WASHINGTON: One of the four Americans killed in a suicide bomb attack in Syria this week was a Navy sailor and married mother of two whose father is a high-ranking officer in the New York State Police, officials said on Friday.
The Pentagon identified three of the four Americans killed in Wednesday’s attack in the northern Syrian town of Manbij.
They are Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida, who was based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon M. Kent, 35, of Pine Plains, New York, and based at Fort Meade, Maryland; and a civilian, Scott A. Wirtz, from St. Louis.
The Pentagon has not identified the fourth casualty, a civilian contractor.
But according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an Arabic interpreter who had emigrated from Syria to the US was among at least 20 people killed in the bombing.
Ali Taher told the newspaper on Friday that his older sister, Ghadir Taher, 27, of East Point, Georgia, was killed by the blast.
Ali Taher, who immigrated with his family to the US, said his sister’s smile would light up the room. He said she graduated from Tri-Cities High School and was kind and very easy to talk to.
The family learned of her death from her employer, Valiant Integrated Services, a defense contractor, he said.
In an email to the newspaper, Valiant spokesman Tom Becker confirmed the death, adding they were “extremely saddened by the tragic and senseless passing” of Ghadir Taher.
The attack, claimed by Daesh, also wounded three US troops and was the deadliest assault on US troops in Syria since American forces went into the country in 2015.
The Pentagon’s statement said Kent was from upstate New York but did not give a hometown. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement that she was from Pine Plains and was the daughter of state police field commander Col. Stephen Smith, the agency’s third-highest position.
“We owe her our eternal gratitude for her selfless dedication and sacrifice,” Cuomo said while ordering flags on state government buildings to be flown at half-staff in Kent’s honor.
Tara Grieb, principal of Stissing Mountain Junior-Senior High School in Pine Plains, said Kent grew up in the small, picturesque Hudson Valley town 145 km north of New York City and graduated from the local high school in 2001.
Grieb said Kent moved away after enlisting in the Navy in 2003.
“She was an honor student and a fabulous person,” Grieb said. “We are proud of her and her service and we support her family 100 percent in their time of sorrow.”
Kent’s mother, Mary Smith, taught sixth grade in the district until retiring last year, Grieb said.
Kent, who lived in Maryland with her husband and two children, was assigned to the Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66 based at Fort George Meade.
Cryptologic technicians are part of the Navy’s intelligence-gathering apparatus, analyzing encrypted electronic communications and using computers and other technology to compile information on the nation’s enemies.
Cmdr. Joseph Harrison, the unit’s commanding officer, said in a statement that Kent “was a rockstar, an outstanding Chief Petty Officer, and leader to many in the Navy Information Warfare Community.”
Florida’s Palm Beach Post reported that Farmer’s parents loaded suitcases into a friend’s SUV on Friday morning before heading to Dover, Delaware, for the return of their son’s remains.
Duncan Farmer characterized his son as “a good man. Good son. Good father. Good husband.” Then he added, “A good friend.”
Duncan Farmer said they knew Jonathan, a Green Beret, was in Syria, but “we didn’t know exactly where.”
Jonathan Farmer was born in Boynton Beach, Florida, south of West Palm Beach. He grew up in Palm Beach Gardens, attending the Benjamin School before going to Bowdoin College in Maine.
His father said Jonathan Famer was in the military for 13 years and had been in dangerous places “many times,” including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
He said services will be at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Palm Beach Gardens, but a date has not been set. He said internment will be at Arlington National Cemetery.
In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson asked Missourians to pray for the family of Wirtz, a former Navy SEAL who was working for the US Defense Intelligence Agency as an operations support specialist.
Wirtz “died bravely serving our nation in a dangerous part of the world, and for that we are grateful,” Parson said.
Syrian-born woman among 4 slain Americans in Manbij
Syrian-born woman among 4 slain Americans in Manbij
- US government sources say the Pentagon and other national agencies are investigating the bombing
- This is one of the deadliest attacks on US forces in Syria since their deployment in 2015
UK signs deals with Iraq aimed at curbing irregular immigration
- “Organized criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too,” Cooper said
- Pacts include a joint UK-Iraq “statement on border security” committing both countries to work more closely in tackling people smuggling and border security
LONDON: The UK government said Thursday it had struck a “world-first security agreement” and other cooperation deals with Iraq to target people-smuggling gangs and strengthen its border security.
Interior minister Yvette Cooper said the pacts sent “a clear signal to the criminal smuggling gangs that we are determined to work across the globe to go after them.”
They follow a visit this week by Cooper to Iraq and its autonomous Kurdistan region, when she met federal and regional government officials.
“Organized criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too,” she said in a statement.
Cooper noted people-smuggling gangs’ operations “stretch back through Northern France, Germany, across Europe, to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and beyond.”
“The increasingly global nature of organized immigration crime means that even countries that are thousands of miles apart must work more closely together,” she added.
The pacts include a joint UK-Iraq “statement on border security” committing both countries to work more closely in tackling people smuggling and border security.
The two countries signed another statement on migration to speed up the returns of people who have no right to be in the UK and help reintegration programs to support returnees.
As part of the agreements, London will also provide up to £300,000 ($380,000) for Iraqi law enforcement training in border security.
It will be focused on countering organized immigration crime and narcotics, and increasing the capacity and capability of Iraq’s border enforcement.
The UK has pledged another £200,000 to support projects in the Kurdistan region, “which will enhance capabilities concerning irregular migration and border security, including a new taskforce.”
Other measures within the agreements include a communications campaign “to counter the misinformation and myths that people-smugglers post online.”
Cooper’s interior ministry said collectively they were “the biggest operational package to tackle serious organized crime and people smuggling between the two countries ever.”
