BAGHDAD: The leader of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia has vowed to retaliate against America for the deaths of four of his men in a US airstrike along the Iraq-Syria border last month, saying it will be a military operation everyone will talk about.
Abu Alaa Al-Walae, commander of Kataib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad that the electoral victory of Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi as president will strengthen Iran-backed militant groups throughout the Middle East for the next four years.
Al-Walae, who rarely gives interviews to foreign media organizations, spoke to the AP on Monday in an office in a Baghdad neighborhood along the Tigris River.
On June 27, US Air Force planes carried out airstrikes near the Iraq-Syria border against what the Pentagon said were facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups to support drone strikes inside Iraq. Four militiamen were killed.
The Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi state-sanctioned umbrella of mostly Shiite militias — including those targeted by the US strikes — said their men were on missions to prevent infiltration by the Daesh group and denied the presence of weapons warehouses.
US troops in eastern Syria came under rocket fire the day after the airstrikes, with no reported casualties.
The US has blamed Iran-backed militias for attacks — most of them rocket strikes — that have targeted the American presence in Baghdad and military bases across Iraq. More recently, the attacks have become more sophisticated, with militants using drones.
US military officials have grown increasingly alarmed over drone strikes targeting US military bases in Iraq, more common since a US drone killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani near the Baghdad airport last year. Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis was also killed in the attack. The strike drew the ire of mostly Shiite Iraqi lawmakers and prompted parliament to pass a nonbinding resolution to pressure the Iraqi government to oust foreign troops from the country.
In mid-April, an explosives-laden drone targeted the military section of the international airport in Irbil, in Iraq’s northern Kurdish-run region, causing no casualties or damages. The base also hosts American troops.
US officials said Iran-backed militias have conducted at least five drone attacks since April.
After midnight Monday, a drone was shot down near the US Embassy compound in Baghdad. There were no casualties. Two US military officials said the drone was launched by Iranian proxies, adding that it was weaponized with explosives and was loitering over the US-led coalition base in Baghdad.
The officials said it was too early to identify the type of the drone. The US Embassy said defense systems at the compound “engaged and eliminated an airborne threat.” The statement added that “we are working with our Iraqi partners to investigate” the attack.
The bearded Al-Walae, wearing a black shirt and trousers and an olive-green baseball cap, hinted that his militiamen might use drones in future attacks. He did not go into details. When asked if they used drones in the past against American troops in Iraq, he gave no straight answer and moved to other subjects.
“We want an operation that befits those martyrs,” he said referring to the four fighters killed in late June. “Even if it comes late, time is not important.”
“We want it to be an operation in which everyone says they have taken revenge on the Americans,” Al-Walae said. “It will be a qualitative operation (that could come) from the air, the sea, along Iraq’s border, in the region or anywhere. It’s an open war.”
Al-Walae spoke in an office decorated with a poster of Soleimani. On a table next to him, a framed photo shows Al-Walae standing next to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
Al-Walae praised Iran’s new president, Raisi, who is scheduled to take office next month, saying Iran-backed militant groups “will have their best times.”
Days after he was elected last month, Raisi said in his first remarks after the vote that he rejects the possibility of meeting with President Joe Biden or negotiating Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support of regional militias.
Al-Walae, who was once held prisoner by US troops in Iraq, boasted that his men were among the first to go to neighboring Syria to fight alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces in 2012, a year after the civil war there broke out. He said their first mission was to protect a Shiite holy shrine south of the capital, Damascus. They later fought in different parts of Syria.
Iran-backed fighters from throughout the region have joined Syria’s conflict, helping tip the balance of power in Assad’s favor. Thousands of Iran-backed fighters remain in Syria, many of them deployed close to the Iraqi border in the towns of Boukamal and Mayadeen.
Al-Walae also said he doesn’t expect Iraq’s parliamentary elections to take place on time in October, saying they might be postponed until April next year. He attributed the delay to the deep crisis the country is experiencing, including severe electricity cuts during the scorching summer.
Iraqi militia commander vows to avenge deaths in US strike
https://arab.news/m2bus
Iraqi militia commander vows to avenge deaths in US strike
- Abu Alaa Al-Walae: ‘We want an operation that befits those martyrs’
- ‘We want it to be an operation in which everyone says they have taken revenge on the Americans’
16 injured after Israel hit by Yemen-launched ‘projectile’
- The projectile fell in Bnei Brak town, east of Tel Aviv
- Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack on central Israel
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Saturday it had failed to intercept a “projectile” launched from Yemen that landed near Tel Aviv, with the national medical service saying 14 people were lightly wounded.
