BEIRUT: Regime and Russian fire has killed at least six civilians in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province, a war monitor said on Saturday, two weeks after Moscow declared a cease-fire in the opposition-dominated region. The truce, which brought a halt to four months of devastating bombardment on Idlib province by the Syrian regime and its ally Russia, had largely held apart from sporadic artillery fire and airstrikes.
But on Tuesday, Russia carried out its first airstrikes in the area since the cease-fire began, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On Friday, regime rocket fire on the towns of Maaret Al-Numan and Kafranbel in southern Idlib province killed five civilians including a child, the Observatory said.
A sixth civilian was killed in a Russian airstrike in the rural west of the province, it added.
That brought to 11 the number killed since the cease-fire came into effect, according to the Britain-based monitor, which has a network of contacts across the war-torn country.
The Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate controls most of Idlib as well as parts of neighboring Aleppo and Latakia provinces.
The region of around 3 million people, many of them displaced by fighting in other areas, is one of the last holdouts of opposition to forces backing Syria’s Bashar Assad.
The Observatory on Saturday reported regime fire in various parts of southern Idlib, including close to a Turkish military observation post.
Russian air raids have also targeted hard-line fighters in Idlib’s western countryside and nearby parts of Latakia, it said.
The cease-fire is the second since Damascus escalated its operations in the area in April, which have since left at least 980 civilians dead, according to Observatory figures, and which the UN says have forced more than 400,000 people to flee.
Besieged
Meanwhile, Syrian state media is accusing militant groups of preventing civilians on Saturday from leaving the last opposition-held stronghold in the country’s northwest through a corridor government troops are securing.
The government has used such passageways before to allow residents to flee areas it is besieging ahead of a military offensive.
Last month, Syrian officials declared a “humanitarian corridor” at the southern tip of the stronghold while troops besieged the area.
State-run TV Al-Ikhbariya said no civilians came out via the corridor from Idlib province, controlled by militants dominated by opposition groups, for the second straight day. Al-Ikhabariya said 20 vehicles were barred by militants from reaching the Abu Dhuhur crossing, including by shooting at those looking to leave.
State news agency SANA also said militants shot at motorists in Idlib, denying them an exit. There was no independent confirmation.
The Abu Dhuhur crossing links between opposition-controlled Idlib, home to nearly 3 million people, and government-controlled areas. State television stations showed buses and medical teams waiting at the crossing.
UN and aid groups question the government’s use of such corridors amid military offensives and sieges and in the absence of any independent monitors. The UN says such exit corridors should be guaranteed from all sides to allow people to use them voluntarily.
Syrian forces have made major ground advances on opposition-held Idlib in recent weeks despite a short-lived cease-fire. The government military offensive since late April has forced nearly half a million people to be displaced within the stronghold, and left about 1,000 killed.
David Miliband, who heads the aid group International Rescue Committee, told a UN panel on northwest Syria on Friday that the breakdown of the recent cease-fire “makes us fear that the worst may be yet to come.” He called for an immediate end to the violence against civilians and an accountability mechanism to investigate attacks against civilians.
IRC supports 24 health facilities and 19 ambulances across northwest Syria, including eight who came under attack. Since April, 51 health facilities have come under attack, mostly in government airstrikes.
Regime-Russia assault kills 6 in Syria
Regime-Russia assault kills 6 in Syria
- On Tuesday, Russia carried out its first air strikes in the area since the cease-fire began
- The cease-fire is the second since Damascus escalated its operations in the area in April
Sudan’s army chief welcomes Turkish offer to resolve conflict: FM
- The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 12 million more
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Sudan’s army chief has welcomed a Turkish offer to resolve the brutal 20-month conflict between his forces and their paramilitary rivals, the Sudanese foreign minister said.
In early December, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a phone call with Sudan’s Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan that Ankara could help establish “peace and stability” in the war-torn African state.
At a meeting in Port Sudan on Saturday, Burhan asked Turkiye’s deputy foreign minister Burhanettin Duran to “deliver the Sudanese leadership’s welcoming of the initiative” to Erdogan, Sudanese foreign minister Ali Youssef said in a briefing after the meeting.
“Sudan needs brothers and friends like Turkiye,” Youssef said, adding that “the initiative can lead to... realizing peace in Sudan.”
