QUNEITRA: Damascus held a condolence ceremony on Tuesday in Quneitra city for 12 children killed in the nearby Israeli-annexed Golan Heights in a strike that Israel has blamed on Syria’s ally Hezbollah.
Dozens of Syrians wearing traditional white Druze caps attended the event, in a tent outside a government building in Quneitra city — just a few hundred meters from the annexed Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.
“We came to show our solidarity with our people, the families of the martyrs in Majdal Shams... These children are our children,” said resident Jawdat Talia.
Israel said Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired a Falaq-1 Iranian rocket on the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams, but the Tehran-backed group said it had “no connection” to the incident.
Earlier on Tuesday, Druze residents of the annexed Golan Heights distanced themselves from Israeli threats to retaliate against Hezbollah for the deadly strike.
Most of Majdal Shams’s 11,000 or so residents still identify as Syrian more than half a century after Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community.
While the Druze of Israel are officially considered Israeli citizens, the vast majority of those in the Golan have refused to take Israeli nationality.
“From here, just a few meters away from the border strip, we offer our deepest condolences to our people inside the occupied territories,” lawmaker Walid Darwish told AFP.
Syrian forces regained full control of Quneitra province in 2018, which had mostly been held by rebel factions since 2013.
The province includes part of the Golan Heights, which is mostly Israeli-occupied, with the two countries still officially at war.
The Druze, who follow an offshoot of Shiite Islam, are an Arabic-speaking community present in Israel, Lebanon and Syria, including the Golan.
The heartland of Syria’s Druze minority is Sweida province, which borders Quneitra and has experienced anti-government demonstrations for nearly a year.
Damascus has turned a blind eye to tens of thousands of Druze men refusing to undertake compulsory military service.
The vast majority of them have not taken up arms against Damascus.
On Monday, during a visit to Majdal Shams, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would deliver a “severe response” to the deadly strike.
On Sunday, Lebanon’s top diplomat said a flurry of diplomatic activity was underway to contain an expected Israeli response against Hezbollah after the attack.
Syria holds ceremony for youths killed in annexed Golan
https://arab.news/pmyyc
Syria holds ceremony for youths killed in annexed Golan
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/07/30/4493151-1728345636.jpg?itok=qbFgoRuf)
- “We came to show our solidarity with our people, the families of the martyrs in Majdal Shams... These children are our children,” said resident Jawdat Talia
- Earlier on Tuesday, Druze residents of the annexed Golan Heights distanced themselves from Israeli threats to retaliate against Hezbollah for the deadly strike
UN winds down ‘unique’ Iraq probe into Daesh crimes
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/09/08/4522148-830439130.jpg?itok=RYVKLXRw)
PARIS: The head of a UN body investigating crimes by Daesh in Iraq expressed regret over “misunderstandings” that led to the premature end of its crucial mission, at Baghdad’s request.
Daesh seized vast swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, carrying out abductions, beheadings, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and rapes.
The Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh, also known as UNITAD, was set up in September 2017 — as Daesh was being driven out of its last major strongholds in Iraq.
In an interview with AFP, UNITAD head Ana Peyro Llopis reflected on its seven-year effort to bring the terrorists to justice, and said “misunderstandings” with the Baghdad authorities contributed to the mission’s closure later this month.
Peyro Llopis noted it has been the only such international investigation mission to be established on the ground.
“There are not many who would have opened their doors to us in such a generous way” to investigate crimes, she said in the telephone interview.
“We could have publicly recognized, more clearly, that the good work we were able to do was only possible because we were invited and that it is unique.”
UNITAD’s mission will end on Sept. 17, years ahead of its expected completion, after the Security Council last year renewed its mandate for only one year at the request of Iraq’s government.
“The Iraqis have seen concrete results in foreign jurisdictions, and got the impression that UNITAD cooperated more with foreign states than with Iraq,” said Peyro Llopis. “Everything could have been better explained,” she added.
A major bone of contention with Baghdad was the sharing of evidence.
“The UN has strict rules of confidentiality and respect for the consent of those who testify,” she said, meaning that not all evidence was passed on to the Iraqis.
Media reports spoke of tensions between UNITAD and the Baghdad government.
