ANKARA: Turkey has fulfilled its responsibilities in the northwestern Syrian region of Idlib in line with its de-escalation agreements with Russia and Iran, Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Saturday, after violence spiked in recent weeks.
Turkey and Russia, which back opposing sides in the conflict, agreed in 2018 to set up a de-escalation zone in the region. But a Syrian government offensive has disrupted Ankara and Moscow’s fragile cooperation, after 13 Turkish soldiers were killed by Syrian attacks in the past two weeks.
Ankara has said it will use military power to drive back the Syrian forces unless they withdraw by the end of February. President Tayyip Erdogan threatened to strike Syrian government forces anywhere in Syria if another Turkish soldier was hurt.
Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar Assad, says Turkey has flouted deals it made with Moscow and aggravated the situation in Idlib. The Kremlin said Ankara had failed to neutralize militants there.
Oktay told broadcaster NTV that Turkey was determined to stop Syrian government advances in Idlib and Ankara had clearly conveyed its position on Idlib to Moscow during the talks.
“We cannot overlook the cruelty happening in our neighbor,” Oktay said, adding that Turkey, which hosts more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees, cannot handle a new migrant wave from Idlib where hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
“Turkey has fulfilled its responsibilities in Idlib. Some of our observation posts have now fallen into areas controlled by the (Syrian) regime,” he said, referring to Turkey’s military observation posts established in Idlib under the 2018 deal.
In an apparent response to Russia’s criticism on Thursday, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Turkey would use force against rebel groups violating a Jan. 12 cease-fire in Idlib and said Ankara was sending reinforcements to control Idlib.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday during the Munich Security Conference, the Interfax news agency reported.
Turkey met responsibilities over Syria’s Idlib in Russia deal: vice president
https://arab.news/mgzke
Turkey met responsibilities over Syria’s Idlib in Russia deal: vice president
- Turkey and Russia agreed in 2018 to set up a de-escalation zone in the region
- Ankara said it will use military power to drive back the Syrian forces unless they withdraw by the end of February
Nearly 100 food aid trucks violently looted in Gaza, UN agencies say
- This is one of the worst aid losses during 13 months of war in the besieged enclave
- 98 of 109 trucks in convoy were raided and some transporters were injured
GENEVA/CAIRO: Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza in one of the worst aid losses during 13 months of war in the enclave, where hunger is deepening, two UN agencies told Reuters on Monday.
The convoy transporting food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Programme was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom border crossing, said Louise Wateridge, UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer.
Ninety-eight of the 109 trucks in the convoy were raided and some of the transporters were injured during the incident, she said, without detailing who carried out the ambush.
“This ... highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” she told Reuters.
“The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive.”
The Hamas TV channel Al-Aqsa quoted Hamas interior ministry sources in Gaza as saying that over 20 gang members involved in looting aid trucks were killed during an operation carried out by Hamas security forces in coordination with tribal committees.
It said anyone caught aiding such looting would be treated with “an iron fist.”
A WFP spokesperson confirmed the looting and said that many routes in Gaza were currently impassable due to security issues.
An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of its war against Hamas, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was UN distribution challenges.
A UN aid official said on Friday that access for aid to Gaza had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the Israeli-besieged north of the enclave all but impossible. Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza was triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.
UNESCO ‘enhanced protection’ for 34 Lebanon heritage sites
- Baalbek and Tyre ‘will receive technical and financial assistance from UNESCO’
PARIS: Dozens of heritage sites in Lebanon were granted “provisional enhanced protection” by UNESCO on Monday, offering a higher level of legal shielding as fighting continues between Israel and Hezbollah militants.
The 34 cultural properties affected “now benefit from the highest level of immunity against attack and use for military purposes,” the United Nations cultural body said in a statement.
Several Israeli strikes in recent weeks on Baalbek in the east and Tyre in the south — both strongholds of Iran-backed Hezbollah — hit close to ancient Roman ruins designated as World Heritage sites.
UNESCO said the decision “helps send a signal to the entire international community of the urgent need to protect these sites.”
“Non-compliance with these clauses would constitute ‘serious violations’ of the 1954 Hague Convention and... potential grounds for prosecution,” it added.
