White burial shrouds are everywhere in Gaza as war deepens

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The shrouded bodies of people killed in Rafah during Israeli bombardment are placed on a truck for burial outside Al-Najar hospital on December 29, 2023. (AFP)
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Mohammed Abu Mussa, a volunteer at Keratan society which prepares dead bodies for burial, writes the name and date on a white shroud covering the body of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli strike at a hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Dec. 28, 2023. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
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Mohammed Abu Mussa, a volunteer at Keratan society which prepares dead bodies for burial, prepares a white shroud at a hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Dec. 28, 2023. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)
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Updated 30 December 2023
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White burial shrouds are everywhere in Gaza as war deepens

  • The coverings bear messages of mourning, love
  • Arab states, charities donate the burial garments

GAZA/RAFAH/CAIRO: “My life, my eyes, my soul,” a husband writes on the white shroud wrapped around his wife after the war devastating Gaza took her life.
A bereaved son writes “my mother and everything” on the burial cloth covering his mother, another of the more than 21,000 Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas confrontation.
Over the past 12 weeks the piece of white cloth has become a symbol of civilian deaths wrought by Israel as it retaliates for Hamas killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages in its Oct. 7 cross-border raid, the deadliest day in Israel’s history.
While the besieged Palestinian territory faces severe shortages of food, water and medicine, the white coverings used to wrap dead Palestinians have remained in abundant supply.
Not all the shrouds bear loving words. Such is the war’s chaos, some of the dead cannot immediately be identified.
In such cases, the shrouds bear the words “unknown male” or “unknown female,” and before burial pictures are taken and the date and place of the strike documented so individuals can be identified by relatives later.
If the conflict escalates, the supply of the white coverings donated by Arab governments and charities is expected to keep pace with demand. But there are difficulties brought on by the sheer number of the dead, and sometimes there are gaps in the local availability of the shrouds.
“The challenges we face are too much, there is shortage in the knives and the scissors that we need to prepare the shrouds and cut them,” said Mohammed Abu Mussa, a volunteer at Keratan society, which prepares dead bodies for burial.

KNIVES, SCISSORS, COTTON
“As you know, there is a blockade and there are no materials in the Gaza Strip, so we find difficulties getting knives, scissors, and cotton,” he said, adding that so many people are dying that sometimes donated shrouds are not enough and he has to wrap four of five people in one shroud.
Marwan Al-Hams, director of Abu Yousef Al Najjar hospital, said the prevalence of the shrouds signifies Gaza’s suffering.
“The big number of the martyrs made the white shroud a symbol for this war and it became parallel to the Palestine flag in its influence and the knowledge of the world about the significance of our cause,” he said.
The white covering goes back to a narration by the Prophet Muhammed, who encouraged his followers to wear white clothes and also wrap the dead in white.
Shrouds from Arab donors come packed with a bar of soap, perfume, cotton, and eucalyptus, for the preparation of bodies for burial, a doctor at a hospital in the southern town of Rafah told Reuters.
A Gaza Health Ministry official told Reuters shrouds are manufactured either from textile or nylon material. While the nylon ones are made in both white and black, white is the traditional color and is preferred.
In Gaza in normal times the minute someone dies, a relative goes to the market and buys a “Kafan,” or shroud.

SCENES OF CHAOS
But for Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Atti, a local journalist, the process in war-time Gaza began amid scenes of chaos and devastation, with bodies of six of his loved ones including his mother and brother being pulled from rubble.
The six were killed in an Israeli strike on Al-Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip on Dec. 7. The strike smashed a building on top of them as they slept.
Describing the procedure as the most painful experience of his life, he obtained shrouds from a hospital and wrapped them around his relatives’ bodies.
“The first one I did was my brother, the rest came wrapped in blankets and I asked they don’t be taken off, I put the shrouds over the blankets, and tied them carefully, before paying them farewell,” Abdel-Atti told Reuters.
“As I wrapped them in shrouds I wondered what was their fault ... Why did Israel kill them as they slept in peace?“
The only consolation, he said, was his relatives are going to heaven. “White resembles peace, resembles calm. It is part of our tradition and belief and by white shrouds, it is as if we are asking God to remove and clear all their sins and accept them in heaven,” said Abdel-Atti.
Asked how much the risk of death preoccupied him, the journalist replied: “Each one of us is afraid. With nightfall, people feel as if they are in a closed cage and each awaits his or her turn to die.” 


Israel strikes Yemen’s Sana’a airport, ports and power stations

Smoke rises after Israeli strikes near Sanaa airport, in Sanaa, Yemen, December 26, 2024. (Reuters)
Updated 24 min 10 sec ago
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Israel strikes Yemen’s Sana’a airport, ports and power stations

  • Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said it struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including Sana’a International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
Attacks hit Yemen’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations as well as military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib, Israel’s military added.
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli attacks on the airport, Hodeidah and on one power station, were reported by Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthis.
More than a year of Houthi attacks have disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.
Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to try to get the Houthis designated as a terrorist organization.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Monday over Houthi attacks against Israel, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israel’s military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people. 


Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills

Updated 26 December 2024
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Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.

Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.


Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall

Updated 26 December 2024
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Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall

AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.


Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government

Updated 26 December 2024
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Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government

  • Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
  • Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders

DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.


Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration

Updated 26 December 2024
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Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”