UN: Arbitrary detentions in Syria conflict may be war crimes

In this file photo taken on February 15, 2019, Syrian men help a wounded woman covered in dust following a strike in the town of Khan Shaykhun in the southern countryside of the rebel-held Idlib province. (AFP)
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Updated 02 March 2021
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UN: Arbitrary detentions in Syria conflict may be war crimes

  • 10-year Syrian conflict killed over half a million, displaced half the population and shattered nearly 5 million as refugees abroad, says UN report
  • UN Commission cites suspected human rights violations and abuses since the civil war erupted

GENEVA: Thousands of Syrian civilians were subject to multiple forms of war crimes, including torture and sexual violence, while others' fate remains unknown to date amid "arbitrary detentions" during the country’s 10-year conflict, said a UN commission report released Monday.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria has regularly reported on suspected human rights violations and abuses since the civil war erupted.
According to the report, the Syrian government arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals and committed “war crimes and crimes against humanity in the context of detention.” Other parties in the conflict also committed crimes by unlawfully and arbitrarily depriving individuals of their liberty, it said.
Rival groups have been blamed for atrocities since Syria’s conflict broke out in March 2011 with anti-government protests that morphed into a civil war. They run jails where wide violations are reported against detainees.
The conflict has killed nearly half a million people, displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, including 5 million who are refugees abroad. Large parts of Syria are destroyed and tens of thousands still live in tent settlements.
The more than 30-page report is based on 2,658 interviews with victims and witnesses conducted from 2011 to the end of 2020, in addition to photographs, videos, satellite imagery, official documents and reports from multiple sources.
It is also based on investigations into more than 100 specific detention facilities, history documents and continued detention-related violations and abuses by nearly every major party that has controlled territory in Syria since 2011.
“The wealth of evidence collected over a decade is staggering, yet the parties to the conflict, with very few exceptions, have failed to investigate their own forces,” said Commissioner Karen Koning AbuZayd.
“The focus appears to be on concealing, rather than investigating crimes committed in the detention facilities,” she added.
The report notes “massive scale of detention” and abuses perpetrated by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and also lists detentions by insurgent groups, including Turkey-backed opposition fighters, other rebel groups and the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. It also examines the record of the Al-Qaeda-linked Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and the Daesh group — both designated terrorist organizations by the UN.
The fate of tens of thousands of civilians who were forcibly disappeared by Syrian government forces, many nearly a decade ago, remains unknown, the report said. Many are presumed to have died or been executed, while some are believed to be held in inhuman conditions of detention.
“Hundreds of thousands of family members have a right to the truth about their loved ones’ fate,” said the commission’s chairman, Paulo Pinheiro.
The commission also urged the government in Damascus to take urgent steps to reveal the fate of those missing. The report appeals on all parties to halt and prevent violations, immediately release specific groups of individuals, allow independent monitoring of detention facilities and provide support to victims.
The report is to be discussed by the UN-backed Human Rights Council, which set up the commission, on March 11, as part of its current four-week session.


Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist, Hamas says

Updated 13 May 2025
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Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist, Hamas says

  • Hamas said the strike killed a journalist and wounded a number of civilians
  • The CPJ says at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it struck a Gaza hospital housing Hamas militants in a raid Tuesday that, according to the Palestinian group, killed a journalist wounded in an Israeli attack last month.

The strike, which Hamas said happened at dawn, ended a brief pause in fighting to allow the release of a US-Israeli hostage.

The military said in a Telegram post that “significant Hamas terrorists” had been “operating from within a command and control center” at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city.

“The compound was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF (army) troops,” it said.

In a statement, Hamas said the strike killed a journalist and wounded a number of civilians.

“The Israeli army bombed the surgeries building at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis at dawn on Tuesday, killing journalist Hassan Aslih,” said Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

Aslih, head of the Alam24 news outlet, had been at the hospital for treatment after being wounded in a strike on April 7, he told AFP.

Two other journalists, Ahmed Mansur and Hilmi Al-Faqaawi, were killed in that bombing, according to reports at the time.The Israeli military said the April strike had targeted Aslih, alleging he operated for Hamas “under the guise of a journalist.”

