SWEIDA, Syria: Maysoun Saab’s eyes filled with tears as she recalled finding her parents bleeding to death on the ground outside their home, minutes after they were shot by Daesh militants on a killing spree across once tranquil villages they infiltrated in a southeastern corner of Syria.
Within an hour, she had lost her mother, father, brother and 34 other members of her extended family. Overall, more than 200 people were killed and 30 hostages abducted in the coordinated July 25 attacks across Sweida province.
It was one of the biggest single massacres of the Syrian civil war and the worst bloodshed to hit the province since the conflict began in 2011, underscoring the persistent threat posed by Daesh, which has been largely vanquished but retains pockets of territory in southern and eastern Syria.
More than two months after the attack, tensions over the missing hostages — all women and children — are boiling over in Sweida, a mountainous area which is a center for the Druze religious minority. Anger is building up, and young men are taking up arms. This week, the militants shot dead one of the women, 25-year-old Tharwat Abu Ammar, triggering protests and a sit-in outside the Sweida governorate building by relatives enraged at the lack of progress in negotiations to free them.
It’s a stark change for a usually peaceful province that has managed to stay largely on the sidelines of the seven-year Syrian war, and where most villagers work grazing livestock over the surrounding hills.
“We still haven’t really absorbed what happened to us. It’s like a dream or a nightmare that you don’t wake up from,” said Saab, a slender woman with a long braid showing underneath a loose white scarf covering her hair.
During a rare visit to the Sweida countryside by an Associated Press team, armed young men and teens, some as young as 14, patrolled the streets. Some wore military uniforms, others the traditional black baggy pants and white caps worn by Druze villagers. They said the Syrian army had provided them with weapons to form civilian patrols to defend their towns and villages.
Residents recalled a summer day of pure terror that began with gunfire and cries of “Allahu Akbar!” that rang out at 4 a.m. Militants who had slipped into the villages under the cover of darkness knocked on doors, sometimes calling out residents’ names to trick them into opening. Those who did were gunned down. Others were shot in their beds. Women and children were dragged screaming from their homes.
Word of the attack spread in the villages of Shbiki, Shreihi and Rami as neighbors called one another to warn of the militant rampage. A series of suicide bombings unfolded simultaneously in the nearby provincial capital of Sweida.
In Shreihi, a small agricultural village of cement houses, Maysoun and her husband were asleep in one room, their children, 16-year-old Bayar and 13-year-old Habib, in another when she heard the first burst of gunfire. From her window, she saw the silhouette of her neighbor, Lotfi Saab, and his wife in their house. Then she saw armed men push open the door, point a rifle at them and shoot. Maysoon screamed, her voice reverberating through the open window. The militants threw a grenade in her direction.
Her husband climbed onto the roof of their home and aimed a hunting rifle at the men, while she hunkered downstairs with the children. At least two of the men blew themselves up nearby.
At the crack of dawn, Maysoun heard another neighbor screaming, “Abu Khaled has been shot!” — referring to Maysoun’s father. Ignoring her husband’s orders to stay indoors, Maysoun ran over the rocky path to her parent’s house, and spotted her father’s bloodied body on the ground near the front porch. She screamed for her mother and found her lying nearby, shot in her leg, blood everywhere.
“There is no greater tragedy than to see your parents like this, strewn on the ground before your eyes. We were together just the night before, staying up late together and talking. ... They took them away from us,” she said, choking back tears.
Maysoun’s brother, Khaled, meanwhile, was trapped with his wife and daughter in their home, fearfully watching the Daesh fighters from their shuttered window. Another brother, who rushed to their aid, was killed outside Khaled’s home.
Less than an hour later, Maysoun called to tell Khaled that both their parents were dead.
When he was able to leave his house, Khaled said he and other neighbors fought and killed as many Daesh militants as they could. He suffered two gunshot wounds in his thigh. But there was no time to grieve.
“We didn’t have the chance to cry or feel anything, even if our father, mother, neighbors, friends, all of these people had died. But at the time there wasn’t a moment to cry for anyone,” said the 42-year-old truck driver.
Residents said the village men fought with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on — hunting rifles, pistols, even sticks — against the far superior Daesh guns.
