Security tightened around Beirut airport following clashes
Rivals fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades after an argument between two families developed into a violent confrontation
The incident has raised further questions about safety at the airport, seen as the only viable international aviation option for Lebanese and Syrians
Updated 09 March 2023
NAJIA HOUSSARI
BEIRUT: Footage of Lebanese gunmen firing in the air as a plane landed nearby has sparked warnings of a growing threat to aircraft and passenger safety at Beirut airport.
The footage was taken on Monday during armed clashes in a southern suburb of the capital, adjacent to one of the airport’s open runways.
Rivals fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades after an argument between two families developed into a violent confrontation during a night of terror in the city.
An informed source told Arab News: “The aircraft crew were terrified during the landing, fearing a bullet could hit the plane and cause a catastrophe.”
The incident has raised further questions about aviation safety at the airport, the only remaining outlet for the Lebanese, as well as Syrians who use it to travel abroad, in addition to international and relief organizations, including the UN and UNIFIL peacekeepers.
A Middle East Airlines aircraft traveling from Jordan was hit by a stray bullet while landing in Beirut in November 2022. Lebanese MP Paula Yacoubian was among the passengers on the flight. No one was hurt.
Airport facilities are frequently struck by stray bullets fired during funerals or celebrations in nearby neighborhoods.
Information International, a Beirut-based research consultancy firm, published a study in 2021 showing that on average seven people are killed and 15 injured by stray bullets in Lebanon every year.
The report said that 81 people died and 169 others were wounded by random gunfire between 2010 and 2021.
Shootings take place in the area surrounding the airport almost daily, either as a result of individual clashes or the security services cracking down on criminals.
The area is considered a Hezbollah and Amal Movement stronghold, and weapons are commonplace.
A security source said that most residents were from the Baalbek-Hermel region, and that many wanted criminals hid among the population, which includes hundreds of poorer families.
Security forces were deployed all over Beirut and tight security measures implemented after Monday’s night of terror.
Ali Hamieh, caretaker minister of public works and transport, said that seven people were arrested by the Lebanese army.
Troops are still deployed near the airport as part of a security crackdown, he said.
“The shooting was an unfortunate incident, but maintaining airport security and aviation safety is a priority for the Lebanese state. We will not be lenient when it comes to such cases and anyone who fires shots randomly in the vicinity of the airport will be detained,” Hamieh said.
Brig. Gen. Elias Baissari, acting director-general of general security, met officials at the airport and highlighted the importance of cooperation between the security and civil services to ensure traveler safety.
Meanwhile, Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon is the scene of growing tension following clashes last week between militants from the Fatah movement and the Asbat Al-Ansar group, which resulted in the death of Fatah member Mahmoud Zubaidat.
Asbat Al-Ansar refuses to hand over the murderer to the Lebanese authorities. Security information indicates that the man has since gone into hiding and the Fatah movement has been on the alert in neighborhoods it controls in the camp.
‘Endless torture’: Turkish inmate recalls hell of Syria jails
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Mehmet Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening
After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon
Updated 58 min 11 sec ago
AFP
MAGARACIK, Turkiye: Finally home in Turkiye, Mehmet Erturk cannot eat the bread his wife has made him. After 20 years jailed in Syria, half his teeth are missing and the other half are threatening to fall out.
“It was torture after torture,” he said, miming the truncheon blows to the mouth the guards would give him at a notorious Damascus prison known as the Palestine Branch, where he spent part of his time incarcerated.
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening, a village perched at the top of a winding road dotted with olive trees some 10 minutes from the Syrian border.
“My family thought I was dead,” said the 53-year-old, whose face and manner of walking make him look 20 years older.
On the night of his release, he heard gunshots and began to pray.
“We didn’t know what was happening outside. I thought I was finished,” he said.
Then he heard loud hammer blows and within minutes the prison gates were flung open by the militants who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
“We hadn’t seen him for 11 years. We had no hope,” admitted his wife Hatice, sitting cross-legged outside their home preparing bread with their youngest daughter, who was barely six months old when her father was arrested.
After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon, at the mercy of brutal guards.
“Our bones would pop out of the socket when they hit our wrists with hammers,” he said.
“They also poured boiling water down the neck of one prisoner. The flesh from his neck just slid all the way down” to his hips, he said.
Pulling up his right trouser leg, he shows his right ankle, the skin darkened by the chain he wore.
“During the day, it was strictly forbidden to talk... there were cockroaches in the food. It was damp, it stank like a toilet,” he said, recalling days “without clothes or water or food.”
“It was like being in a coffin.”
And there was huge overcrowding.
“They put 115, 120 people in a cell for 20 people. Many people died of starvation,” he said.
And the guards just “threw the dead into rubbish skips.”