It said Aslih had “infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the murderous massacre carried out by the Hamas terrorist organization” on October 7, 2023.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the strike.It said Aslih had worked for international media outlets until 2023, when the pro-Israeli watchdog HonestReporting published a photo of him being kissed by then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The CPJ says at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the start of the war.

Israel had paused military operations in Gaza to allow for the release of Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old US-Israeli soldier who had been held hostage since October 2023.

Alexander, believed to be the last surviving hostage with US citizenship, was released Monday ahead of a Middle East visit by US President Donald Trump.

Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce in its war against Hamas, which was triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack.

The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday at least 2,749 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,862.


‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

Updated 13 May 2025
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‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town

TAWILA: Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge — the only food her family have had for days.
“No organization has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Idris told AFP, her voice brittle with fatigue.
Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.
“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometer (37-mile) desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.
The few aid organizations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.
“Humanitarian organizations were simply not prepared to receive this scale of displacement,” said Thibault Fendler, who works with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tawila.
Since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and rival paramilitaries, the town has received waves of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere.
“We are working to scale up our capacities, but the needs are simply enormous,” Fendler told AFP.
Tawila, nestled between mountains and seasonal farmland, was once a quiet rural outpost.
But the two-year war pitting the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has buffeted the already-scarred Darfur region.
Entire displacement camps have been besieged and razed, while the armed group that controls the area around Tawila — a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdelwahid Al-Nur — has vowed to protect those fleeing the violence.
The town’s schools, mosques and markets are crammed with people sleeping side by side, on concrete floors, under trees or in huts of straw and plastic, exposed to temperatures that can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Beyond the town center, a patchwork of makeshift shelters fans out across the horizon.
Inside, families keep what little they managed to bring with them: worn bags, cooking pots or clothes folded carefully on mats laid over dry earth.
Some weary children play silently in the dirt — many malnourished, some dressed in oversized hand-me-downs, others in the clothes they had fled in.
Nearby, dozens of women line up with empty jerrycans, waiting by a lone water tank.
More queues snake around soup kitchens, with women carrying pots in hand and children on their hips, hoping to get a meal before they run out.
“When we arrived, the thirst had nearly killed us, we had nothing,” said Hawaa Hassan Mohamed, a mother who fled from North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher.
“People shared what little they had,” she told AFP.
The war has created the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine already declared in several parts of North Darfur state where the UN estimates that more than a million people are on the brink of starvation.
The RSF and the army continue to battle for control of territory, particularly in and around El-Fasher — the last army stronghold in Darfur — crippling humanitarian access.
“It takes a long time to get aid here. The roads are full of checkpoints. Some are completely cut off,” Noah Taylor, head of operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP from Tawila.
“There are so many gaps in every sector, from food to shelter to sanitation. The financial and in-kind resources we have are simply not sufficient,” he said.
Organizations are scrambling to get food, clean water and health assistance to desperate families, but Taylor said these efforts are just scratching the surface.
“We are not there yet in terms of what people need,” he said.
“We’re doing what we can, but the global response has not kept pace with the scale of this disaster.”
Leni Kinzli, head of communications at the World Food Programme, said that a one-time delivery of “1,600 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies” for 335,000 people had reached Tawila last month.
But it took two weeks to reach the town, navigating multiple checkpoints and unsafe roads, she told AFP.
Aid workers warn that without urgent funding and secure access, these deliveries will even be harder, especially with the rainy season approaching.


Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital

Updated 13 May 2025
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Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital

  • Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries
  • Residents urged to stay indoors

TRIPOLI: Violent clashes between rival armed groups erupted Monday night in the Libyan capital Tripoli, prompting the interior ministry to urge residents to stay indoors.
Heavy arms fire and explosions were heard in several areas of the capital from 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), AFP journalists in the city said.
Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries.
The interior ministry of the national unity government in Tripoli in a statement urged “all citizens to stay at home for their safety.”
Local media said clashes broke out in the southern suburbs between armed groups from Tripoli and rivals from Misrata, a major port city 200 km (125 miles) east of the capital.
Libya is struggling to recover from years of unrest following a 2011 revolt that led to the fall of the late dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
It is currently divided between a UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, controlled by the Haftar family.
Despite relative calm in recent years, clashes periodically break out between armed groups vying for territory.
In August 2023, fighting between two powerful armed groups in Tripoli left 55 dead.
Several districts of the capital and its suburbs announced that schools would be closed on Tuesday until further notice.
Earlier Monday, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the United States Embassy in Tripoli called for calm.
They urged “all parties to de-escalate” and “refrain from any provocation, to resolve disputes through dialogue.”


Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

Updated 12 May 2025
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Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says

RAMALLAH: An Israeli rights group has denounced a government decision to launch extensive land registration for parts of the occupied West Bank, saying it could help advance annexation of the Palestinian territory.

“It is a tool for annexation,” said Yonatan Mizrachi of the Settlement Watch project at Israeli nongovernmental organization Peace Now.

The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has no comprehensive land registry, with some areas unregistered or residents holding deeds from before the Israeli occupation.

The Israeli security Cabinet on Sunday decided to initiate a land registration process in the West Bank’s Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.

Though the process would likely take “years” according to Mizrachi, he said that Palestinians in Area C could lose land if Israeli authorities do not accept their claim to it.

This might lead to “a massive land theft,” Peace Now said, adding that the process could result “in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the (Israeli) state.”

“The Palestinians will have no practical way to realize their ownership rights,” the anti-settlement group said.

Some Israeli ministers have advocated the annexation of the West Bank, home to around 3 million Palestinians as well as some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, has said that 2025 would be the year Israel extends its sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.

To Mizrachi, the government’s decision was primarily “about ... the places where they want to expand settlements,” including in areas considered state land.

He mentioned remarks by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who praised the move in the official statement announcing it.

Katz said that launching land registration “is a revolutionary decision that brings justice to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name that the Israeli government uses to refer to the West Bank.

The process will lead to the “strengthening, establishment and expansion” of settlements, Katz was quoted as saying.

He also said it would block “attempts to seize land” by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank but not Area C.

Mohammed Abu Al-Rob, director of the Palestinian Authority’s communication center, said that the decision was “a dangerous escalation of Israel’s illegal policies aimed at entrenching its occupation and advancing de facto annexation.”

Area C is “an inseparable part” of the rest of the Palestinian territories, he said.

Abu Al-Rob called on the international community to “reject this unlawful decision and to take immediate, concrete action to thwart its implementation.”


Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state

Updated 12 May 2025
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Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state

  • Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani emphasizes that ‘our goal is not dominance but unification’

ANKARA: Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani has warned that postponing the implementation of an agreement between Syria’s new administration and Kurdish-led forces in the northeast would “prolong the chaos” in the country.

His remarks came as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced it was disbanding, an announcement the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control swaths of north and northeast Syria, have not yet commented on.

The PKK’s move is “a pivotal moment” for regional stability, Al-Shaibani told a news conference in Ankara with his Turkish and Jordanian counterparts.

Syria is “implementing the national accord with the Syrian Democratic Forces and incorporating all areas under central state control,” he said.

In March, Syria’s President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the civil and military institutions of the autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast into the national government.

The deal, agreed three months after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.

“This process is complicated and sensitive, but it is necessary,” Al-Shaibani said, adding that “delaying the implementation of this agreement will prolong the chaos, open the door to foreign interference, and fuel separatist tendencies.”

“Our goal is not dominance but unification,” he said.

“We are keen on implementing this agreement, and we hope that the other side is seriously committed to implementing this agreement,” he added.

The SDF, the Kurdish administration’s de facto army, controls most of the oil and gas fields in Syria. The force maintains that it is independent from the PKK, but it is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Ankara views as a PKK offshoot.

After years of marginalization and repression under the Assad dynasty, the Kurds took advantage of the government forces’ withdrawal during the civil war, which erupted in 2011, to establish a semi-autonomous administration.

With US backing, the SDF played a key role in the fight against Daesh, which was defeated in its last Syrian territorial stronghold in 2019.

Al-Shaibani emphasized that “the unity of Syrian territory is non-negotiable, as Syria is an indivisible, unified state, sovereign over its land and will remain so.”

“The rights of Kurdish citizens will be preserved and guaranteed on an equal footing with the rest of the Syrian people,” he added.

Syria’s Kurds have criticized a temporary constitutional declaration announced in March and said the new government failed to reflect the country’s diversity.

In February, Abdi said an initial call for the PKK to lay down weapons and disband did not concern his forces.