GAZA STRIP: Hamas released the first batch of hostages under a cease-fire deal that began Friday, including 13 Israelis who have been held in the Gaza Strip since the militant group staged a raid on Israel nearly seven weeks ago, according to officials and media reports.
Twelve Thai nationals were also released, according to Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. Dozens of Palestinian prisoners are also expected to be freed by Israel.
The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas began Friday, setting the stage for the exchange and allowing sorely needed aid to start flowing into Gaza.
There were no reports of fighting after the truce began. The deal offered some relief for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, who have endured weeks of Israeli bombardment and dwindling supplies of basic necessities, as well as for families in Israel worried about loved ones taken captive during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which triggered the war.
The truce raised hopes of eventually winding down the conflict, which has flattened vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. Israel, however, has said it is determined to resume its massive offensive once the cease-fire ends.
Under the deal, Gaza’s ruling Hamas group pledged to free at least 50 of the about 240 hostages it and other militants took in the Oct. 7 raid. In exchange, Hamas said Israel would free 150 Palestinian prisoners.
Both sides agreed to release women and children first, in stages starting Friday, and as planned 13 Israelis were released, according to Israeli media, citing security officials. An Israeli official, meanwhile, confirmed that the Thai captives left Gaza and were en route to a hospital in Israel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss the releases with the media.
Israel said the deal calls for the truce to be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed.
Early in the day, ambulances were seen arriving at the Hatzerim air base in southern Israel, preparing for the release. Those freed will then be taken to hospitals for assessment and treatment, Israeli officials said.
Among the Israeli citizens freed some have a second nationality, according to a Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details with the media.
Israel’s Justice Ministry published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners eligible for release. Thirty-nine — 24 women, including some convicted of attempted murder for attacks on Israeli forces, and 15 teenagers jailed for offenses like throwing stones — were expected to be freed Friday, Palestinian authorities said.
On Friday, the truce brought quiet after weeks in which Gaza saw heavy bombardment and artillery fire daily as well as street fighting as ground troops advanced through neighborhoods in the north. The last report of air raid sirens in Israeli towns near the territory came shortly after the truce took effect.
Not long after, four tankers with fuel and four with cooking gas entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt, Israel said.
Israel has agreed to allow the delivery of 130,000 liters (34,340 gallons) of fuel per day during the truce — still only a small portion of Gaza’s estimated daily needs of more than 1 million liters.
For most of the past seven weeks of war, Israel had barred the entry of fuel to Gaza, claiming it could be used by Hamas for military purposes — though it has occasionally allowed small amounts in.
UN aid agencies pushed back against the claim, saying fuel deliveries were closely supervised and urgently needed to avert a humanitarian catastrophe since fuel is required to run generators that power water treatment facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.
The Israeli military dropped leaflets over southern Gaza, warning hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who sought refuge there not to return to their homes in the territory’s north, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive.
Even though Israel warned that it would block such attempts, hundreds of Palestinians could be seen walking north Friday.
Two were shot and killed by Israeli troops and another 11 were wounded. An Associated Press journalist saw the two bodies and the wounded as they arrived at a hospital.
Sofian Abu Amer, who had fled Gaza City, said he decided to risk heading north to check on his home.
“We don’t have enough clothes, food and drinks,” he said. ”The situation is disastrous. It’s better for a person to die.”
The hope is that “momentum” from the deal will lead to an “end to this violence,” said Majed Al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, which served as a mediator along with the United States and Egypt.
But hours before it came into effect, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was quoted telling troops that their respite would be short and that the war would resume with intensity for at least two more months.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also vowed to continue the war to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities, end its 16-year rule in Gaza and return all the hostages.
Israel’s northern border with Lebanon was also quiet on Friday, a day after the militant Hezbollah group, an ally of Hamas, carried out the highest number of attacks in one day since fighting there began Oct. 8.