“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, one projectile launched from Yemen was identified and unsuccessful interception attempts were made,” the Israeli military said on its Telegram channel.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the missile attack in central Israel on Saturday, in a statement the Houthis said they had “targeted a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of” Tel Aviv using a ballistic missile. Israeli rescuers earlier reported 16 wounded in the attack.
Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have repeatedly launched missile attacks against Israel since the war in Gaza began more than a year ago, most of which have been intercepted.
In return, Israel has struck multiple targets in Yemen — including ports and energy facilities in areas controlled by the Houthis.
“A short time ago, reports were received of a weapon falling in one of the settlements within the Tel Aviv district,” Israeli police said Saturday.
According to Israeli media, the projectile fell in the town of Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv.
Israel’s emergency medical service said 14 people had been injured.
“Additional teams are treating several people on-site who were injured while heading to protected areas, as well as those suffering from anxiety,” a spokesman said.
The Houthi rebels say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians and last week pledged to continue operations “until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted.”
On December 9, a drone claimed by Houthis exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israel city of Yavne, causing no casualties.
In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.
The Houthis have also regularly targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, leading to retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets by US and sometimes British forces.
The rebels said Thursday that Israeli air strikes that day killed nine people, after the group fired a missile toward Israel, badly damaging a school.
While Israel has previously hit targets in Yemen, Thursday’s were the first against the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
“The Israeli enemy targeted ports in Hodeida and power stations in Sanaa, and the Israeli aggression resulted in the martyrdom of nine civilian martyrs,” rebel leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said in a lengthy speech broadcast by the rebels’ Al-Masira TV.
Israel said it struck the targets in Yemen after intercepting a missile fired from the country, a strike the rebels subsequently claimed.
Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said they had fired ballistic missiles at “two specific and sensitive military targets... in the occupied Yaffa area,” referring to the Jaffa region near Tel Aviv.
Qatar embassy reopens in Damascus with flag raising
DAMASCUS: Qatar reopened its embassy in Damascus on Saturday, 13 years after it was closed early in Syria’s civil conflict, as foreign governments seek to establish ties with the country’s new rulers.
An AFP journalist saw Qatar’s flag raised over the mission, making it the second nation, after Turkiye, to officially reopen its embassy since Islamist-led militants drove president Bashar Assad from power earlier this month.
Unlike several other Arab governments, Qatar — which supported opposition groups during Syria’s civil war — did not attempt to rehabilitate Assad before his toppling.
Earlier on Saturday, workers were busy sweeping the pavement, cleaning the area and removing graffiti from the building’s walls. One of the workers had placed the Qatari flag at the base of the flagpole.
Doha sent a diplomatic delegation to Damascus several days ago to meet with the transitional government. The mission expressed “Doha’s full commitment to support the Syrian people,” a Qatari diplomat said.
On Tuesday, the European Union said it was ready to reopen its diplomatic mission in Damascus, while Britain, France and the United States have all sent delegations to the Syrian capital since Assad’s overthrow.
The French flag was raised over Paris’s embassy in Damascus on Tuesday, although the country’s special envoy to Syria said the mission would remain closed “as long as security criteria are not met.”
Meanwhile, the United States on Friday dropped a $10 million bounty it had issued years earlier on Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new leader and the head of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham Islamist militant group that spearheaded the ouster of Assad.
HTS has its roots in Al-Qaeda, but has sought to moderate its image in recent years.
Syria’s new rulers name Asaad Al-Shibani as foreign minister, state news agency says
Syria’s new rulers have appointed a foreign minister, the official Syrian news agency (SANA) said on Saturday, as they seek to build international relations two weeks after Bashar Assad was ousted.
The ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
No details were immediately available about Shibani.
Syria’s de facto ruler, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, has actively engaged with foreign delegations since assuming power, including hosting the UN’s Syria envoy and senior US diplomats.
