DEIR EZZOR, Syria: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said it thwarted an attempted Daesh group suicide bomb attack early on Wednesday during a last-stand battle for the militant group’s final enclave.
The SDF on Tuesday said the battle for Baghouz, a collection of hamlets and farmland near the Iraqi border, was as good as over.
The enclave is the last shred of populated territory held by the militants who have been driven from roughly one third of Iraq and Syria over the past four years.
Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the SDF media office, said its forces had been bombarding Baghouz heavily overnight before engaging in direct clashes with Daesh fighters from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Live footage broadcast by the Kurdish Ronahi TV overnight showed a series of large explosions lighting up the night sky over Baghouz.
“There were suicide vest attacks by a group of bombers who tried to blow themselves up amidst our forces. Our forces targeted and killed them before they reached our positions,” Bali said.
The SDF has laid siege to Baghouz for weeks but had repeatedly postponed its final assault to allow thousands of civilians, many of them wives and children of Daesh fighters, to leave. It resumed the attack on Sunday.
Around 3,000 fighters and their families surrendered to SDF forces in 24 hours, Bali said overnight. Three women and four children belonging to the Yazidi sect, a minority group who were kidnapped and enslaved by Daesh in 2014, were also freed, he said.
While Baghouz is the last populated territory of what was once the group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate,” fighters still operate in remote areas elsewhere.
The group put out a new propaganda video overnight Monday filmed in recent weeks inside Baghouz, insisting on its claim to leadership of all Muslims and calling on its supporters to keep the faith.
“Tomorrow, God willing, we will be in paradise and they will be burning in hell,” one of the men interviewed in the video said.
Daesh suicide bombers thwarted in last-stand battle for Baghouz: SDF
Daesh suicide bombers thwarted in last-stand battle for Baghouz: SDF
- The Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday said the battle for Baghouz was as good as over
- The enclave is the last shred of populated territory held by the militants
Norway fund’s ethics body reviews Israeli bank stakes over West Bank settler loans
- Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
OSLO/LONDON/JERUSALEM: The ethics watchdog for Norway’s $1.9 trillion wealth fund is scrutinizing Israeli banks’ practice of underwriting Israeli settlers’ housebuilding commitments in the occupied West Bank in a review that could prompt up to $500 million in divestments.
The Council on Ethics, a public body set up by the Ministry of Finance, has, however, decided not to object to the Fund’s investments in accommodation platforms such as Airbnb that offer rentals in the Jewish settlements.
The body checks that firms in the portfolio of the world’s largest wealth fund meet ethical guidelines set by Norway’s parliament.
In an interview with Reuters on May 22, Council head Svein Richard Brandtzaeg said it was examining how Israeli banks offer guarantees that protect Israeli settlers’ money if the company building their home in the West Bank should fold.
Other practices are also being looked at “but this is what we can see so far,” he said. “That is what is well documented.” He declined to say how long the review would take.
Brandtzaeg did not name the banks but, at the end of 2024, the fund owned about 5 billion crowns ($500 million) in shares in the five largest Israeli lenders, up 62 percent in 12 months, according to the latest data.
The banks — Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi Tefahot Bank and First International Bank of Israel — did not answer requests for comment.
Since 2020, they have been included in a list of companies with ties to settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories compiled by a UN mission assessing the implications for Palestinian rights.
Latterly, investor concern has grown around the world over a 19-month-old Israeli onslaught that has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the Gaza Strip in response to an attack by Hamas militants that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.
Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Many settlements are adjacent to Palestinian areas and some Israeli firms serve both Israelis and Palestinians.
The United Nations’ top court last year found that Israeli settlements built on territory seized in 1967 were illegal, a ruling that Israel called “fundamentally wrong,” citing historical and biblical ties to the land.
ACCOMMODATION RENTALS IN WEST BANK SETTLEMENTS
In mid-2024, the Council on Ethics began a new review of investments linked to the West Bank and Gaza.
It examined 65 companies but recommended only petrol station chain Paz and telecoms company Bezeq for divestment, resulting in share sales.
The Council also scrutinized some multinationals to see if their activities in the West Bank met its guidelines.
Among them were the accommodation platforms, including Airbnb, Booking.com, TripAdviser and Expedia, named on the UN list and accounting for about $3 billion in Fund investments.
But the Council will not recommend watchlisting or divesting from those, Eli Ane Lund, head of its secretariat, said in the joint interview.
“The company’s activity must have some kind of influence on the (ethical) violations,” she said. “It’s not (enough) to have a connection, it has to have something to do with the violation, it must contribute to it.”
The Council’s recommendations go to the central bank, which is not obliged to follow them but generally does.
If investments are sold, it is done gradually to avoid alerting markets, and the decision is then made public.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners say the Council sets its bar too high for recommending divestments, and that the Norwegian government should instruct the fund to conduct a general divestment from Israel just as it did for Russia in 2022, three days after Moscow invaded Ukraine.
But most lawmakers support the Council’s approach, and are set on Wednesday to formally endorse a parliamentary finance committee’s decision not to order a wholesale boycott.