Hezbollah is not a party to the cease-fire agreement, but was widely expected to halt its attacks.
The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages, including babies, women and older adults, as well as soldiers.
The soldiers will only be released in exchange for all Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, according to the Islamic Jihad militant group, which is reportedly holding about 40 hostages.
It is not clear how many of the hostages are currently serving in the military or whether the militants also consider reserve soldiers to be “military hostages.”
According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, Israel is currently holding 7,200 Palestinians on security charges or convictions, including about 2,000 arrested since the start of the war.
The Israeli offensive has killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which resumed its detailed count of casualties in Gaza after stopping for weeks because of the health system’s collapse in the north.
The ministry says some 6,000 people have been reported missing, feared buried under rubble.
The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its death tolls. Women and minors have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead, though the new number was not broken down. The figure does not include updated numbers from hospitals in the north.
Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, without presenting evidence for its count.
Hamas frees first batch of hostages under truce, including 13 Israelis
https://arab.news/w7rr2
Hamas frees first batch of hostages under truce, including 13 Israelis
- Pause silences guns raging since Hamas’ raids into Israel on October 7
- 13 hostages held in Gaza freed, Israel to release 39 Palestinians prisoners
Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?
- Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials & a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport
BEIRUT: After insurgents toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad this month, many senior officials and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away. Activists say some of them have managed to flee the country while others went to hide in their hometowns.
For more than five decades, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron grip, locking up those who dared question their power in the country’s notorious prisons, where rights groups say inmates were regularly tortured or killed.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham insurgent group — which led anti-government fighters who forced Assad from power — has vowed to bring those who carried out such abuses to justice.
“We will go after them in our country,” said HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was previously known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani. He added that the group will also ask foreign countries to hand over any suspects.
But finding those responsible for abuses could prove difficult.
Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials and a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Most of those are presumed to be regular people, and Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said earlier this week that no Syrian official entered Lebanon through a legal border crossing.
In an apparent effort to prevent members of Assad’s government from escaping, the security officials said a Lebanese officer who was in charge of Masnaa was ordered to go on vacation because of his links to Assad’s brother.
But Rami Abdurrhaman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says several senior officers have nonetheless made it to neighboring Lebanon using travel documents with fake names.
Here’s a look at Assad and some of the officials in his inner circle.
Bashar Assad
The Western-educated ophthalmologist initially raised hopes that he would be unlike his strongman father, Hafez, when he took power in 2000, including freeing political prisoners and allowing for a more open discourse.
But when protests of his rule erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to brutal tactics to crush dissent. As the uprising became an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.
He has fled to Moscow, according to Russian state media.
Maher Assad
The younger brother of the ousted president was the commander of the 4th Armored Division, which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers. He is under US and European sanctions. He disappeared over the weekend, and Abdurrhaman said he made it to Russia.
Last year, French authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Maher Assad, along with his brother and two army generals, for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including in a 2013 chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs.
Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk
Mamlouk was a security adviser to Assad and former head of the intelligence services. He is wanted in Lebanon for two explosions in the northern city of Tripoli in 2012 that killed and wounded dozens.
Mamlouk is also wanted in France after a court convicted him and others in absentia of complicity in war crimes and sentenced them to life in prison. The trial focused on the officials’ role in the 2013 arrest in Damascus of a Franco-Syrian man and his son and their subsequent torture and killing.
Abdurrahman said Mamlouk fled to Lebanon, and it is not clear if he is still in the country under the protection of Hezbollah.
Brig. Gen. Suheil Al-Hassan
Al-Hassan was the commander of the 25th Special Missions Forces Division and later became the head of the Syrian Special Forces, which were key to many of the government’s battlefield victories in the long-running civil war, including in Aleppo and the eastern suburbs of Damascus that long held off Assad’s troops.
Al-Hassan is known to have close ties to Russia and was praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin during one of his visits to Syria. Al-Hassan’s whereabouts are not known.