Erturk said he paid the price for the hatred Syria’s authorities bore for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who early in the war urged Assad to leave.
“We Turks suffered a lot of torture for that,” he said, saying he was refused medication on grounds of his nationality.
He sank so low he even hoped they would hang him.
“They were taking us to a new prison block and I saw a rope hanging from the ceiling and I said: ‘Thank God, I’m saved’,” he said.
As he recounted the horrors, he often broke off to thank “our dear president Erdogan” for him being back, alive with his family and not one of the countless victims of Syria’s brutal prison system.
Those could number more than 105,000 people since the war began in 2011, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
One of his sisters passes him a handful of old photos.
In one, he is pictured with a lifelong friend called Faruk Karga, who ended up in the same prison with him shortly after the picture was taken.
But Karga never came home.
“He died of starvation in prison in around 2018,” said Erturk.
“He weighed about 40 kilos.”
Syria’s de facto leader not interested in new conflicts despite Israeli attacks
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights
Updated 15 December 2024
Reuters
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad Al-Sharaa said on Saturday Israel is using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but that he is not interested in engaging in new conflicts as the country focuses on rebuilding following the end of Bashar Assad’s reign.
Sharaa — better known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — leads the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group that swept Assad from power last week, ending the family’s five-decade iron-fisted rule.
Israel has since moved into a demilitarised zone inside Syria created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus, where it took over an abandoned Syrian military post.
Israel, which has said that it does not intend to stay there and calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure border security, has also carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
“Israeli arguments have become weak and no longer justify their recent violations. The Israelis have clearly crossed the lines of engagement in Syria, which poses a threat of unwarranted escalation in the region,” Sharaa said in an interview published on the website of Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel.
“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations. The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”
He also said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not wanted.
On Russia, whose military intervention almost a decade ago helped tip the balance in Assad’s favor and which gave asylum to the ousted leader earlier this week, Sharaa said that its relations with Syria should serve common interests.
“The current stage requires careful management of international relations,” he added.
“The strain on our resources has been substantial, worsening existing economic trouble,” Mikati said
“Today, and after the political transformation in Syria, the best resolution to this issue is for Syrians to go back“
Updated 15 December 2024
AFP
ROME: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called Saturday for Syrians who sought refuge in his country to return home following the fall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar Assad.
“The consequences of the Syrian war made Lebanon home to the largest number of refugees per capita, with one-third of our population comprising of Syrian refugees,” Mikati said at a Rome political festival.
“The strain on our resources has been substantial, worsening existing economic trouble and creating fierce competition for jobs and services,” he said in English.
“Today, and after the political transformation in Syria, the best resolution to this issue is for Syrians to go back to their homeland,” he said.
Authorities say Lebanon, population 5.8 million, currently hosts around two million Syrians, while more than 800,000 are registered with the United Nations — the highest number of refugees per capita in the world.
Many fled Syria after its civil war began following the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Mikati told a festival held by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party that “the international community, particularly Europe, should assist in the return of Syrians.”
They should do so “by engaging in early recovery efforts in secure areas with Syria,” he said.
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met on Saturday with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Middle East envoy Brett McGurk
Updated 15 December 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: Thousands of Israelis demonstrated Saturday for a deal to release the remaining hostages still held in Gaza after more than 14 months of war against Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
“We all can agree that we have failed until now and that we can reach an agreement now,” Lior Ashkenazi, a prominent Israeli actor, told a crowd gathered in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Itzik Horn, whose sons Eitan and Iair are still being held captive in Gaza, said: “End the war, the time has arrived for action and the time has arrived to bring everyone home.”
There has been guarded optimism in recent days that a ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza might finally be within reach after months of abortive mediation efforts.
Palestinian militants abducted 251 hostages during Hamas’s October 2023 attack, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Qatar, a key mediator in the negotiations, said last week there was new “momentum” for talks.
US Security of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Jordan on Saturday: “This is the moment to finally conclude that agreement.”
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met on Saturday with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Middle East envoy Brett McGurk.
“The meeting addressed efforts to reach an agreement for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange in Gaza,” El-Sisi’s office said.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack last year that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,930 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Palestinian refugees return to Yarmouk amid questions about their place in the new Syria
“The new Syrian leadership, how will it deal with the Palestinian issue?” said Palestinian ambassador to Syria Samir Al-Rifai. “We have no information because we have had no contact with each other so far”
Updated 14 December 2024
AP
DAMASCUS: The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before the war in Syria reduced it to row after row of blasted out buildings where there were once falafel stands, pharmacies and mosques.
Taken over by a series of militant groups then bombarded by government planes, the camp has been all but abandoned since 2018. The buildings that were not destroyed by bombs were demolished by the government or stripped by thieves. Those who wanted to return to rebuild their homes were stymied by Kafkaesque bureaucratic and security requirements.
