NEW YORK: Russia scored a victory for its ally Syria by forcing the Security Council to limit humanitarian aid deliveries to the country’s mainly rebel-held northwest to just one crossing point from Turkey, a move that Western nations say will cut a lifeline for 1.3 million people.
Russia on Saturday argued that aid should be delivered from within the country across conflict lines, and says only one crossing point is needed.
UN officials and humanitarian groups argued unsuccessfully — along with the vast majority of the UN Security Council — that the two crossing points in operation until their mandate expired Friday were essential for getting help to millions of needy people in Syria’s northwest, especially with the first case of COVID-19 recently reported in the region.
The Security Council vote approving a single crossing from Turkey was 12-0, with Russia, China and the Dominican Republic abstaining.
The vote capped a week of high-stakes rivalry pitting Russia and China against the 13 other council members. An overwhelming majority voted twice to maintain the two crossings from Turkey, but Russia and China vetoed both resolutions — the 15th and 16th veto by Russia of a Syria resolution since the conflict began in 2011 and the ninth and 10th by China.
Germany and Belgium, which had sponsored the widely supported resolutions for two crossing points, finally had to back down to the threat of another Russian veto. The resolution they put forward Saturday authorized only a single crossing point from Turkey for a year.
In January, Russia also scored a victory for Syria, using its veto threat to force the Security Council to adopt a resolution reducing the number of crossing points for aid deliveries from four to two, from Turkey to the northwest. It also cut in half the yearlong mandate that had been in place since cross-border deliveries began in 2014 to six months.
Before adopting the resolution on Saturday, the council rejected two amendments proposed by Russia, including one suggesting that US and EU sanctions on Syria were impeding humanitarian aid. That contention was vehemently rejected by the Trump administration and the EU, which noted their sanctions include exemptions for humanitarian deliveries. It also rejected an amendment from China.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, said after the vote that from the beginning Moscow had proposed one crossing — from Bab Al-Hawa to Idlib — and that Saturday’s resolution could have been adopted weeks ago. He said Russia abstained in the vote because negotiations over the resolution were marred by “clumsiness, disrespect.”
Polyansky accused Western nations on the council of “unprecedented heights” of hypocrisy, saying they were ready to jeopardize cross-border aid over the references to unilateral sanctions.
He said cross-border aid to Syria’s northwest doesn’t comply with international law because the UN has no presence in the region, which he described as being controlled “by international terrorists and fighters” that make it impossible to control and monitor who gets aid.
German Ambassador Christoph Heusgen retorted that while Russia talks about delivery of aid across conflict lines, “in practice it doesn’t” happen.
He said his side fought to maintain multiple crossing points for aid, including the Al-Yaroubiya crossing point from Iraq in the northeast that was closed in January, because that is what is needed for efficient delivery of aid to millions in need — and he asked Polyansky “this is clumsy?”
“This is what we tried to do over these past weeks, to get the optimum to the population,” Heusgen said.
US Ambassador Kelly Craft told the council: “Today’s outcome leaves us sickened and outraged at the loss of the Bab Al-Salaam and Al Yarubiyah border crossings.”
“Behind those locked gates are millions of women, children, and men who believed that the world had heard their pleas. Their health and welfare are now at great risk,” she said.
Still, Craft called the authorization of access through Bab Al-Hawa for 12 months “a victory” in light of Russia and China’s “willingness to use their veto to compel a dramatic reduction in humanitarian assistance.”
“This solemn victory must not end our struggle to address the mounting human needs in Syria — that fight is far from over,” Craft said.
Belgium and Germany said in a joint statement that 1.3 million people, including 800,000 displaced Syrians, live in the Aleppo area, including 500,000 children who received humanitarian aid through the Bab Al-Salam crossing — and now have that aid cut off.
“Today is yet another sad day. It is a sad day for this council, but mostly, it is a sad day for the Syrian people of that region.,” they said. “Both Yarubiyah and Bab Al-Salam were vital crossings to deliver, in the most efficient way possible, the humanitarian help, those people deserve.”
In a later statement, they added: “One border crossing is not enough, but no border crossings would have left the fate of an entire region in question.”
UN approves aid to Syria’s rebel area through 1 crossing
https://arab.news/25s5v
UN approves aid to Syria’s rebel area through 1 crossing
- The Security Council vote approving a single crossing from Turkey was 12-0, with Russia, China and the Dominican Republic abstaining
Lebanon and Syria agree to ceasefire after 2 days of border clashes, defense ministry says
- Lebanon’s president earlier Monday ordered troops to retaliate against the source of gunfire from the Syrian side
- Fighting happened after Syria’s interim government accused militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group of crossing border
BEIRUT: Lebanese and Syrian defense officials reached an agreement late Monday for a ceasefire to halt two days of clashes along the border, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported.
The agreement also stipulates “enhanced coordination and cooperation between the two sides,” the statement from the Syrian Ministry of Defense said.
