‘Faceless killer’: Syria land mines keep sowing death

Syrian soldiers take part in a training session to remove and neutralise unexploded weapons, in the countryside of the capital Damascus, on June 19, 2022. (AFP)
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Updated 11 July 2022
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‘Faceless killer’: Syria land mines keep sowing death

  • The airstrikes and shelling responsible for many of the Syrian war’s half million deaths have decreased in recent years

DAMASCUS: Family members from three generations were huddled on the back of a pickup truck for what started as a joyful ride through the Syrian countryside for Abdulaziz Al-Oqab and his relatives.
They were planning to sample the long-forgotten peacetime pleasure of a simple family picnic when a land mine brought a bloody end to their outing, and to the lives of 21 family members.




Members of the Syrian civil defence known as the White Helmets, equipped with protective outfits, search for unexploded weapons in a field, on the outskirts of al-Jinah village in Syria's northern Aleppo province, on June 23, 2022. (AFP)

Oqab walked away with relatively light wounds that day in February 2019, but the blast killed his wife, two of his sons, four of his siblings, an uncle and other family members, and left others maimed.
“It was a day of joy that turned into tragedy,” Oqab, 41, told AFP. “I’ve come to hate going out since then. People live in fear of this faceless killer that could be anywhere.”

FASTFACTS

• Since 2015, landmines and other explosive remnants have on average killed or injured five people every day, according to UN data.

• The UN Mine Action Service said 15,000 people have been killed or injured by explosive devices in Syria since 2015.

The airstrikes and shelling responsible for many of the Syrian war’s half million deaths have decreased in recent years.
But remnants of explosives laid by all sides in the 11-year-old conflict are now claiming more lives in Syria than anywhere else in the world, says the United Nations.
Since 2015, land mines and other explosive remnants have on average killed or injured five people every day, according to UN data.
“An entire family was destroyed,” Oqab said about the fateful day more than three years ago, sitting outside his traditional beehive-style mud hut in his village in Hama province.
“Death awaited us from inside the earth,” he said, surrounded by his orphaned nephews.
“This was our destiny.”




An explosion is provoked as Syrian soldiers take part in a training session to remove and neutralise unexploded weapons, in the countryside of the capital Damascus, on June 19, 2022. (AFP)

The UN Mine Action Service said 15,000 people have been killed or injured by explosive devices in Syria since 2015.
This is a “huge number,” said Habibulhaq Javed, who heads Syria’s UNMAS team. “Currently, Syria is reporting the highest number of victims caused by explosive ordnance globally.”
Syria’s war is estimated to have killed almost 500,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 2011.
About 10.2 million people, or roughly half of all Syrians, live in areas contaminated with explosive devices, the UN says.
“Mines have a long lifespan,” said a Syrian army officer, who asked not to be named over security concerns.
They stay lethal even longer if they are kept inside casings, he told AFP during a de-mining training exercise organized by the military near Damascus.
Syrian authorities detonate ammunition and explosive remnants of war on a near-daily basis, especially in areas formerly held by rebel forces near the capital.
In Syria’s rebel-held north, it is rescue workers who take on the daunting task of sweeping for land mines and detonating them, in the absence of state support.
The White Helmets rescue group has even set up training and workshops to raise awareness on the dangers land mines pose.




Abdulaziz al-Oqab and his nephews, orpahned after a landmine exploded under a pick-up truck they had clamoured on, killing several members of the family, walk in front of traditional beehive mud huts in a village in the central Syrian Hama province, on June 13, 2022. (AFP)

Raed Hassoun of the White Helmets heads a de-mining center in Syria’s northwest that has neutralized about 24,000 explosive devices since 2016.
“We deal with unexploded ordnance according to one principle,” he told AFP.
“Your first mistake is your last.”

A lack of resources is depriving most of Syria’s towns and villages of vital mine clearance work.
Last year, UNMAS carried out its first mine-clearing operation in government-held parts of Daraya, an area on the outskirts of Damascus that was once a rebel bastion and saw fierce fighting.
UNMAS also carried out sweeps in the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp outside Damascus, which was held by rebels and then jihadists before its recapture by government forces in 2018.
Explosive remnants were found in about 200 out of 6,000 surveyed buildings, the UN said.
The world body is struggling with limited funding for its de-mining programs, Javed said.
As a result, civilians have paid the price.
They include the family of Zakia Al-Boushi who, on a fateful day in 2017, went out with eight relatives in Aleppo province searching for the precious white truffles that grow in the desert sands in winter.
Only three of them returned alive.
The land mine that killed her relatives was the second one they came across that day.
Her brother was avoiding a device he had spotted when a second one went off and blew up their vehicle.
Boushi’s brother and mother were killed, while her daughter was left so shell-shocked she has not uttered a word in five years.
“The mine tore us apart,” Boushi said.