Hezbollah and Israel have been at war since late September, when Israel broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border, even as the Gaza war plows on.
UNESCO’s move followed an appeal Sunday by hundreds of cultural professionals, including archaeologists and academics, to activate the enhanced protection.
Baalbek and Tyre “will receive technical and financial assistance from UNESCO to reinforce their legal protections, improve risk anticipation and management measures, and provide further training for site managers,” the body said.
Refugees who escaped from war-torn Tuti Island speak of hunger, disease
- Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices
JUBA: Mohammed Awad and his family are among dozens who escaped Sudan’s Tuti Island earlier this year amid a siege by the Rapid Support Forces, finding refuge at a shelter after surviving for months on scant food and the risk of disease.
The island in the middle of the Nile serves as a microcosm for the devastation unleashed by a war that began in April 2023.
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, significantly more than previously recorded, according to a new report.
Activists report that the Rapid Support Forces charged people large sums to evacuate them.
HIGHLIGHT
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war.
“There is no good food, and there’s a lot of diseases, there is no sleep, no safety,” Awad said, holding one of his children at the shelter for displaced residents in Omdurman, an army-controlled refuge. The island is one of 14 places across Sudan at risk of famine, according to experts. Dengue fever has ravaged Tuti, a close-knit farming community.
Sarah Siraj, a mother who left with her two children, said six or seven people were dying daily, and that she was only able to have her children treated for dengue, a mosquito-borne disease, once she reached Omdurman.
Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices.
Rabeea Abdel Gader, a nutrition guide, has been treating newly arrived families at a city shelter.
“We ask the mother about what they eat ... Sometimes the mother responds with her tears,” she said.
Meanwhile, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Monday calling for an immediate end to hostilities in Sudan.
Lebanon says Israeli strike on central Beirut kills four
- “A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq Al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said
- The densely populated working class district of Zuqaq Al-Blat has welcomed many displaced people who fled Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Israel struck a densely packed Beirut neighborhood on Monday, killing at least four people, in the third attack in two days on the city’s central districts.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Zuqaq Al-Blat in Beirut killed four people and injured 18,” a ministry statement said in preliminary toll.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said an apartment near a Shiite Muslim place of worship had been targeted.
“A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq Al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said.
An AFP correspondent in the area heard two blasts, and said the raid badly damaged the ground floor of a building.
Reporters elsewhere in the city heard ambulance sirens.
The densely populated working class district of Zuqaq Al-Blat has welcomed many displaced people who fled Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon, as well as south Beirut — areas where the Iran-backed Hezbollah holds sway.
The strike hit near a building housing many displaced Lebanese, the AFP correspondent said.
It was cordoned off by security forces as residents rushed to help in the rescue efforts, he added.
Several hundreds of meters (yards) away was the site of a similar strike on Sunday, in the Mar Elias neighborhood, which the Lebanese health ministry said killed three people including a woman.
Israel has not commented on Monday’s and Sunday’s strikes in central Beirut, but confirmed one air raid in the area the killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.
The strike, also on Sunday, hit the Lebanese office of the Syrian Baath party, killing Afif and four other members of his media team, Hezbollah said, with the health ministry saying seven people had been killed in total.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,510 people have been killed since Hezbollah-Israel clashes began in October last year, with most casualties recorded since war erupted in September.
US hits Israeli settler group with sanctions over West Bank violence
- Sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets
- Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began
WASHINGTON: The United States imposed sanctions on Monday on an Israeli settler group it accused of helping perpetrate violence in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.
The Amana settler group “a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
The sanctions also target a subsidiary of Amana called Binyanei Bar Amana, described by Treasury as a company that builds and sell homes in Israeli settlements and settler outposts.
The sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets. The United Kingdom and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Amana.
Israel has settled the West Bank since capturing it during the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say the settlements have undermined the prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical Judea and Samaria, and the settlers cite biblical ties to the land.
Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began over a year ago.
Most countries deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position disputed by Israel which sees the territory as a security bulwark. In 2019, the then-Trump administration abandoned the long-held US position that the settlements are illegal before it was restored by President Joe Biden.
Last week, nearly 90 US lawmakers urged Biden to impose sanctions on members of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