Erdogan said in his December call with Burhan that Turkiye “could step in to resolve disputes” and prevent Sudan from “becoming an area of external interventions,” according to a statement from the Turkish presidency.
Following his meeting with Burhan on Saturday, Turkiye’s Duran said that the peace process “entails concerted efforts,” and that his country was ready to play a “role in mobilizing other regional actors to help overcoming the difficulties in ending this conflict.”
In a statement last week, the UAE welcomed “diplomatic efforts” by Turkiye to “resolve the ongoing crisis in Sudan.”
“The UAE is fully prepared to cooperate and coordinate with the Turkish efforts and all diplomatic initiatives to end the conflict in Sudan and find a comprehensive solution to the crisis,” its foreign ministry said.
The war in Sudan, which has pitted Burhan against his former deputy and RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 12 million more.
It has also pushed the country to the brink of famine, with analysts warning involvement from other countries will only prolong the suffering.
Syrian foreign minister arrives in Doha to meet Qatari officials
- The Syrian minister’s visit to Qatar is his second foreign trip less than a month since former President Bashar Assad was ousted
DOHA: Ministers from Syria’s transitional government arrived in Qatar on Sunday for their first visit to the Gulf state since the toppling of president Bashar Assad last month, officials and news agency SANA said.
The interim foreign minister, Asaad Al-Shibani, was accompanied by defense minister Morhaf Abu Kasra and the new head of intelligence, Anas Khattab, SANA reported.
It said the delegation would discuss with Qatari officials “prospects for cooperation and coordination between the two countries.”
A Syrian diplomat and a Qatari official said that Shibani had arrived on Sunday morning for meetings.
Unlike other Arab countries, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Syria under Assad, who was toppled by an 11-day militant advance that swept through major cities and then the capital Damascus in December.
War in Syria erupted in 2011 after Assad cracked down on peaceful democracy protests.
The conflict morphed into a multi-pronged war, and Doha was for years a key backer of the armed rebellion.
In a statement on X, Shibani on Friday said he would visit Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan over the coming days.
“We look forward to these visits contributing to supporting stability, security, economic recovery, and building distinguished partnerships,” the foreign minister wrote.
Qatar was the second country, after Turkiye, to reopen its embassy in the Syrian capital following the overthrow of the Assad clan.
Red Cross says determining fate of Syria’s missing ‘huge challenge’
- The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of Syria’s civil war
- Red Cross working with the caretaker authorities, NGOs and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data to give families answers
DAMASCUS: Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said.
“Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge,” ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric said in an interview.
The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started in 2011 when president Bashar Assad’s forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.
Many are believed to have been buried in mass graves after being tortured in Syria’s jails during a war that has killed more than half a million people.
Thousands have been released since Islamist-led militants ousted Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of relatives and friends who went missing.
Spoljaric said the ICRC was working with the caretaker authorities, non-governmental organizations and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data to give families answers as soon as possible.
But “the task is enormous,” she said in the interview late Saturday.
“It will take years to get clarity and to be able to inform everybody concerned. And there will be cases we will never (be able) to identify,” she added.
“Until recently, we’ve been following up on 35,000 cases, and since we established a new hotline in December, we are adding another 8,000 requests,” Spoljaric said.
“But that is just potentially a portion of the numbers.”
Spoljaric said the ICRC was offering the new authorities to “work with us to build the necessary institution and institutional capacities to manage the available data and to protect and gather what... needs to be collected.”
Human Rights Watch last month urged the new Syrian authorities to “secure, collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records... that will be vital in future criminal trials.”
The rights group also called for cooperation with the ICRC, which could “provide critical expertise” to help safeguard the records and clarify the fate of missing people.
Spoljaric said: “We cannot exclude that data is going to be lost. But we need to work quickly to preserve what exists and to store it centrally to be able to follow up on the individual cases.”
More than half a century of brutal rule by the Assad family came to a sudden end in early December after a rapid militant offensive swept across Syria and took the capital Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.
Syria monitor says fighting between pro-Turkiye, Kurdish forces kills 101
BEIRUT: More than 100 combatants were killed over the last two days in northern Syria in fighting between Turkish-backed groups and Syrian Kurdish forces, a war monitor said on Sunday.