The Daesh group, which once held large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has been mostly vanquished. Its de facto capital of Raqqa, in eastern Syria, fell a year ago this month. But the group fights on in eastern pockets like Deir Ezzor and Sweida province.
Some here fear that as the militants flee the advancing Syrian government forces, they will try to regroup in remote pockets of territory like this once quiet corner of Syria. They fear another raid or more trouble because of the brewing tensions over the hostages IS still holds.
On Tuesday, a video posted on the Internet purported to show Dasesh militants shoot Abu Ammar in the back of her head as they threatened to kill more hostages if the Syrian government and its Russian allies do not meet their demands, which include freeing IS fighters and their family members elsewhere in Syria.
In the village of Rami, where 20 civilians from the Maqlad family were killed in the July assault, Nathem Maqlad points to bullet holes and blood stains on the ground from the battle with Daesh.
“I stand ready and alert to defend our land and dignity all over again if I have to,” he said, walking with a group of young men with rifles slung over their shoulders.
In Syria’s Sweida, young men take up arms to defend villages
In Syria’s Sweida, young men take up arms to defend villages
- It’s a stark change for a usually peaceful province that has managed to stay largely on the sidelines of the seven-year Syrian war
- More than 200 people were killed and 30 hostages abducted in the coordinated July 25 attacks across Sweida province
Queen Rania of Jordan hosts Ramadan iftar for women leaders in Aqaba
- Attendees congratulated on occasions of Ramadan, International Women’s Day
- Governor of Aqaba welcomes queen, expresses gratitude for her efforts to empower women
LONDON: Queen Rania of Jordan hosted a Ramadan iftar banquet on Thursday at the Prince Rashid Club in Aqaba.
Women leaders and activists from various sectors in Aqaba, a governorate on the Red Sea in southern Jordan, attended the event.
Queen Rania congratulated the attendees on Ramadan and the upcoming International Women’s Day, which will be marked on March 8, the Jordan News Agency reported.
She praised the contributions of Jordanian women in the workforce and the labor market, as well as their roles in caring for their families to provide comfort and reassurance at home.
Khaled Al-Hajjaj, the governor of Aqaba, welcomed the queen to the city and expressed gratitude for her efforts to empower women.
Mahmoud Khalifat, the director general of Aqaba Ports Corporation, and Muhannad Al-Naser, director of Prince Rashid Club, were also present.
Iraq authorities ‘working to find academic kidnapped in Baghdad’
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s national security adviser said that authorities were actively searching for Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli Russian academic kidnapped nearly two years ago in Baghdad.
Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University and fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, has been missing in Iraq since March 2023.
Israeli authorities said later she had been kidnapped, blaming a pro-Iranian group for her disappearance.
National Security Adviser Qassem Al-Araji said “Iraqi authorities are working under the prime minister’s direction” to solve the issue.
“The security services are mobilized to locate her and find the group that kidnapped her,” he said, adding there had been no claims of responsibility for her abduction or demands for her release.
“We have to operate discreetly and through intermediaries” to locate her, he said.
Tsurkov, who had likely entered Iraq on her Russian passport, had traveled to the country as part of her doctoral studies.
An Iraqi security source told AFP that the last trip was not Tsurkov’s first visit to Iraq.
In November 2023, Iraqi channel Al Rabiaa TV aired the first hostage video of Tsurkov known to the public since her kidnapping.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or determine whether her statement was coerced.
In the video, Tsurkov mentioned the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah of holding her, but the armed faction has implied it was not involved in her disappearance.
Charity kitchen brings hope to displaced Palestinians
- Israeli military raid launched in the West Bank weeks ago has uprooted more than 40,000 people
TULKARM: At a makeshift kitchen inside a city office building, volunteers rub paprika, oil and salt on slabs of chicken before arraying them on trays and slipping them into an oven.
Once the meat is done, it is divided into portions and tucked into plastic foam containers along with piles of yellow rice scooped from large steel pots.
The unpaid chefs at the Yasser Arafat Charity Kitchen in Tulkarm hope their labors will bring joy to displaced Palestinians trying to mark Ramadan.
An Israeli military raid launched in the West Bank weeks ago has uprooted more than 40,000 people.