But bit by bit, the camp’s former occupants have trickled back. After the Dec. 8 fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in a lightening offensive by opposition forces, many more hope they will be able do so.
A Palestinian woman Taghrid Halawi, left, with her two relatives speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, outside Damascus, Syria, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP)
At the same time, Syria’s Palestinian refugees — a population of about 450,000 — are unsure of their place in the new order.
“The new Syrian leadership, how will it deal with the Palestinian issue?” said Palestinian ambassador to Syria Samir Al-Rifai. “We have no information because we have had no contact with each other so far.”
Days after Assad’s government collapsed, women walked in groups through the streets of Yarmouk while children played in the rubble. Motorcycles, bicycles and the occasional car passed between bombed-out buildings. In one of the less heavily damaged areas, a fruit and vegetable market was doing brisk business.
Some people were coming back for the first time in years to check on their homes. Others had been back before but only now were thinking about rebuilding and returning for good.
Ahmad Al-Hussein left the camp in 2011, soon after the beginning of the anti-government uprising-turned-civil-war. A few months ago, driven by rising rents elsewhere, he came back to live with relatives in a part of the camp that was relatively untouched.
He is now hoping to rebuild his home in a building that was reduced to a hollowed-out shell and marked for demolition.
Under Assad’s rule, getting permission from security agencies to enter the camp “wasn’t easy,” Al-Hussein said. “You would have to sit at a table and answer who’s your mother, who’s your father, and who in your family was arrested and who was with the rebels. … Twenty-thousand questions to get the approval,”
He said people who had been reluctant now want to return, among them his son, who fled to Germany.
Taghrid Halawi came with two other women on Thursday to check on their houses. They spoke wistfully of the days when the streets of the camp used to buzz with life until 3 or 4 a.m.
“You really feel that your Palestine is here, even though you are far from Palestine,” Halawi said. “Even with all this destruction, I feel like it’s like heaven. I hope that everyone returns, all the ones who left the country or are living in other areas.”
Yarmouk was built in 1957 as a Palestinian refugee camp but grew into a vibrant suburb where many working-class Syrians settled. Before the war, some 1.2 million people lived in Yarmouk, including 160,000 Palestinians, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Today, it houses some 8,160 Palestinian refugees who remained or have returned.
Palestinian refugees in Syria are not given citizenship, ostensibly to preserve their right to go back to the homes they fled or were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel and where they are currently banned from returning.
But in contrast to neighboring Lebanon, where Palestinians are banned from owning property or working in many professions, in Syria, Palestinians historically had all the rights of citizens except the right to vote and run for office — a negligible matter given that the outcome of Syrian elections was largely predetermined.
At the same time, Palestinian factions have had a complicated relationship with Syrian authorities. Former Syrian President Hafez Assad and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat were bitter adversaries. Many Palestinians were imprisoned for belonging to Arafat’s Fatah movement.
Mahmoud Dakhnous, a retired teacher who returned to Yarmouk to check on his demolished house, said he used to be frequently called in for questioning by the Syrian intelligence services.
“Despite their claims that they are with the (Palestinian) resistance, in the media they were, but on the ground the reality was something else,” he said of the Assad dynasty.
In recent years, the Syrian government began to roll back the right of Palestinians to own and inherit property.
As for the country’s new rulers, “we need more time to judge” their stance toward Syria’s Palestinians, Dahknous said.
“But the signs so far in this week, the positions and proposals that are being put forward by the new government are good for the people and the citizens,” he said.
Yarmouk’s Palestinian factions tried to remain neutral when Syria’s civil war broke out, but by late 2012, the camp was pulled into the conflict and different factions took opposing sides.
Since the fall of Assad, the factions have been angling to solidify their relationship with the new government. A group of Palestinian factions said in a statement Wednesday that they had formed a body, headed by the Palestinian ambassador, to manage relations with Syria’s new authorities.
The new leadership — headed by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, an Islamic militant group — has not officially commented on the status of Palestinian refugees or regarding its stance toward Israel, which the previous Syrian government never recognized.
The Syrian interim government on Friday sent a complaint to the UN Security Council denouncing the incursion by Israeli forces into Syrian territory in the Golan Heights and their bombardment of multiple areas in Syria. But HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, has said the new administration does not seek a conflict with Israel.
Al-Rifai said the new government’s security forces had entered the offices of three Palestinian factions and removed the weapons that were there, but that it was unclear whether there had been an official decision to disarm Palestinian groups.
“We are fully aware that the new leadership has issues that are more important” than the issue of Palestinian refugees, he said, including “the issue of stability first.”
For now, he said, Palestinians are hoping for the best. “We expect the relationship between us to be a better relationship.”