Since Friday evening, clashes in several villages around the city of Manbij have left 101 dead, including 85 members of pro-Turkish groups and 16 from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In a statement, the SDF said it had repelled “all the attacks from Turkiye’s mercenaries supported by Turkish drones and aviation.”
Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria resumed their fight with the SDF at the same time Islamist-led rebels were launching an offensive on November 27 that overthrew Syrian president Bashar Assad just 11 days later.
They succeeded in capturing the cities of Manbij and Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province from the SDF.
The fighting has continued since, with heavy casualties.
According to Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Observatory, the Turkish-backed groups aim to take the cities of Kobani and Tabqa, before moving on to Raqqa.
The SDF controls vast areas of Syria’s northeast and parts of Deir Ezzor province in the east where the Kurds created an autonomous administration following the withdrawal of government forces during the civil war that began in 2011.
The group, which receives US backing, took control of much of its current territory, including Raqqa, after capturing it from the jihadists of the Daesh group.
Ankara considers the SDF an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in southeastern Turkiye and is banned as a terrorist organization by the government.
The Turkish military regularly launches strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and neighboring Iraq, accusing them of being PKK-linked.
Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new leader and the head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), has previously said the SDF would be integrated into the country’s future army.
HTS led the coalition of rebel groups that overthrew Assad last month.
Israel-Hamas talks resume in Qatar as violence shows no let-up
- Israel’s defense chief says indirect negotiations with Hamas seek release of hostages
- Ninety-six Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 Israeli military says are dead
GAZA STRIP: Israel confirmed on Saturday that negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal had resumed in Qatar, as rescuers said more than 30 people had been killed in fresh bombardment of the territory.
The civil defense agency said a dawn air strike on the home of the Al-Ghoula family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.
AFP images from the neighborhood of Shujaiya showed residents combing through smoking rubble. Bodies including those of small children were lined up on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.
As the violence raged, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that indirect negotiations with Hamas had resumed in Qatar for the release of hostages seized in the October 2023 attacks.
The minister told relatives of one of the hostages, woman soldier Liri Albag, that “efforts are under way to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday (Friday) for negotiations in Qatar,” his office said.
Katz said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given “detailed instructions for the continued negotiations.”
He was speaking after Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, released a video of Albag in captivity in Gaza.
In the undated, three-and-half-minute recording that AFP has not been able to verify, the 19-year-old conscript called in Hebrew for the Israeli government to secure her release.
In response, her family issued an appeal to Netanyahu, saying: “It’s time to take decisions as if it were your own children there.”
A total of 96 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the latest video was “firm and incontestable proof of the urgency of bringing the hostages home.”
Hamas had said late on Friday that the negotiations were poised to resume.
The militant group, whose October 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, said they would “focus on ensuring the agreement leads to a complete cessation of hostilities (and) the withdrawal of occupation forces.”
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged in months of effort that have failed to end nearly 15 months of war.
In December, Qatar expressed optimism that “momentum” was returning to the talks following the US election of Donald Trump, who takes office in 16 days.
But Hamas and Israel then accused each other of setting new conditions and obstacles.
As the clock ticks down to the handover of power in Washington, the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden notified Congress of an $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a source familiar with the plan said on Saturday.
“The department has informally notified Congress of an $8 billion proposed sale of munitions to support Israel’s long-term security by resupplying stocks of critical munitions and air defense capabilities,” the official said.
The United States is Israel’s largest military supplier.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Ghoula home in Gaza City “was completely destroyed” by the dawn strike.
“It was a two-story building and several people are still under the rubble,” he said, adding Israeli drones had “also fired on ambulance staff.”
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment.
“A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,” said neighbor Ahmed Mussa.
“It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.”
Elsewhere, the civil defense agency said an Israeli strike killed five security officers tasked with accompanying aid convoys as they drove through the southern city of Khan Yunis.
The Israeli army said the five had been “implicated in terrorist activities” and were not escorting aid trucks at the time of the strike.
Rescuers said strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed 10 other people.
AFP images showed Palestine Red Crescent paramedics in Gaza City moving the body of one of their colleagues, his green jacket laid over the blanket that covered his corpse.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a total of 136 people had been killed over the previous 48 hours.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen in the latest of a series of attacks.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been firing missiles and drones at Israel — as well as at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — in what they say is a solidarity campaign with Palestinians during the war in Gaza.
The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,717 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