Sharaa has signaled a willingness to engage diplomatically with international envoys, saying his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development. He has said he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
US delegation to Syria says Assad’s torture-prison network is far bigger than previously thought
- In first official visit to Syria by US officials in 12 years, team led by secretary of state for near eastern affairs meets the country’s interim leadership
- As they search for missing Americans, delegates discover the number of regime prisons could be as high as 40, much more than the 10 or 20 they suspected
CHICAGO: There are “many more” regime prisons in Syria than previously believed, a high-level delegation of US diplomats said on Friday as they searched for missing Americans in the country.
In the first official visit to Syria by American officials in 12 years, the delegation met on Friday with members of the country’s interim leadership both to urge the formation of an inclusive government and to locate US citizens who disappeared during the conflict.
Western countries have sought to establish connections with senior figures in the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham militant group that led the offensive which forced President Bashar Assad from power this month.
Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, who led the US delegation, told journalists, including Arab News, that the delegates attended a commemorative event for “the tens of thousands of Syrians and non-Syrians alike who were detained, tortured, forcibly disappeared or are missing, and who brutally perished at the hands of the former regime.”
Among the missing Americans are freelance journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in 2012, and Majid Kamalmaz, a psychotherapist from Texas who disappeared in 2017 and is thought to have died.
Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, who is part of the delegation, said the number of prisons in which detainees were tortured and killed by the Assad regime is much higher than suspected.
“We thought there’d be maybe 10 or 20,” he said. “It’s probably more like 40; it might even be more. They’re in little clusters at times. Sometimes they’re in the far outreaches of Damascus.
“Over 12 years, we’ve been able to pinpoint about six facilities that we believe have a high possibility of having had Austin Tice at one point or another. Now, over the last probably 11 or 12 days, we’ve received additional information based on the changing conditions, which leads us to add maybe one or two or three more facilities to that initial number of six.”
Carstens said the US has limited resources available in Syria and will focus on six of the prisons in an attempt to determine Tice’s fate. But he said the search would eventually expand to cover all 40 prison locations.
“We’re going to be like bulldogs on this,” he said. “We’re not going to stop until we find the information that we need to conclude what has happened to Austin, where he is, and to return him home to his family.”
He said the FBI cannot be present on the ground in Syria for an extended period of time to search for missing Americans “right now,” but suggested this might change in the future. Meanwhile, the US continues to work with “partners,” including nongovernmental organizations and the news media in Syria, he added.
Leaf confirmed the delegation met Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the commander of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, an Islamist group that was once aligned with Al-Qaeda and is still designated as a terrorist organization by Washington. She said she told Al-Sharaa the US would not pursue the $10 million reward for his capture, and hoped the group will be able to help locate Tice and other missing Americans.
The delegation received “positive messages” from the Syrian representatives they met during their short visit, Leaf said. America is committed to helping the Syrian people overcome “over five decades of the most horrifying repression,” she added.
“We will be looking for progress on these principles and actions, not just words,” she said. “I also communicated the importance of inclusion and broad consultation during this time of transition.
“We fully support a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process that results in an inclusive and representative government which respects the rights of all Syrians, including women and Syria's diverse ethnic and religious communities.”
Leaf said the US would be able to help with humanitarian assistance and work with Syrians to “seize this historic opportunity.”
She added: “We also discussed the critical need to ensure terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside of Syria or externally, including to the US and our partners in the region. Ahmad Al-Sharaa committed to this.”
Bringing Assad to justice for his crimes, particularly those carried out during the civil war, which started in 2011, remains a priority for the US government, Leaf said.
“Syrians desperately want that,” she added.
She called on the international community to offer technical expertise and other support to help document Assad’s crimes, including evidence from the graves and mass graves that have been uncovered since his downfall on Dec. 8.
UAE sends 3,000 tonnes of aid on ship bound for Lebanon
DUBAI: The UAE on Friday dispatched a second aid ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of relief materials to Lebanon.
The ship departed Port of Jebel Ali, bound for the Port of Beirut, as part of the “UAE Stands with Lebanon” initiative which started in October.
It carries a wide range of essential aid supplies, such as food, winter clothing and items specifically designed for children and women, state-run WAM reported.
The statement noted that this was the second UAE relief aid ship to carry various relief supplies from UAE donor agencies, humanitarian institutions to Lebanon, noting that the ship was expected to arrive by the end of this month.
The UAE has consistently reaffirmed its unwavering position towards the unity of Lebanon and its national sovereignty since the Israeli escalation in southern Lebanon.
In October, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed directed the delivery of an urgent $100 million relief package to help the people of Lebanon.