Maj. Gen. Hussam Luka
Luka, head of the General Security Directorate intelligence service, is not well known among the wider public but has played a major role in the crackdown against the opposition, mainly in the central city of Homs that was dubbed the “capital of the Syrian revolt.”
Luka has been sanctioned by the US and Britain for his role in the crackdown. It’s not clear where he is.
Maj. Gen. Qahtan Khalil
Khalil, whose whereabouts are also unknown, was head of the Air Force Intelligence service and is widely known as the “Butcher of Daraya” for allegedly leading a 2012 attack on a Damascus suburb of the same name that killed hundreds of people.
Other officials
— Retired Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, former head of the Air Force Intelligence service, is also suspected of bearing responsibility for the attack in Daraya. Hassan was among those convicted in France this year along with Mamlouk.
— Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Abbas and Maj. Gen. Bassam Merhej Al-Hassan, head of Bashar Assad’s office and the man in charge of his security, are accused of human rights violations.
Turkiye says told Russia, Iran not to intervene militarily in Syria rebel push
- Turkiye’s aim was to “hold focused talks with the two important power players to ensure minimum loss of life,” Fidan said
ANKARA: Turkiye said Friday it had urged Russia and Iran not to intervene militarily to support Bashar Assad’s forces as Islamist-led rebels mounted their lightning advance on Damascus that ended with the Syrian strongman’s ouster.
“The most important thing was to talk to the Russians and Iranians to ensure that they didn’t enter the equation militarily. We had meetings with (them) and they understood,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Turkiye’s private NTV television.
He said if Moscow and Tehran, both key Assad allies since the start of the civil war in 2011, had come to the Syrian president’s aid, the rebels could still have won but the outcome could have been far more violent.
“If Assad had received support, the opposition could have achieved victory with their determination, but it would have taken a long time and could have been bloody,” he said.
Turkiye’s aim was to “hold focused talks with the two important power players to ensure minimum loss of life,” Fidan said.
When the Islamist-led HTS rebel alliance first began its offensive on November 27, Moscow and Tehran initially offered Assad military support to hold off the rebels.
But the scale of the collapse of Assad’s forces took them by surprise.
And it came at a time when both nations were caught up with problems of their own: Russia mired in the war with Ukraine, and Iran’s proxies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah taking a major battering from Israel.
They quickly realized the game was up, that Assad “was no longer someone to invest in” and “there was no point anymore,” the Turkish minister added.
Turkiye expressed support for the rebels with experts saying it even gave its green light for the offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), without being directly involved.
Many nations, especially in the region, have expressed concern about HTS, which is rooted in Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch and proscribed by many Western governments as a terror organization.
But Fidan said it was “perfectly normal” to have such concerns about HTS, which would “need to be resolved.”
“No one knows them as well as we do, we want a Syria without terrorism, not posing a threat to the countries in the region.”
Since 2016, Turkiye has held considerable sway over northwestern Syria, maintaining a working relationship with HTS which ran most of the Idlib area, which was Syria’s last bastion of opposition.
With open lines of communication with HTS, Turkiye was relaying such concerns directly to them, he said.
“We reflect our friends’ concerns to them and ensure they take steps. They have made many announcements and people see they are on the right track,” he said.
The message that Ankara was sending to the new administration in Damascus was: “This is what Turkiye — which has stood by you for years — expects. And this is what the world expects,” he said.
Turkiye to reopen its embassy in Syria for the first time since 2012 in wake of Assad’s fall
- “It will be operational as of tomorrow,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan
ANKARA: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says that Türkiye’s Embassy in Syria’s capital of Damascus will reopen on Saturday, for the first time since 2012.
In an interview with Türkiye’s NTV television Fidan said a newly appointed interim charge d’affaires had left for Damascus on Friday together with his delegation.
“It will be operational as of tomorrow,” he said.
The Embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security conditions during the Syrian civil war. All embassy staff and their families were recalled to Türkiye.
