Syrian boy survives regime bombing that killed his mother, siblings

A wounded Syrian boy is pictured inside an ambulance following a reported air strike by regime forces and their allies on Maaret al-Noman in Syria's southwestern Idlib province on May 30, 2019. (AFP / Abdulaziz Ketaz)
Updated 31 May 2019
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Syrian boy survives regime bombing that killed his mother, siblings

  • Volunteers from the White Helmets group pulled away at cement blocks to reach the lifeless body of a young boy
  • The Syrian regime escalated its offensive on the opposition stronghold in northwestern Syria. Bombs and shells rained on the crowded enclave, sending tens of thousands of civilians fleeing to safer areas in the north

BEIRUT/NEW YORK: Syrian regime warplanes dropped bombs on a residential building in the last opposition’s stronghold on Thursday, pancaking it and killing at least five people, including a mother and her two children, rescue workers and activists said.

Video shot by the Syrian Civil Defense showed volunteers working to pull bodies and survivors from under the collapsed building in Maaret Al-Numan, a town in southern Idlib that was hit in the airstrike.

The volunteers from the group also known as White Helmets pulled away at cement blocks to reach the lifeless body of a young boy. 

His father, standing behind the camera, wept, repeating his son’s name, Abboudi, as rescuers mulled how to lift the heavy structure. A large bulldozer stood nearby.

Amid the frenzy, a younger boy emerged from a gap in the rubble with swollen red eyes, dusty hair and body, his shirt barely hanging on his body. Rescuers cheered. It was Abboudi’s younger brother.

The mother and another sibling, a girl, were also killed in the bombing. Activist-operated Baladi News agency also reported that five people were killed.

Syria’s regime escalated its offensive on the opposition stronghold in northwestern Syria, home to 3 million people. Bombs and shells rained on the crowded enclave, sending tens of thousands of civilians fleeing to safer areas in the north.

The UN has warned its humanitarian operations in the region are at risk. The US envoy for Syria says top US and Russian diplomats have discussed the step-by-step implementation of a 2012 roadmap to UN-supervised elections in the war-torn country that could allow a Syrian government “to move back into the international community.”

Ambassador James Jeffrey’s comments indicate a new US-Russian engagement on efforts to end the eight-year Syrian war.

But Jeffrey cautioned that “this is just a potential way forward” because there have been no steps such as a cease-fire in the last opposition-held stronghold in Idlib or the convening of a committee to draft a new constitution for Syria.

Jeffrey told reporters after a closed Security Council meeting Wednesday that such steps “would give us confidence that the Assad regime actually understands what it must do to help end this conflict.”


Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike

Updated 3 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike

The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment

GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said three aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Hamas-run territory on Saturday but the Israeli army said it killed a “terrorist.”
The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen. The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The Israeli army said it had “struck a vehicle with a terrorist that took part in the murderous October 7 massacre,” referring to militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel last year.
“The claim that the terrorist was simultaneously a WCK worker is being examined,” it added in a statement.
Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the bodies of “at least five dead were transported (to hospital), including (those of) the three employees of World Central Kitchen.”
“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
The Israeli army insisted its strike in the main southern city hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli air strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

Lebanon says Israeli strike on south wounds 3 people including a child

Updated 35 min 25 sec ago
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Lebanon says Israeli strike on south wounds 3 people including a child

  • An Israeli enemy strike on a car in Majdal Zoun wounded three people

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike on a vehicle in south Lebanon on Saturday wounded three people, including a child, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah after two months of all-out war.
“An Israeli enemy strike on a car in Majdal Zoun wounded three people including a seven-year-old child,” the health ministry said in a statement.


West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

Updated 30 November 2024
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West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

  • MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
  • ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’

LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.

Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.

Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”

Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”

In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.

In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.


Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Updated 30 November 2024
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Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

  • Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City

The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.


Syria’s military ‘temporarily’ withdraws from Aleppo to prepare for counteroffensive

Updated 30 November 2024
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Syria’s military ‘temporarily’ withdraws from Aleppo to prepare for counteroffensive

  • Syrian military confirms militants enter Aleppo, says dozens of soldiers killed

AMMAN: The Syrian military said on Saturday that dozens of its troops had been killed during a militant attack in northwestern Syria and that militants had managed to enter large parts of Aleppo city, forcing the army to redeploy.

The Syrian military statement was the first public acknowledgement by the army that insurgents led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham had entered the government-held city of Aleppo in a surprise attack that began earlier this week.

“The large numbers of terrorists and the multiplicity of battlefronts prompted our armed forces to carry out a redeployment operation aimed at strengthening the defense lines in order to absorb the attack, preserve the lives of civilians and soldiers, and prepare for a counterattack,” the army said.

The insurgent attack marks the most significant challenge in years to President Bashar Assad, jolting the frontlines of the Syrian civil war that have largely been frozen since 2020.

The Syrian military statement said that the insurgents had not been able to establish fixed positions in Aleppo city due to the army’s continued bombardment of their positions.

Two Syrian military sources said earlier that Russian and Syrian warplanes targeted insurgents in an Aleppo suburb on Saturday. Russia deployed its air force to Syria in 2015 to aid Assad in the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011.

The insurgent force began its surprise offensive earlier this week, sweeping through government-held towns and reaching Aleppo nearly a decade after government forces backed by Russia and Iran drove militants from the city.

Speaking on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow regarded the militant attack as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty. “We are in favor of the Syrian authorities bringing order to the area and restoring constitutional order as soon as possible,” he said.