BEIRUT: The US-led coalition said Monday its aircraft carried out a strike in northwestern Syria a day earlier that a monitor reported had killed eight extremists, including commanders, from an Al-Qaeda-linked group.
“This operation targeted AQ-S operatives responsible for plotting external attacks threatening US citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians,” US Central Command said in a statement, using an acronym for Al-Qaeda in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said six commanders were among the slain extremists from the Hurras Al-Deen group in Aleppo province.
The killed commanders included two Tunisians, two Algerians, an Egyptian and a Syrian, the Observatory added.
“With our allies and partners, we will continue to target Daesh and Al-Qaeda to prevent both groups from using Syria as a safe haven,” US Central Command said.
Hurras Al-Deen maintains ties to Al-Qaeda and fights alongside the global extremist network’s former Syria branch, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham — which dominates most of Idlib province as well as parts of neighboring Hama, Aleppo and Latakia.
Since its formation in 2014, the US-led coalition against Deash has targeted extremist leaders in Syria’s northwest, but the strikes have dropped off significantly since 2017.
In March 2017, the Observatory said a US-led strike on a mosque in the north of Aleppo province killed 49 people, most of them civilians.
The Pentagon denied that large numbers of civilians were killed or that it had targeted the religious building, acknowledging only one possible civilian death.
The greater Idlib area was supposed to be protected by a buffer zone under a September agreement between Russia and Turkey.
But backed by its ally Moscow, Damascus has since late April ramped up its bombardment of the region, home to some three million people — nearly half of whom have been displaced from other parts of Syria.
That came after HTS took over administrative control of the Idlib region at the start of the year.
Hurras Al-Deen was established in February 2018 and has some 1,800 fighters, including non-Syrians, according to the Observatory.
US-led coalition says targeted Al-Qaeda in northwest Syria
US-led coalition says targeted Al-Qaeda in northwest Syria
- US officials said the targets were planning attacks that threaten the safety of US citizens and partners as well as civilians
- The killed commanders were from different nationalities
UN: Over 30 million in need of aid in war-torn Sudan
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced
- Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: More than 30 million people, over half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the United Nations said on Monday.
The UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of 30.4 million people it said are in need in what it called “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
Sudan has been torn apart and pushed to the brink of famine by the war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, which, in addition to 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
A further 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan’s borders to escape the war, which means over a quarter of the country’s pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, are now uprooted.
Famine has already been declared in five areas in Sudan and is expected to take hold of five more areas by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.
Sudan’s army-aligned government has denied there is famine, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
For much of the conflict, the UN has struggled to raise even a quarter of the funds it has targeted for its humanitarian response in the impoverished northeast African country.
Sudan has often been called the world’s “forgotten” war, overshadowed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine despite the scale of the horrors inflicted upon civilians.
Jordanian FM discusses rebuilding Syria in Turkiye talks
DUBAI: The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi highlighted on Tuesday the need to help Syria regain its security, stability, and sovereignty during discussions in Turkiye.
Talks also focused on providing support to the Syrian people and addressing the challenge of rebuilding the war-torn country.
He underscored Jordan's firm stance against any aggression on Syria’s sovereignty, rejecting Israeli attacks on Syrian territory.
The minister also expressed solidarity with Turkey, supporting its rights in confronting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), emphasizing the importance of regional cooperation to ensure peace and stability.
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