The horror of Saydnaya jail, symbol of Assad excesses
- The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances
- When Syrian militants entered Damascus on Sunday after their lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates
BEIRUT: Saydnaya prison north of the Syrian capital Damascus has become a notorious symbol of the inhumane abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011.
The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomising the atrocities committed against his opponents by ousted president Bashar Assad.
When Syrian militants entered Damascus on Sunday after their lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates.
Some had been incarcerated there since the 19080s.
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), the militants liberated more than 4,000 people.
Photographs of haggard and emaciated inmates, some helped by colleagues because they were too weak to leave their cells, were circulated worldwide.
Suddenly the workings of this infamous jail that rights group Amnesty International had dubbed a “human abattoir” were revealed for all to see.
The prison was built in the 1980s during the rule of Hafez Assad, father of the deposed president, and was initially meant for political prisoners including members of Islamist groups and Kurdish militants.
But down the years, Saydnaya became a symbol of pitiless state control over the Syrian people.
In 2016, a United Nations commission found that “the Syrian Government has also committed the crimes against humanity of murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts,” notably at Saydnaya.
The following year, Amnesty International in a report entitled “Human Slaughterhouse” documented thousands of executions there, calling it a policy of extermination.
Shortly afterwards, the United States revealed the existence inside Saydnaya of a crematorium in which the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners were burnt.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in 2022 reported that around 30,000 people had been imprisoned in Saydnaya where many were tortured, and that just 6,000 were released.
The ADMSP believes that more than 30,000 prisoners were executed or died under torture, or from the lack of medical care or food between 2011 and 2018.
The group says the former authorities in Syria had set up salt chambers — rooms lined with salt for use as makeshift morgues to make up for the lack of cold storage.
In 2022, the ADMSP published a report describing for the first time these makeshift morgues of salt.
It said the first such chamber dated back to 2013, one of the bloodiest years in the Syrian civil conflict.
Many inmates are officially considered to be missing, with their families never receiving death certificates unless they handed over exorbitant bribes.
After the fall of Damascus last week, thousands of relatives of the missing rushed to Saydnaya hoping they might find loved ones hidden away in underground cells.
Saydnaya is now empty, and Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers group announced the end of search operations there on Tuesday, with no more prisoners found.
Several foreigners also ended up in Syrian jails, including Jordanian Osama Bashir Hassan Al-Bataynah, who spent 38 years behind bars and was found “unconscious and suffering from memory loss,” the foreign ministry in Amman said on Tuesday.
According to the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan, 236 Jordanian citizens were held in Syrian prisons, most of them in Saydnaya.
Other freed foreigners included Suheil Hamawi from Lebanon who returned home on Monday after being locked up in Syria for 33 years, and also spent time inside Saydnaya.
American released from Syrian prison is flown out of the country, a US official says
- Travis Timmerman, 29, was flown out of Syria on a US military helicopter
- Timmerman was detained after he crossed into Syria while on a Christian pilgrimage
WASHINGTON: The US military has transported out of Syria an American who had disappeared seven months ago into former President Bashar Assad’s notorious prison system and was among the thousands released this week by rebels, a US official said Friday.
Travis Timmerman, 29, was flown out of Syria on a US military helicopter, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation.
It’s unclear where Timmerman may go next. After being rescued, he thanked his rescuers for freeing him but has told American officials that he would like to stay in the region, according to another person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Timmerman was detained after he crossed into Syria while on a Christian pilgrimage from a mountain along the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle in June.
He told The Associated Press that he was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.
In his prison cell, Timmerman said, he had a mattress, a plastic drinking container and two others for waste.
He said the Friday calls to prayers helped keep track of days.
Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them, after rebels seized control of Damascus and forced Assad from power in a dramatic upheaval.
He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.” He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.
Timmerman is from Urbana, Missouri, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Springfield in the southwestern part of the state. He earned a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017.