Lebanon’s president earlier Monday ordered troops to retaliate against the source of gunfire from the Syrian side of the border after more deadly fighting erupted overnight along the frontier. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that seven Lebanese citizens were killed and another 52 injured in the clashes, including a 4-year-old girl.
The fighting happened after Syria’s interim government accused militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group of crossing into Syria on Saturday, abducting three soldiers and killing them on Lebanese soil. Hezbollah denied involvement and some other reports pointed to local clans in the border region that are not directly affiliated with Hezbollah but have been involved in cross-border smuggling.
It was the most serious cross-border fighting since the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Syrian News Channel, citing an unnamed Defense Ministry official, said the Syrian army shelled “Hezbollah gatherings that killed Syrian soldiers” along the border. Hezbollah denied involvement in a statement on Sunday.
Information Minister Paul Morkos said Lebanon’s defense minister told a Cabinet meeting that the three killed were smugglers.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said five Syrian soldiers were killed during Monday’s clashes. Footage circulated online and in local media showed families fleeing toward the Lebanese town of Hermel.
Lebanon’s state news agency reported that fighting intensified Monday evening near Hermel.
“What is happening along the eastern and northeastern border cannot continue and we will not accept that it continues,” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said on X. “I have given my orders to the Lebanese army to retaliate against the source of fire.”
Aoun added that he asked Lebanon’s foreign minister, who was in Brussels for a donors conference on Syria, to contact Syrian officials to resolve the problem “and prevent further escalation.”
Violence recently spiked in the area between the Syrian military and armed Lebanese Shiite clans closely allied with the former government of Assad, based in Lebanon’s Al-Qasr border village.
Lebanese media and the observatory say clans were involved in the abductions that sparked the latest clashes.
The Lebanese and Syrian armies said they have opened channels of communication to ease tensions. Lebanon’s military also said it returned the bodies of the three killed Syrians. Large numbers of Lebanese troops have been deployed in the area.
Lebanese media reported low-level fighting at dawn after an attack on a Syrian military vehicle. The number of casualties was unclear.
Early on Monday, four Syrian journalists embedded with the Syrian army were lightly wounded after an artillery shell fired from the Lebanese side of the border hit their position. They accused Hezbollah of the attack.
Meanwhile, senior Hezbollah legislator Hussein Hajj Hassan in an interview with Lebanon’s Al Jadeed television accused fighters from the Syrian side of crossing into Lebanese territory and attacking border villages. His constituency is the northeastern Baalbek-Hermel province, which has borne the brunt of the clashes.
Lebanon has been seeking international support to boost funding for its military as it gradually deploys troops along its porous northern and eastern borders with Syria as well as its southern border with Israel.
Speaking from the southern border on Monday, UN envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert also warned the Security Council that the sustained presence of Israeli forces on Lebanese territory, alongside ongoing Israeli strikes, could easily lead to “serious ripple effects.”
On Monday, Israeli strikes hit several sites in southern Syria, including in the city of Daraa. The Israeli military said it was hitting “command centers and military sites containing weapons and military vehicles belonging to the old Syrian regime, which (the new army) are trying to make reusable.” Since the fall of Assad, Israeli forces have seized territory in southern Syria, which Israel said is a move to protect its border.
Syria’s Civil Defense said that three people were killed and 14 injured in the strikes, including four children, a woman and three civil defense volunteers.
Sudan army inches closer to retaking Khartoum
- Shelling by Rapid Support Forces kills six civilians, including two children
OMDURMAN: Shelling by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed six civilians, including two children, in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, a doctor said Monday, as the army inched closer to the capital’s presidential palace.
Sunday’s attack also wounded 36 civilians, half of them children, the doctor at Al-Nao Hospital said.
The bombardment struck residential areas in northern Omdurman, hitting civilians inside their homes and children playing on a football field, the Khartoum regional government’s media office said.
The war between the RSF and the army, which began in April of 2023, has escalated recently, with army forces seeking to reclaim territory lost to the RSF early in the conflict in the capital, Khartoum, and beyond.
The army says its units are now less than a kilometer from the presidential palace, which the RSF seized at the war’s outset. In a video address shared on Telegram on Saturday, RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo vowed his troops “will not leave the Republican Palace.”
AFP journalists saw thick plumes of smoke rising over central Khartoum as fighting raged across the capital, with gunfire and explosions heard in several areas.
Nationwide, the conflict has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
In Khartoum alone, at least 3.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to the violence, according to the UN.
Further southwest, in the North Kordofan state capital of El-Obeid — roughly 400 km from Khartoum — two civilians were killed and 15 others wounded after RSF forces shelled residential neighborhoods on Monday morning, a medical source at the city’s main hospital said.
Last month, the military broke through a nearly two-year RSF siege of the southern city, a key crossroads linking Khartoum to the vast Darfur region, which is under near-total RSF control.
Across North Kordofan, more than 200,000 people are currently displaced, while nearly a million are facing acute food insecurity, according to UN figures.