Israel says it was meant to stamp out militancy in the occupied region, which has experienced a surge of violence since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
The raid has been deadly and destructive, emptying several urban refugee camps that house descendants of Palestinians who fled wars with Israel decades ago.
The refugees have been told they will not be allowed to return for a year.
In the meantime, many of them have no access to kitchens, are separated from their communities, and are struggling to mark the end of the daily Ramadan fast with what are typically lavish meals.
“The situation is difficult,” said Abdullah Kamil, governor of the Tulkarm area.
He said some are drawing hope from the charity kitchen, which has expanded its usual operations to provide daily meals for up to 700 refugees, an effort to “meet the needs of the people, especially during the month of Ramadan.”
For Mansour Awfa, 60, the meals are a bright spot in a dark time.
He fled from the Tulkarm refugee camp in early February and does not know when he can return. “This is the house where I was raised, where I lived, and where I spent my life,” he said of the camp. “I’m not allowed to go there.”
Awfa, his wife, and four children live in a relative’s city apartment, where they sleep on thin mattresses on the floor.
“Where do we go? Where is there to go?” he asked. “But thanks to God, we await meals and aid from some warmhearted people.”
At least 48 killed in ‘most violent’ Syria unrest since Assad ouster: monitor
- Pro-Assad fighters killed 16 security personnel while 28 fighters “oyal to ousted ruler Bashar Assad and four civilians reported killed
- Huweija, who headed air force intelligence from 1987 to 2002, has long been a suspect in the 1977 murder of Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Bek Jumblatt
DAMASCUS: Fierce fighting between Syrian security forces and gunmen loyal to deposed ruler Bashar Assad killed 48 people on Thursday, a war monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clashes in the coastal town of Jableh and adjacent villages were “the most violent attacks against the new authorities since Assad was toppled” in December.
Pro-Assad fighters killed 16 security personnel while 28 fighters “loyal” to ousted President Bashar Assad and four civilians were also killed, it said.
The fighting struck in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia, the heartland of the ousted president’s Alawite minority who were considered bastions of support during his rule.
Mustafa Kneifati, a security official in Latakia, said that in “a well-planned and premeditated attack, several groups of Assad militia remnants attacked our positions and checkpoints, targeting many of our patrols in the Jableh area.”
He added that the attacks resulted in “numerous martyrs and injured among our forces” but did not give a figure.
Kneifati said security forces would “work to eliminate their presence.” “We will restore stability to the region and protect the property of our people,” he declared.
The UK-based observatory said most of the security personnel killed were from the former rebel bastion of Idlib in the northwest.
During the operation, security forces captured and arrested a former head of air force intelligence, one of the Assad family’s most trusted security agencies, state news agency SANA reported.
“Our forces in the city of Jableh managed to arrest the criminal General Ibrahim Huweija,” SANA said.
“He is accused of hundreds of assassinations during the era of the criminal Hafez Assad,” Bashar Assad’s father and predecessor.
Huweija, who headed air force intelligence from 1987 to 2002, has long been a suspect in the 1977 murder of Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Bek Jumblatt.
His son and successor Walid Jumblatt retweeted the news of his arrest with the comment: “Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest).”
The provincial security director said security forces clashed with gunmen loyal to an Assad-era special forces commander in another village in Latakia, after authorities reportedly launched helicopter strikes.
“The armed groups that our security forces were clashing with in the Latakia countryside were affiliated with the war criminal Suhail Al-Hassan,” the security director told SANA.
Nicknamed “The Tiger,” Hassan led the country’s special forces and was frequently described as Assad’s “favorite soldier.” He was responsible for key military advances by the Assad government in 2015.
Alawite leaders call for peaceful protests
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had earlier reported “strikes launched by Syrian helicopters on armed men in the village of Beit Ana and the surrounding forests, coinciding with artillery strikes on a neighboring village.”
SANA reported that militias loyal to the ousted president had opened fire on “members and equipment of the defense ministry” near the village, killing one security force member and wounding two.
Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera reported that its photographer Riad Al-Hussein was wounded in the clashes but that he was doing well.
A defense ministry source later told SANA that large military reinforcements were being deployed to the Jableh area.
Alawite leaders later called in a statement on Facebook for “peaceful protests” in response to the helicopter strikes, which they said had targeted “the homes of civilians.”
