DAMASCUS: An explosive device went off in a car in an upscale neighborhood of Damascus Saturday, Syrian state media said, quoting a police source and adding that there were no victims.
Security incidents, including blasts targeting military or civilian vehicles, occur intermittently in the capital. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the blast or who was the target.
But it came with tensions high in the city after Iran vowed retaliation for an air strike it blamed on Israel.
The April 1 strike destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing seven Revolutionary Guards, including two generals.
Syria’s official SANA news agency, quoting a Damascus police command source, said an explosion “in the Mazzeh area resulted from an explosive device detonating in a car in Al-Huda square.”
It added that there were no casualties.
The city’s Mazzeh district is where Iran’s embassy and other foreign missions are located.
Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said without elaborating that the driver of the car was “a Lebanese national who has yet to be identified.”
The Observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria, said the authorities had cordoned off the scene of the explosion, and that the vehicle had been “slightly damaged.”
Both Damascus and Tehran blame Israel for the April 1 raid on the consular building, but it has not commented.
The Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has a significant presence in the Damascus region.
The strike came against the backdrop of Israel and Hamas’s ongoing war, which began with the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.
Syrian state media: explosive device blows up car in Damascus
https://arab.news/8jd2x
Syrian state media: explosive device blows up car in Damascus
- Security incidents, including blasts targeting military or civilian vehicles, occur intermittently in the capital
- It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the blast or who was the target
Syrian lawyers demand free bar association elections: petition
Islamist-led rebels toppled longtime president Bashar Assad earlier this month, ending more than 50 years of his family’s iron-clad rule.
Lawyer Abdulhay Sayed, who signed the petition, told AFP that Syria’s new rulers “appointed a new council” to govern the bar association with “no visibility for the future.”
The petition, seen by AFP, said: “Today, with the collapse of the deposed regime, the bar association must no longer be subordinate to the whims of any ruler.
“It is imperative that it reclaim its rightful role in public life and empower its members to defend the rights of individuals and safeguard society’s existence, even against the most powerful authorities,” it added.
The petition said its councils should not be replaced by “others lacking electoral legitimacy.”
“This approach would simply substitute one form of authoritarianism for another, perpetuating the suppression of the bar’s vital role in oversight and protection of rights,” the statement said.
“At this critical transitional moment, it is essential to organize free and independent elections for the central bar association and its branches across the provinces without delay,” it said.
The petition was signed by about two dozen lawyers mainly based in the Damascus, Homs and Hama areas.
It “aims to restore the bar association’s historical role and its independence,” Sayed told AFP.
The bar had played a leading role in opposing state repression, particularly in the early 1980s, before being muzzled by authorities that imposed their own appointees.
Syria’s new authorities have suspended the constitution and parliament for a three-month interim period and appointed a transitional government to head the country during that time.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa said organizing national elections could take four years and that rewriting the constitution could take two or three years, in a televised interview last week.
Dozens of patients and wounded evacuated from Gaza for treatment
- The 45 patients left the European Hospital in Khan Younis and crossed into Israel
- Patients will be sent to UAE for treatment
Dozens of patients and the wounded have been evacuated for treatment outside the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where the United Nations says Israel’s attacks on and around hospitals have pushed health care to the brink.
The 45 patients left the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis early Tuesday and traveled through the Kerem Shalom Crossing into Israel, Palestinian health officials said. They will receive treatment in the United Arab Emirates.
Among them was a 10-year-old boy, Abdullah Abu Yousef, suffering from kidney failure. He was accompanied by his sister after the Israeli authorities rejected his mother’s application to join him. Israel says it screens escorts for security.
“The boy is sick,” said his mother, Abeer Abu Yousef. “He requires hemodialysis three to four days a week.”
The Health Ministry says several thousand Palestinians in Gaza need medical treatment abroad. Israel has controlled all entry and exit points since capturing the southern city of Rafah in May. Israel’s offensive, launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack has gutted the territory’s health care system and forced most of its hospitals to close. Those that remain open are only partially functioning.
US strikes Houthi targets in Yemen: CENTCOM
NEW YORK: The US military said that it carried out strikes against Houthi targets in Sanaa and coastal locations in Yemen on Monday and Tuesday.
“On Dec. 30 and 31, US Navy ships and aircraft targeted a Houthi command and control facility and advanced conventional weapon (ACW) production and storage facilities that included missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV),” the US military’s Central Command said in a post on X.
The Iran-backed militant group in Yemen has been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to try to enforce a naval blockade on Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza.
Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said that the country would continue to defend itself after several US strikes targeted facilities in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday.
UN: Gaza healthcare nearing ‘total collapse’ due to Israeli strikes
- ‘Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza, and associated combat, pushed the health care system to the brink of total collapse’
GENEVA: A United Nations report published Tuesday found that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip had left health care in the Palestinian territory on the verge of collapse.
The report by the UN human rights office said such strikes raised grave concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law.
“Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza, and associated combat, pushed the health care system to the brink of total collapse, with catastrophic effect on Palestinians’ access to health and medical care,” the UN human rights office said in a statement.
Its 23-page report, entitled “Attacks on hospitals during the escalation of hostilities in Gaza,” looked at the period from October 7, 2023 to June 30, 2024.
It said that during this time, there were at least 136 strikes on 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities, claiming significant casualties among doctors, nurses, medics and other civilians and causing significant damage to, if not the complete destruction of, civilian infrastructure.
The report noted that medical personnel and hospitals are specifically protected under international humanitarian law, provided they do not commit, or are not used to commit, acts harmful to the enemy outside their humanitarian function.
It found that Israel’s repeated claims that Gaza hospitals were being improperly used for military purposes by Palestinian groups “vague.”
“Insufficient information has so far been made publicly available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information,” the report said.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said Gaza hospitals had become a “death trap.”
“As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap,” he said.
“The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.”
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
That resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 45,500 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
The report concluded with a call for credible investigations into the incidents detailed, and said they had to be independent given the “limitations” of Israel’s justice system in respect of the conduct of its armed forces.
“It is essential that there be independent, thorough and transparent investigations of all of these incidents, and full accountability for all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law which have taken place,” said Turk.
“All medical workers arbitrarily detained must be immediately released.
“It must also be a priority for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure and facilitate access to adequate health care for the Palestinian population, and for future recovery and reconstruction efforts to prioritize the restoration of the medical capacity which has been destroyed over the last 14 months of intense conflict.”
Syria’s new rulers confirm appointment of Murhaf Abu Qasra as defense minister
DUBAI: Syria’s new rulers confirmed the appointment of Murhaf Abu Qasra as defense minister in the new interim government, according to a statement released on Tuesday.
Reuters reported from an official source on Dec. 21 the appointment of Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar Assad.