Some Lebanon hospitals look set to restart quickly after ceasefire, WHO says
- “Probably some of our hospitals will take some time,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO representative in Lebanon said
GENEVA: A World Health Organization official voiced optimism on Thursday that some of the health facilities in Lebanon shuttered during more than a year of conflict would soon be operational again, if the ceasefire holds.
“Probably some of our hospitals will take some time, but some hospitals probably will be able to restart very quickly,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO representative in Lebanon, told an online press conference after a damage assessment this week.
“So we are very hopeful,” he added, saying four hospitals in and around Beirut were among those that could restart quickly.
Lebanon says 2 hurt as Israeli troops fire on people returning south after truce with Hezbollah
- Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two people were wounded by Israeli fire in Markaba, close to the border, without providing further details
- It said Israel fired artillery in three other locations near the border
BEIRUT: At least two people were wounded by Israeli fire in southern Lebanon on Thursday, according to state media. The Israeli military said it had fired at people trying to return to certain areas on the second day of a ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group.
The agreement, brokered by the United States and France, includes an initial two-month ceasefire in which Hezbollah militants are to withdraw north of the Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border. The buffer zone would be patrolled by Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two people were wounded by Israeli fire in Markaba, close to the border, without providing further details. It said Israel fired artillery in three other locations near the border. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press reporter in northern Israel near the border heard Israeli drones buzzing overhead and the sound of artillery strikes from the Lebanese side.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the ceasefire.” It said troops “opened fire toward them” and would “actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement.”
Israeli officials have said forces will be withdrawn gradually as it ensures that the agreement is being enforced. Israel has warned people not to return to areas where troops are deployed, and says it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah if it violates the terms of the truce.
A Lebanese military official said Lebanese troops would gradually deploy in the south as Israeli troops withdraw. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
The ceasefire agreement announced late Tuesday ended 14 months of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that began a day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets, drones and missiles in solidarity.
Israel retaliated with airstrikes, and the conflict steadily intensified for nearly a year before boiling over into all-out war in mid-September. The war in Gaza is still raging with no end in sight.
More than 3,760 people were killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
Some 1.2 million people were displaced in Lebanon, and thousands began streaming back to their homes on Wednesday despite warnings from the Lebanese military and the Israeli army to stay out of certain areas. Some 50,000 people were displaced on the Israeli side, but few have returned and the communities near the northern border are still largely deserted.
In Menara, an Israeli community on the border with views into Lebanon, around three quarters of homes are damaged, some with collapsed roofs and burnt-out interiors. A few residents could be seen gathering their belongings on Thursday before leaving again.
Algeria facing growing calls to release French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal
- “The detention without serious grounds of a writer of French nationality is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said
- The European Parliament discussed Algeria’s repression of freedom of speech on Wednesday and called for “his immediate and unconditional release”
PARIS: Politicians, writers and activists have called for the release of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose arrest in Algeria is seen as the latest instance of the stifling of creative expression in the military-dominated North African country.
The 75-year-old author, who is an outspoken critic of Islamism and the Algerian regime, has not been heard from by friends, family or his French publisher since leaving Paris for Algiers earlier this month. He has not been seen near his home in his small town, Boumerdes, his neighbors told The Associated Press.
“The detention without serious grounds of a writer of French nationality is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Wednesday.
He added Sansal’s work “does honor to both his countries and to the values we cherish.”
The European Parliament discussed Algeria’s repression of freedom of speech on Wednesday and called for “his immediate and unconditional release.”
Algerian authorities have not publicly announced charges against Sansal, but the APS state news service said he was arrested at the airport.
Though no longer censored, Sansal’s novels have in the past faced bans in Algeria. A professed admirer of French culture, his writings on Islam’s role in society, authoritarianism, freedom of expression and the civil war that ravaged Algeria throughout the 1990s have won him fans across the ideological spectrum in France, from far-right leader Marine Le Pen to President Emmanuel Macron, who attended his French naturalization ceremony in 2023.
But his work has provoked ire in Algeria, from both authorities and Islamists, who have issued death threats against him in the 1990s and afterward.
Though few garner such international attention, Sansal is among a long list of political prisoners incarcerated in Algeria, where the hopes of a protest movement that led to the ouster of the country’s then-82 year old president have been crushed under President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Human rights groups have decried the ongoing repression facing journalists, activists and writers. Amnesty International in September called it a “brutal crackdown on human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”
Algerian authorities have in recent months disrupted a book fair in Bejaia and excluded prominent authors from the country’s largest book fair in Algeria has in recent months, including this year’s Goncourt Prize winner Kamel Daoud,
“This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is no more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment and the surveillance of the entire society,” French-Algerian author Kamel Daoud wrote in an editorial signed by more than a dozen authors in Le Point this week.
Sansal has been a polarizing figure in Algeria for holding some pro-Israel views and for likening political Islam to Nazism and totalitarianism in his novels, including “The Oath of the Barbarians” and “2084: The End of the World.”
Despite the controversial subject matter, Sansal had never faced detention. His arrest comes as relations between France and Algeria face newfound strains. France in July backed Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, angering Algeria, which has long backed the independence Polisario Front and pushed for a referendum to determine the future of the coastal northwest African territory.
“A regime that thinks it has to stop its writers, whatever they think, is certainly a weak regime,” French-Algerian academic Ali Bensaad wrote in a statement posted on Facebook.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer killed in Syria, SNN reports
DUBAI: Iranian Revolutionary Guards Brig. Gen. Kioumars Pourhashemi was killed in the Syrian province of Aleppo by “terrorists” linked to Israel, Iran’s SNN news agency reported on Thursday without giving further details.
Rebels led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham on Wednesday launched an incursion into a dozen towns and villages in northwest Aleppo province controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad.
