DAMASCUS: They came from all over Syria, tens of thousands. The first place they rushed to after the fall of their longtime tormentor, former President Bashar Assad, was here: Saydnaya Prison, a place so notorious for its horrors it was long known as “the slaughterhouse.”
For the past two days, all have been looking for signs of loved ones who disappeared years or even decades ago into the secretive, sprawling prison just outside Damascus.
But hope gave way to despair Monday. People opened the heavy iron doors lining the hallways to find cells inside empty. With sledgehammers, shovels and drills, men pounded holes in floors and walls, looking for what they believed were secret dungeons, or chasing sounds they thought they heard from underground. They found nothing.
Insurgents freed dozens of people from the Saydnaya military prison on Sunday when Damascus fell. Since then, almost no one has been found.
“Where is everyone? Where are everyone’s children? Where are they?” said Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.
She had rushed from her Damascus home to the prison on the capital’s outskirts, hoping to find her brother. He was detained in 2011, the year that protests first erupted against the former president’s rule – before they turned into a long, grueling civil war. She didn’t know why he was arrested.
“My heart has been burned over my brother. For 13 years, I kept looking for him,” she said. When insurgents last week seized Aleppo — her original hometown — at the start of their swiftly victorious offensive, “I prayed that they would reach Damascus just so they can open up this prison,” she said.
Civil defense officials helping in the search were as confused as the families over why no further inmates were being found. It appeared fewer were held here in recent weeks, they said.
But few were giving up, a sign of how powerfully Saydnaya looms in the minds of Syrians as the heart of Assad’s brutal police state. The sense of loss over the missing — and the sudden hope they might be found — brought a kind of dark unity among Syrians from across the country.
During Assad’s rule and particularly after the 2011 protests began, any hint of dissent could land someone in Saydnaya. Few ever emerged.
In 2017, Amnesty International estimated that 10,000-20,000 people were being held there at the time “from every sector of society.” It said they were effectively slated for “extermination.”
Thousands were killed in frequent mass executions, Amnesty reported, citing testimony from freed prisoners and prison officials. Prisoners were subjected to constant torture, intense beatings and rape. Almost daily, guards did rounds of the cells to collect bodies of inmates who had died overnight from injuries, disease or starvation. Some inmates fell into psychosis and starved themselves, the human rights group said.
“There is not a home, there is not a woman in Syria who didn’t lose a brother, a child or a husband,” said Khairiya Ismail, 54. Two of her sons were detained in the early days of the protests against Assad – one of them when he came to visit her after she herself had been detained.
Ismail, accused of helping her son evade military service, spent eight months in Adra prison, northeast of Damascus. “They detained everyone.”
An estimated 150,000 people were detained or went missing in Syria since 2011 — and tens of thousands of them are believed to have gone through Saydnaya.
“People expected many more to be here ... They are clinging to the slightest sliver of hope,” said Ghayath Abu Al-Dahab, a spokesman for the White Helmets, the search and rescue group that operated in rebel-held areas throughout the war.
Five White Helmet teams, with two canine teams, came to Saydnaya to help the search. They even brought in the prison electrician, who had the floor plan, and went through every shaft, vent and sewage opening. So far, there were no answers, Abu Al-Dahab said.
He said the civil defense had documents showing more than 3,500 people were in Saydnaya until three months before the fall of Damascus. But the number may have been less by the time the prison was stormed, he said.
“There are other prisons,” he said. “The regime had turned all of Syria into a big prison.” Detainees were held in security agencies, military facilities, government offices and even universities, he added.
Around the Y-shaped main building of the prison, everyone kept trying, convinced they could find some hidden chamber with detainees, dead or alive.
Dozens of men tried to force a metal gate open until they realized it led only to more cells upstairs. Others asked the insurgents guarding the prison to use their rifle to lever open a closed door.
A handful of men were gathered, excavating what looked like a sewage opening in a basement. Others dug up electrical wiring, thinking it might lead to hidden underground chambers.