The security forces imposed overnight curfews on Alawite-populated areas, including Latakia, the port city of Tartus and third city Homs, SANA reported.
In other cities around the country, crowds gathered “in support of the security forces,” it added.
Tensions erupted after residents of Beit Ana, the birthplace of Suhail Al-Hassan, prevented security forces from arresting a person wanted for trading arms, the Observatory said.
Security forces subsequently launched a campaign in the area, resulting in clashes with gunmen, it added.
Tensions erupted after at least four civilians were killed during a security operation in Latakia, the monitor said on Wednesday.
Security forces launched the campaign in the Daatour neighborhood of the city on Tuesday after an ambush by “members of the remnants of Assad militias” killed two security personnel, state media reported.
Islamist rebels led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham launched a lightning offensive that toppled Assad on December 8.
The country’s new security forces have since carried out extensive campaigns seeking to root out Assad loyalists from his former bastions.
Residents and organizations have reported violations during those campaigns, including the seizing of homes, field executions and kidnappings.
Syria’s new authorities have described the violations as “isolated incidents” and vowed to pursue those responsible.
UN experts condemn Israeli move to reopen ‘gates of hell’ and unilaterally alter ceasefire terms
- Israel’s government said on Sunday it was suspending deliveries of all goods to Gaza, including critical, life-saving aid
- This is ‘a gross violation of international law. As an occupying power, Israel is legally obligated’ to provide food, medicine and other aid, the experts say
NEW YORK CITY: More than 20 UN independent human rights experts have denounced the decision by the Israeli government to block all humanitarian aid to Gaza and resume a total siege of the territory.
They warned that this breaks the terms of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, breaks international law and puts the prospects for peace in jeopardy.
In a joint statement on Thursday, the experts condemned Israel’s decision on Sunday to suspend deliveries of all goods to Gaza, including critical, life-saving aid. It follows an announcement by the Israeli war Cabinet that it was prepared to withdraw from the ceasefire agreement, with some ministers openly calling for reopening the “gates of hell” in the war-battered enclave.
“This action constitutes a gross violation of international law,” the experts said. “As an occupying power, Israel is legally obligated to ensure the provision of sufficient food, medical supplies, and other forms of aid.
“By blocking such essential services, including those vital to sexual and reproductive health and disability support, Israel is weaponizing humanitarian assistance.”
Such actions represent “serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law,” they added, and might amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.
The independent experts who put their names to the statement included Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Michael Fakhri, the special rapporteur on the right to food. Special rapporteurs are part of what is known as the special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. They are independent experts who work on a voluntary basis, are not members of UN staff and are not paid for their work.
They also criticized Israel’s general approach to the ceasefire agreement, which initially was hailed as a pathway to peace. Instead of fostering a cessation of hostilities, however, the agreement has been marked by continued violence and destruction.
At least 100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since it took effect on Jan. 19. The total death toll in the territory since the war began in October 2023 now stands at 48,400, as Israeli forces persist with airstrikes and ground assaults.
“The harsh conditions of the ceasefire, marked by limited aid and scarce resources, have only exacerbated the suffering of Gaza’s population,” the experts wrote.
“The decision to reimpose a total siege on Gaza — where 80 percent of farmland and civilian infrastructure has already been destroyed — will undoubtedly worsen the humanitarian crisis.”
While some states and regional organizations have attempted to justify Israel’s actions as a response to alleged ceasefire violations by Hamas, the experts noted that repeated violations of the agreement by Israel have largely gone unreported.
They called for the mediators of the ceasefire deal, Egypt, Qatar and the US, to intervene to help preserve the agreement in accordance with international obligations. They also stressed that Israel’s actions should be viewed within the context of the ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, a situation the International Court of Justice has demanded came an end.
The experts concluded by issuing a strong call for global action: “Nations must recall their obligations under international law and act to halt this brutal assault on the Palestinian people. The international community cannot allow lawlessness and injustice to prevail.”
As the world watches the devastating effects of the latest Israeli decision, the experts warned that fragile hopes for peace in the region continue to fade, and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is far from over.
The initial phase of the ceasefire expired on Sunday without Israel and Hamas reaching an agreement on an extension or a way forward for the deal.