Clashes have also erupted in Blue Nile state, which borders South Sudan and Ethiopia, and where the RSF claimed Sunday to have destroyed military vehicles and taken prisoners from the army and allied forces.
In almost two years, the war has nearly torn Sudan into two, with the RSF in control of almost all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south, while the army holds the country’s north and east.
The army has made gains in central Sudan and Khartoum in recent months and appears to be on the verge of reclaiming the entire capital.
Algeria rejects French deportation drive in latest row
- Algerian authorities would not accept a list handed over by France in recent days with the names of around 60 Algerians set for deportation
- French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has said those selected were 'dangerous' or former convicts
ALGIERS: Algeria on Monday opposed a French bid to deport several dozen Algerians, rejecting “threats” and “ultimatums” by Paris as the two countries’ ties came under increasing strain.
The Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement that the authorities would not accept a list handed over by France in recent days with the names of around 60 Algerians set for deportation.
It cited procedural requirements but also said Algeria “categorically rejects threats and intimidation attempts, as well as.... ultimatums.”
In rejecting the French list, Algeria was “solely motivated by the wish to fulfil its duty of consular protection for its citizens” and to ensure “the rights of individuals subject to deportation measures,” the ministry’s statement said.
Hard-line French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has said those selected for deportation were “dangerous” or former convicts.
Relations between Paris and Algiers have been strained since French President Emmanuel Macron recognized Moroccan sovereignty of the disputed territory of Western Sahara in July last year.
But they have worsened since Algiers refused to accept the return of undocumented Algerian migrants from France.
Retailleau has led verbal attacks on Algeria in the media, fueling tensions between the countries.
In late February, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou warned Paris could revoke a special status given to Algerians in France, the former colonial power.
Macron has since voiced his support for “renegotiating,” though not annulling, the 1968 agreement Bayrou was referring to.
Algeria was a French colony from the mid-19th century until 1962 and for most of that period was considered an integral part of metropolitan France.
On February 28, the French president said that agreements mandating the automatic return of nationals, signed between the two countries in 1994, “must be fully respected.”
In recent months, France has arrested and deported a number of undocumented Algerians on suspicion of inciting violence, only for Algeria to send back one of those expelled.
France warned it could restrict visas as a result, as well as limit development aid.
Algeria’s government has previously criticized Macron for “blatant and unacceptable interference in an internal Algerian affair.”
Israel strikes southern Syria: state media, monitor
- “Israeli occupation jets launch air strikes targeting the surroundings of Daraa city,” said Damascus’s official news agency SANA
- Monitor said Israel targeted military site once belonging to Assad’s army but now used by the forces of Syria’s new authorities
DAMASCUS: Israel struck the area of Syria’s southern city of Daraa, the state news agency SANA reported, with a war monitor saying the latest Israeli attack targeted a military site.
“Israeli occupation jets launch air strikes targeting the surroundings of Daraa city,” said Damascus’s official news agency SANA, without immediately providing further details.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said Israel targeted a military site once belonging to ousted president Bashar Assad’s army but now used by the forces of Syria’s new authorities.
The Britain-based Observatory reported that a fire broke out, with ambulances rushing to the scene amid reports of casualties.
Since Assad’s overthrow in December, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria and deployed troops to a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the strategic Golan Heights.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the air force conducted a strike on Damascus on Thursday, with the military saying it had hit a “command center” of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
The Observatory reported one fatality in that strike, with SANA saying it targeted a building in the capital.
The Israeli military said the “command center was used to plan and direct terrorist activities by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad” against Israel.
A source in Islamic Jihad said a building belonging to the group had been hit by Israeli jets, adding there were “martyrs and wounded” in the strike.
Ismail Sindawi, Islamic Jihad’s representative in Syria, told AFP the targeted building had been “closed for five years and nobody from the movement frequented it.” Israel was just sending a message, Sindawi said.
Even before Assad’s fall, during the Syrian civil war that broke out in 2011, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly on government forces and Iranian-linked targets.
Jordan’s FM says Syria’s reconstruction must preserve security, unity
- Ayman Safadi met his Syrian counterpart on the sidelines of an international conference in Brussels
- Ties between Amman and Damascus have improved since the fall of the Assad regime
LONDON: Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Al-Shaibani, in Brussels on Monday on the sidelines of an international conference to support Syria’s political transformation.
Ties between the neighboring countries have improved since the fall of the Bashar Assad regime in December. Interim president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, visited Amman in late February.
In Brussels, the ministers discussed the most recent developments in Syria. Safadi said that Jordan supports Syria’s reconstruction on the basis of preserving its security and unity while protecting the rights of Syrians, the Petra agency reported.
On Monday, the EU hosted the ninth international conference to support Syria. Representatives from the new interim government were invited to attend for the first time, including Al-Shaibani.
The event aims to bolster international support for Syria’s transition and recovery following more than 13 years of civil war.