US says it is aware of Palestinian American’s killing by Israeli forces in West Bank

Updated 09 April 2025
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US says it is aware of Palestinian American’s killing by Israeli forces in West Bank

  • Israel has expanded and consolidated settlements in the occupied West Bank as part of the steady integration of these territories into the state of Israel in breach of international law, the UN human rights office said last month

WASHINGTON: The US State Department said on Tuesday it was aware of the killing by Israeli forces of a Palestinian American teenager in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and was seeking more information about the incident.
A State Department spokesperson made the comments to reporters when asked about the killing of US citizen Omar Mohammad Rabea, 14, and the shooting of two other teenagers.
“We are certainly aware of that dynamic,” the State Department spokesperson said. “There is an investigation that is going on. We are aware of the reports from the IDF that this was a counterterrorism act, we need to learn more about the nature of what happened on the ground.”
The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the weekend incident as an “extra-judicial killing” by Israeli forces during a raid. A local mayor said Rabea was shot along with two other teenagers by an Israeli settler and that the Israeli army pronounced him dead after detaining him.
The Israeli military said it shot a “terrorist” who endangered civilians by hurling rocks.
“We don’t have the complete picture of what was going on on the ground,” the State Department spokesperson added.
Israel has expanded and consolidated settlements in the occupied West Bank as part of the steady integration of these territories into the state of Israel in breach of international law, the UN human rights office said last month.
Settler violence in the West Bank, including incursions into occupied territory and raids, has intensified since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza that has killed over 50,000, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and led to genocide and war crimes accusations that Israel denies.
The Israeli onslaught in Gaza followed a Hamas attack in October 2023 in which 1,200 were killed and about 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
 

 


Israel troops shoot dead woman in alleged West Bank knife attack

Updated 09 April 2025
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Israel troops shoot dead woman in alleged West Bank knife attack

  • Yaqub was a lawyer and mother of three from nearby Biddya, the village’s mayor, Ahmed Abu Safiyeh, told AFP
  • The Israeli military said Tuesday that Israeli settlers set fire to a Palestinian event hall overnight in the area of Biddya, and that no injuries were reported

HARES, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli troops killed a 30-year-old woman near the West Bank city of Salfit on Tuesday after what the army described as an attempted stabbing.
The ministry reported the death of Amana Ibrahim Mohammed Yaqub, 30, “who was shot by (Israeli) forces near Salfit,” south of Nablus.
The Israeli military said it had “neutralized a terrorist who hurled rocks and attempted to stab soldiers adjacent to the Gitai Avisar junction” close to the West Bank village of Hares.
An AFP journalist reported seeing a lifeless body under a foil blanket by the roadside at the scene of the attack.
Yaqub was a lawyer and mother of three from nearby Biddya, the village’s mayor, Ahmed Abu Safiyeh, told AFP.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that Israeli settlers set fire to a Palestinian event hall overnight in the area of Biddya, and that no injuries were reported.
An AFP journalist reported most of the hall was burned to the ground, and that settlers left graffiti in Hebrew on nearby walls.
The area around Salfit and Biddya is dense with Israeli settlements, including the town of Ariel.
Since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, violence has soared in the occupied West Bank. Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 918 Palestinians in the territory, according to health ministry figures.
Palestinian attacks and clashes during military raids have killed at least 33 Israelis, including soldiers, over the same period, according to Israeli figures.
 

 


Hamas official says ‘necessary to reach a ceasefire’ in Gaza

Updated 09 April 2025
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Hamas official says ‘necessary to reach a ceasefire’ in Gaza

  • “This war cannot continue indefinitely, and it is therefore necessary to reach a ceasefire,” Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: A Hamas official told AFP on Tuesday that it was “necessary to reach a ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, three weeks after Israel resumed bombardments on the Palestinian territory.
“This war cannot continue indefinitely, and it is therefore necessary to reach a ceasefire,” Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP, adding that “communication with the mediators is still ongoing” but that “so far, there are no new proposals.”
 