Pact for $4.5m signed to aid 4,400 stranded Gazans in West Bank
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/09/08/4522071-227948071.jpg?itok=SmVRgmqT)
- “Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation,” UNRWA Commissioner-General said
CAIRO: The Qatar Red Crescent and the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) signed an agreement on Sunday, with $4.5 million from a Qatari state development fund, to aid more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza in the West Bank.
“Cash assistance will represent vital support for those displaced who have not been able to return to the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Strip last October,” a statement from the Qatar’s state news agency said.
“Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation, stranded from their loved ones and livelihoods,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said.
Since Israel’s blockade of Gaza began in 2007, movement in and out of the Strip has been heavily restricted, forcing individuals to seek medical care, education, or jobs in the West Bank, while escalating violence often closes borders, trapping those in need of essential services.
Egypt condemns killing of activist by Israeli forces in the West Bank
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/09/08/4522061-1272528211.jpg?itok=KdS_bc9X)
- Ministry extends condolences to government of Turkiye and its people
CAIRO: Egypt condemned the killing of US-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, condemned the killing of Eygi, which occurred south of Nablus.
In a statement issued by the ministry, Abu Zeid extended his condolences to the Turkish government and people and offered his sympathies to the family of the deceased.
He said the death is a further example of the daily Israeli violations against Palestinian civilians and their supporters, adding to the various forms of violence and disregard for human rights they face in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He also condemned the moral crisis faced by the international community due to the atrocities committed against civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories over decades.
Eygi, 26, was shot and killed on Friday in the village of Beita, near Nablus, during a nonviolent protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and escalating settler violence against Palestinian homes and landowners.
Eight-year-old found dead in Turkiye after national search effort
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/09/08/4522046-226158653.png?itok=gtGtmHEz)
- “Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu
ANKARA: The body of an eight-year-old girl who had been missing in Turkiye for 19 days has been found after an enormous manhunt, the interior minister said on Sunday.
The body of Narin Guran was found in a bag in a river in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, around one kilometer from the village where she lived with her family, Diyarbakir governor Murat Zorluoglu told reporters.
“Unfortunately, the lifeless body of Narin, who went missing in the village of Tavsantepe... has been found,” Turkish interior minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
She disappeared on August 21, sparking a huge search effort in Turkiye, with a number of well-known figures joining a social media campaign called “Find Narin.”
“Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu.
“Based on the first observations, she was put into a bag after she was killed. The bag was then placed in the river, hidden under branches and rocks so as not to raise suspicion,” he added.
Diyarbakir prosecutors have detained 21 people, said Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc.
The girl’s uncle was arrested last week on suspicion of murder and “deprivation of liberty.”
“Our president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is following the case closely to guarantee that the ongoing investigation continues thoroughly and that those who took Narin’s life answer before the law,” the president’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said on X.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish party DEM has called for a march to take place in Diyarbakir on Sunday evening.
“Narin was killed in an organized manner. Those responsible for this murder, which has saddened us all, must be revealed and held accountable before an impartial and independent justice system,” DEM wrote on X.
Tunc said on X that “those responsible for Narin’s death will be brought to justice.”
Sudan rejects UN call for ‘impartial’ force to protect civilians
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/09/08/4522016-1913282884.jpg?itok=UOBe6uRd)
PORT SUDAN: Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an “independent and impartial force” to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.
The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered “harrowing” violations by both sides, “which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
They called for “an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians” to be deployed “without delay.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry, which is loyal to the army under General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said in a statement late Saturday that “the Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission.”
It called the UN Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding mission last year, “a political and illegal body,” and the panel’s recommendations “a flagrant violation of their mandate.”
The UN experts said eight million civilians have been displaced and another two million people have fled to neighboring countries.
More than 25 million people — upwards of half the country’s population — face acute food shortages.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on a visit to Sudan on Sunday, said: “The scale of the emergency is shocking, as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict and respond to the suffering it is causing.”
In Port Sudan, where government offices and the United Nations have relocated to due to the intense fighting in the capital Khartoum, Tedros called on the “world to wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry statement accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, of “systematically targeting civilians and civilian institutions.”
“The protection of civilians remains an absolute priority for the Sudanese government,” it said.
The statement added that the UN Human Rights Council’s role should be “to support the national process, rather than seek to impose a different exterior mechanism.”
It also rejected the experts’ call for an arms embargo.