Syrian pro-Assad fighter jailed for life in Germany for crimes against humanity
BERLIN: A German court on Tuesday convicted a Syrian man of crimes against humanity and jailed him for life over offenses committed during his time fighting for former President Bashar Assad.
The court in the city of Stuttgart found the former militiaman guilty of crimes including murder and torture after a trial which involved testimony from 30 witnesses.
Shortly after the outbreak of anti-Assad protests in early 2011, the man joined a pro-government Shia militia in the southern town of Bosra Al-Sham.
He proceeded to take part in several crimes against the local Sunni population with the aim of “terrorizing” them and driving them from the town, the court found.
German authorities have pursued several suspects for crimes committed in Syria’s civil war under the principle of universal jurisdiction, even after Assad’s ouster last December.
In 2022, former Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan was found guilty of overseeing the murders of 27 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the notorious Al-Khatib jail in 2011 and 2012.
That was the first international trial over state-sponsored torture in Syrian prisons and was hailed as “historic” by human rights activists.
More than 4 million refugees have fled Sudan since war began, UN says
GENEVA: The number of people who have fled Sudan since the beginning of the war has surpassed 4 million, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.
UNHCR spokesperson Eujin Byun told a Geneva press briefing that the milestone was reached on Monday and that the scale of displacement was “putting regional and global stability at stake.”
US to eventually reduce military bases in Syria to one: US envoy
ISTANBUL: The United States has begun reducing its military presence in Syria with a view to eventually closing all but one of its bases there, the US envoy for the country has said in an interview.
Six months after the ouster of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, the United States is steadily drawing down its presence as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), a military task force launched in 2014 to fight the Daesh group (IS).
“The reduction of our OIR engagement on a military basis is happening,” the US envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, said in an interview with Turkiye’s NTV late on Monday.
“We’ve gone from eight bases to five to three. We’ll eventually go to one.”
But he admitted Syria still faced major security challenges under interim leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whose Islamist-led coalition toppled Assad in December.
Assad’s ouster brought an end to Syria’s bloody 14-year civil war, but the new authorities have struggled to contain recent bouts of sectarian violence.
Barrack, who is also the US ambassador to Turkiye, called for the “integration” of the country’s ethnic and religious groups.
“It’s very tribal still. It’s very difficult to bring it together,” he said.
But “I think that will happen,” he added.
The Pentagon announced in April that the United States would halve its troops in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, saying the IS presence had been reduced to “remnants.”
Gaza officials say Israeli forces killed 27 heading to aid site. Israel says it fired near suspects
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday condemned the killing of more 30 Palestinians
- He called for an “immediate and independent investigation” into the incident
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Palestinian health officials and witnesses say Israeli forces fired on people as they headed toward an aid distribution site on Tuesday, killing at least 27, in the third such incident in three days.
The army said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots.
The near-daily shootings have come after an Israeli and US-backed foundation established aid distribution points inside Israeli military zones, a system it says is designed to circumvent Hamas.
The United Nations has rejected the new system, saying it doesn’t address Gaza’s mounting hunger crisis and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of casualties on Tuesday.
It previously said it fired warning shots at suspects who approached its forces early Sunday and Monday, when health officials and witnesses said 34 people were killed.
The military denies opening fire on civilians or blocking them from reaching the aid sites.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the sites, says there has been no violence in or around them. On Tuesday,
it acknowledged that the Israeli military was investigating whether civilians were wounded “after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone,” in an area that was “well beyond our secure distribution site.”
‘Either way we will die’ The shootings all occurred at the Flag Roundabout, around a kilometer (1,000 yards) from one of the GHF’s distribution sites in the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah.
The entire area is an Israeli military zone where journalists have no access outside of army-approved embeds.
At least 27 people were killed early Tuesday, according to Zaher Al-Waheidi, the head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s records department.
Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people, 19 of whom were declared dead on arrival and eight more who later died of their wounds.
The 27 dead were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the shooting started around 4 a.m. in the city’s Flag Roundabout area, around one kilometer (1,000 yards) away from the aid distribution hub.
He said he saw several people killed or wounded. Neima Al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, gave a similar account.
“There were many martyrs and wounded,” she said, saying the shooting by Israeli forces was “indiscriminate.”
She said she managed to reach the hub but returned empty-handed.
“There was no aid there,” she said. “After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return,” she said.
“Either way we will die.” Rasha Al-Nahal, another witness, said “there was gunfire from all directions.”
She said she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road.
She said she also found no aid when she arrived at the distribution hub, and that Israeli forces “fired at us as we were returning.” 3 Israeli soldiers killed in northern Gaza
The Israeli military meanwhile said Tuesday that three of its soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on Israel’s forces since it ended a ceasefire with Hamas in March.
The military said the three soldiers, all in their early 20s, fell during combat in northern Gaza on Monday, without providing details.
Israeli media reported that they were killed in an explosion in the Jabaliya area.
Israel ended the ceasefire in March after Hamas refused to change the agreement to release more hostages sooner.
Israeli strikes have killed thousands of Palestinians since then, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel that ignited the war.
They are still holding 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.
The ministry is led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government.
Its toll is seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts, though Israel has challenged its numbers.
Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence. Around 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Oct. 7 attack, including more than 400 during the fighting inside Gaza.