In a scene throughout the day, hundreds cheered as men with sledgehammers and shovels battered a huge column in the building’s atrium, thinking they had found a secret cell. Hundreds ran to see. But there was nothing, and tears and loud sighs replaced the celebrations.
In the wards, lines of cells were empty. Some had blankets, a few plastic pots or a few names scribbled on walls. Documents, some with names of prisoners, were left strewn in the yard, the kitchen and elsewhere. Families scoured them for their loved ones’ names.
A brief protest broke out in the prison yard, when a group of men began chanting: “Bring us the prison warden.” Calls on social media urged anyone with information of the secret cells of the prison to come forth and help.
Firas Al-Halabi, one of the prisoners freed when insurgents first broke into Saydnaya, was back on Monday visiting. Those searching flocked around him, whispering names of relatives to see if he met them.
Al-Halabi, who had been an army conscript when he was arrested, said he spent four years in a cell with 20 others.
His only food was a quarter loaf of bread and some burghul. He suffered from tuberculosis because of the cell conditions. He was tortured by electrocution, he said, and the beatings were constant.
“During our time in the yard, there was beating. When going to the bathroom, there was beating. If we sat on the floor, we got beaten. If you look at the light, you are beaten,” he said. He was once thrown into solitary for simply praying in his cell.
“Everything is considered a violation,” he said. “Your life is one big violation to them.”
He said that in his first year in the prison guards would call out hundreds of names over the course of days. One officer told him it was for executions.
When he was freed Sunday, he thought he was dreaming. “We never thought we would see this moment. We thought we would be executed, one by one.”
Noha Qweidar and her cousin sat in the yard on Monday, taking a rest from searching. Their husbands were detained in 2013 and 2015. Qweidar said she had received word from other inmates that her husband was killed in a summary execution in prison.
But she couldn’t know for sure. Prisoners reported dead in the past have turned up alive.
“I heard that (he was executed) but I still have hope he is alive.”
Just before sundown on Monday, rescue teams brought in an excavator to dig deeper.
But late at night, the White Helmets announced the end of their search, saying in a statement they had found no hidden areas in the facility.
“We share the profound disappointment of the families of the thousands who remain missing and whose fates are unknown.”
Thousands scour Syria’s most horrific prison but find no sign of their loved ones
https://arab.news/4zadu
Thousands scour Syria’s most horrific prison but find no sign of their loved ones
Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill at least 40
- Eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Mahadi family home in Jabalia
- An Israeli strike on the Al-Agha family home killed five people in an area of Khan Yunis in the south
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes on Monday killed at least 40 people across the Palestinian territory, which has been under an Israeli aid blockade for more than 50 days.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18. A ceasefire agreement that had largely halted the fighting for two months before that collapsed over disagreements between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose 2023 attack triggered the war.
Civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP that 40 people had been killed since dawn on Monday.
They included eight people who were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Mahadi family home in Jabalia, in the north of the territory.
“They were sleeping in their homes, feeling safe, when missiles hit... this scene makes the body shiver,” said Abdul Majeed Abu Mahadi, 67, who added that his brother was killed in the attack.
“If a person looked at this scene, they would have seen children, women and elderly men cut into pieces, it makes the heart ache, but what can we do?“
The civil defense agency reported that another 10 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Ghamari family home in the Al-Sudaniya area northwest of Gaza City.
A strike on the Al-Agha family home killed eight others in an area of Khan Yunis in the south, it added.
Fourteen others were killed in four separate strikes across the territory, the civil defense said, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Shafii camp, west of Khan Yunis.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 2,222 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,314.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says its renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
Iran minister blames ‘negligence’ for port blast that killed 65
- Iran’s state TV showed images of firefighters still dousing the flames Monday, and said the damage would be assessed after the fire was fully brought under control
TEHRAN: Iran’s interior minister on Monday blamed “negligence” for a massive explosion that killed 65 people at the country’s largest commercial port, with firefighters still battling a blaze at the facility two days later.