 


Iran-backed militias in Iraq ‘ready to disarm’

Updated 08 April 2025
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Iran-backed militias in Iraq ‘ready to disarm’

  • They fear threat of US airstrikes

BAGHDAD: Powerful Iran-backed militias in Iraq are ready to disarm to avert the threat of US airstrikes, they said on Tuesday.

The move follows repeated private warnings by US officials to the Iraqi government since Donald Trump took office as US president in January.
They told Baghdad that unless it acted to disband the militias on its soil, America could attack the groups.
“Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario,” said one commander of Kata’ib Hezbollah, the most powerful militia.

BACKGROUND

Militia leaders said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had told them to do whatever they deemed necessary to avoid being drawn into a potentially ruinous conflict with the US.

The others that have offered to lay down their weapons are Nujabaa, Kata’ib Sayyed Al-Shuhada and Ansarullah Al-Awfiyaa.
Militia leaders said their main ally and patron, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, had told them to do whatever they deemed necessary to avoid being drawn into a potentially ruinous conflict with the US.
The militias are part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, about 10 armed factions with about 50,000 fighters and arsenals that include long-range missiles and anti-aircraft weapons.
They are a key pillar of Iran’s network of regional proxy forces, and have carried out dozens of missile and drone attacks on Israel and US forces in Iraq and Syria since the Gaza war began in 2023.
Iraqi security officials said Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani was pressing for disarmament by all militias that declared their allegiance to the Revolutionary Guards or its Quds Force rather than to Baghdad.
Some have already quit their bases and reduced their presence in major cities including Mosul and Anbar for fear of airstrikes.

 


Pro-Turkiye Syria groups reduce presence in Kurdish area

Updated 08 April 2025
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Pro-Turkiye Syria groups reduce presence in Kurdish area

  • Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies carried out an offensive from January to March 2018 targeting Kurdish fighters in the Afrin area
  • Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) played a key role in the recapture of the last territory held by the Daesh group in Syria in 2019

DAMASCUS: Pro-Turkiye Syrian groups have scaled down their military presence in a historically Kurdish-majority area of the country’s north which they have controlled since 2018, a Syrian defense ministry official said on Tuesday.
The move follows an agreement signed last month between Syria’s new authorities and Kurdish officials that provides for the return of displaced Kurds, including tens of thousands who fled the Afrin region in 2018.
The pro-Ankara groups have “reduced their military presence and checkpoints” in Afrin, in Aleppo province, the official told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Their presence has been “maintained in the region for now,” said the official, adding that authorities wanted to station them in army posts but these had been a regular target of Israeli strikes.
After Islamist-led forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December, the new authorities announced the disbanding of all armed groups and their integration into the new army, a move that should include pro-Turkiye groups who control swathes of northern Syria.
Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies carried out an offensive from January to March 2018 targeting Kurdish fighters in the Afrin area.
The United Nations has estimated that half of the enclave’s 320,000 inhabitants fled during the offensive.
The Kurds and rights groups have accused the pro-Turkiye forces of human rights violations in the area.
Last month, the Kurdish semi-autonomous administration that controls swathes of northern and northeastern Syria struck a deal to integrate its civil and military institutions into those of the central government.
The administration’s de facto army, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), played a key role in the recapture of the last territory held by the Daesh group in Syria in 2019, with backing from a US-led international coalition.
A Kurdish source close to the matter said the people of Afrin were “waiting for all the checkpoints to be removed and for the exit of pro-Turkiye factions.”
Requesting anonymity as the issue is sensitive, the source told AFP that in talks with Damascus, the SDF was pushing for security personnel deployed in Afrin to be from the area.
The SDF is also calling for “international organizations or friendly countries from the international coalition” to supervise collective returns, the source added.
Syria’s new leadership has been seeking to unify the country since the December overthrow of longtime president Bashar Assad after more than 13 years of civil war.
This month, Kurdish fighters withdrew from two neighborhoods of Aleppo as part of the deal.
Syrian Kurdish official Bedran Kurd said on X that the Aleppo city agreement “represents the first phase of a broader plan aimed at ensuring the safe return of the people of Afrin.”