The blast occurred on Saturday at the Shahid Rajaee Port in Iran’s south, near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which one-fifth of global oil output passes.
“The death toll has reached 65 in this horrific incident,” Mohammad Ashouri, governor of the southern Hormozgan province where the port is located, told state television, adding that the fire has not been fully extinguished yet.
Officials have said more than 1,000 people were injured. The province’s crisis management director, Mehrdad Hassanzadeh, said most had already been released after treatment.
On Monday, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni told state TV that “culprits have been identified and summoned,” and that the blast was caused by “shortcomings, including noncompliance with safety precautions and negligence.”
Momeni, who has been in the area since hours after the blast, stated that the “investigation is still underway.”
Iran’s state TV showed images of firefighters still dousing the flames Monday, and said the damage would be assessed after the fire was fully brought under control.
Heavy charcoal-black smoke continued to billow over low flames at part of the site, above which a firefighting helicopter flew, pictures from the Iranian Red Crescent showed.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered a probe into the incident.
It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion but the port’s customs office said it likely resulted from a fire that broke out at the hazardous and chemical materials storage depot.
CCTV images on social media showed it began gradually, with a small fire belching orange-brown smoke among a few containers stacked outside, across from a warehouse.
A small forklift truck drives past the area and men can be seen walking nearby.
About one minute after the small fire and smoke become visible, a fireball erupts as vehicles pass nearby, with men running for their lives.
President Masoud Pezeshkian visited hospitals treating the wounded on Sunday in the nearby city of Bandar Abbas.
Since the explosion, authorities have ordered all schools and offices in the area closed, and have urged residents to avoid going outside “until further notice” and to use protective masks.
The New York Times quoted a person with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, as saying that what exploded was sodium perchlorate — a major ingredient in solid fuel for missiles.
Defense ministry spokesman Reza Talaei-Nik later told state TV that “there has been no imported or exported cargo for military fuel or military use in the area.”
Iran’s ally Russia has dispatched specialists to help battle the blazes.
Authorities have declared Monday a national day of mourning, while three days of mourning began Sunday in Hormozgan province.
The blast occurred as Iranian and US delegations were meeting in Oman for high-level talks on Tehran’s nuclear program.
While Iranian authorities so far appear to be treating the blast as an accident, it also comes against the backdrop of years of shadow war with regional foe Israel.
According to The Washington Post, Israel launched a cyberattack targeting the Shahid Rajaee Port in 2020.
Israeli authorities order Palestinians to stop building homes in Al-Jib town
- Residents were ordered to halt construction on three homes and caravans for livestock
- The stop-work order is a decree that often triggers a demolition order
LONDON: Israeli authorities issued stop-work orders for several Palestinian structures being built in Al-Jib town, north of occupied East Jerusalem.
On Monday, authorities stormed Al-Jib and notified residents to halt construction on three homes and caravans for raising livestock, according to the Wafa news agency. The stop-work order is a decree that often triggers a demolition order.
The majority of village territory, located 9 km north of Jerusalem, falls within Area C where the Palestinian Authority is in charge of educational and health services, while Israel remains responsible for security and construction.
Israel restricts Palestinians from expanding in Area C, and inside Jerusalem, it rarely grants building permits to residents of the city. Al-Jib is surrounded by several Israeli settlements, the biggest of which is Giv’at Ze’ev.
The Palestinain Authority-affiliated Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission reported in March that Israeli authorities carried out 58 demolition operations in the occupied West Bank, affecting 87 structures. These included 39 inhabited homes, six uninhabited houses, and 26 agricultural properties in the cities of Nablus, Tulkarm, Jerusalem, and Salfit.
Houthis say alleged US airstrike that hit Yemen prison holding African migrants kills 68
DUBAI: The Houthis on Monday alleged a US airstrike hit a prison holding African migrants, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others. The US military did not acknowledge carrying out the strike.
The strike was in Yemen’s Saada governorate, a stronghold for the Houthis.
It will likely renew questions from activists about the American campaign, known as “Operation Rough Rider,” which has been targeting the militia as the Trump administration negotiates with their main benefactor, Iran, over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.
The US military’s Central Command, in a statement early Monday before news of the alleged strike broke, sought to defend its policy of offering no specific details of its extensive airstrike campaign. The strikes have drawn controversy in America over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the unclassified Signal messaging app to post sensitive details about the attacks.
“To preserve operational security, we have intentionally limited disclosing details of our ongoing or future operations,” Central Command said. “We are very deliberate in our operational approach, but will not reveal specifics about what we’ve done or what we will do.”
It did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press about the alleged strike in Saada.
Graphic footage shows aftermath of explosion
Graphic footage aired by the Houthis’ Al-Masirah satellite news channel showed what appeared to be dead bodies and others wounded at the site. The Houthi-run Interior Ministry said some 115 migrants had been detained at the site.
The militia’s Civil Defense organization said at least 68 people had been killed and 47 others wounded in the attack.
Footage from the site analyzed by the AP suggested some kind of explosion took place there, with its cement walls seemingly peppered by debris fragments and the wounds suffered by those there.
A voice, soft in the footage, can be heard repeating the start of a prayer in Arabic: “In the name of God.” An occasional gunshot rang out as medics sought to help those wounded.
The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, said it was “deeply saddened” by the deaths at the prison.
“It is imperative that all efforts are made to avoid harm to civilians and to protect those most vulnerable in these challenging circumstances,” it said.
US military says over 800 strikes conducted in campaign so far
Meanwhile, US airstrikes overnight targeting Yemen’s capital killed at least eight people, the Houthis said. The American military acknowledged carrying out over 800 individual strikes in their monthlong campaign.
The overnight statement from Central Command also said “Operation Rough Rider” had “killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders,” including those associated with its missile and drone program. It did not identify any of those officials.
“We will continue to ratchet up the pressure until the objective is met, which remains the restoration of freedom of navigation and American deterrence in the region,” it added.
The US is targeting the Houthis because of the group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, a crucial global trade route, and on Israel. The Houthis are also the last militant group in Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” that is capable of regularly attacking Israel.
US discusses deadly port strike
The US is conducting strikes on Yemen from its two aircraft carriers in the region — the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea and the USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea.
On April 18, an American strike on the Ras Isa fuel port killed at least 74 people and wounded 171 others in the deadliest-known attack of the American campaign. Central Command on Monday offered an explanation for why it hit the port.
“US strikes destroyed the ability of Ras Isa Port to accept fuel, which will begin to impact Houthi ability to not only conduct operations, but also to generate millions of dollars in revenue for their terror activities,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Houthis have increasingly sought to control the flow of information from the territory they hold to the outside world. It issued a notice Sunday that all those holding Starlink satellite Internet receivers should “quickly hand over” the devices to authorities.
“A field campaign will be implemented in coordination with the security authorities to arrest anyone who sells, trades, uses, operates, installs or possesses these prohibited terminals,” the Houthis warned.
Starlink terminals have been crucial for Ukraine in fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion and receivers also have been smuggled into Iran amid unrest there.
Sisi meets Burhan in Cairo to discuss restoring stability in Sudan
- 2 leaders also planned to consult on strengthening bilateral ties
DUBAI: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council President Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan met in Cairo on Monday to discuss ways to restore stability and promote development in Sudan.
The two leaders also planned to consult on strengthening bilateral ties and addressing various regional issues, Ahram Online reported.
Al-Burhan’s visit comes amid ongoing conflict in Sudan, where fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces has devastated the country.
Al-Burhan declared Khartoum “free” of RSF control in March after a major military push.
The war, which erupted in April 2023 over disputes regarding the RSF’s integration into the military, has left tens of thousands dead, with both sides accused of committing atrocities.
Sudan remains deeply divided, with the army controlling the north and east, while the RSF holds much of Darfur and parts of the south.
