In Damascus, life resumes without Assad

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People walk past anti government forces securing the Syrian capital in Damascus, on December 9, 2024. (AFP)
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People celebrate as anti-government fighters and their families, who lived in exile in the Idlib governorate, return to the Damascus suburb of Daraya on December 9, 2024. (AFP)
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A woman offers a rose to a pedestrian in central Aleppo to celebrate its take over from government forces on December 6, 2024, one week after the northern Syrian city was overrun by Islamist-led rebel fighters in a surprise offensive. (AFP)
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Updated 10 December 2024
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In Damascus, life resumes without Assad

  • The curfew imposed on the capital’s residents since Sunday has been relaxed, now starting at 9:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) instead of 5:00 p.m. and lasting until morning

DAMASCUS: In Damascus, life is cautiously returning to normal as residents step out of their homes into a Syria transformed by the ousting of long-time president Bashar Assad.
“We were a little worried, but since Sunday, we are no longer afraid,” said Lina Al-Ostaz, referring to when the Syrian capital fell to a coalition of Islamist-led rebels.
The 11-day lightning offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and allies ended over half a century of unchecked rule by the Assad dynasty.
Ostaz said she left her house for the first time since the offensive began to go shopping in central Damascus on Tuesday. She strolled through the market with her husband, smiling at patrons and passersby.




People eat outdoors in Damascus on December 9, 2024, a day after the ousting of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by Islamist-led anti-government fighters, who took the capital, forcing him to flee, and ending five decades of Baath rule in Syria. (AFP)

“We Syrians, we love life, and life goes on,” said the 57-year-old, who hesitated before mentioning she was arrested by government forces in 2015.
“I hope that the future will be better for young people,” she said.
After more than half a century of repression, Syrians seem to be speaking more freely.

In Qassaa, a predominantly Christian neighborhood, cafes are bustling with patrons smoking shisha and playing cards.
“We were very afraid... but we encouraged each other to go out and resume our normal lives,” said Rania Diab, a 64-year-old doctor who left home for the first time to meet up with friends at a cafe.
“But we remain cautious, we go home early, the situation is not yet clear,” she added.
She said her only hope was “that we can live normally in our country, that our freedoms are preserved... and that we can live in security and with freedom of opinion.”
The curfew imposed on the capital’s residents since Sunday has been relaxed, now starting at 9:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) instead of 5:00 p.m. and lasting until morning.
In the streets, portraits of Bashar Assad have been torn down. The green, white, and black flag of the revolution now flies, replacing the red, white, and black of the Syrian flag adopted during Assad’s father Hafez’s reign.
Spent bullet casings litter the vast central Umayyad Square, where revellers play out revolutionary songs.
Armed men from various rebel groups, clad in fatigues and often wearing balaclavas, patrol the streets of the capital. Regime soldiers and police officers deserted their posts in large numbers on Sunday.

At the police headquarters in Damascus, there are officers from the self-proclaimed rebel government of Idlib, led by Mohammad Al-Bashir, who was appointed as the head of Syria’s transitional government on Tuesday.
A man who introduced himself as the new head of the police and declined to give his name told AFP that they would take up their duties in the coming days.
“We will ensure the security of all government buildings and maintain security in the capital,” he said.
In the upscale Malki neighborhood, people sat in outdoor cafes, while young people staged an impromptu demonstration, dancing to the familiar tunes of the 2011 uprising.
The peaceful demonstrations were brutally repressed by Assad’s forces, sparking a civil war that fragmented Syria and killed more than half a million people.
In the historic heart of the capital, the bars of the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma, which serve alcohol, are still closed.
In the restaurants and cafes that are open, alcohol is not served, out of caution as residents await the new order under Damascus’s new rulers.
 

 


US says it is ‘critical’ that Gaza ceasefire implementation continues

Updated 4 sec ago
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US says it is ‘critical’ that Gaza ceasefire implementation continues

  • Both Republican Trump and Democratic former President Joe Biden have been strong backers of Washington’s ally Israel

WASHINGTON: The US government said on Saturday it was “critical” that implementation of the Gaza ceasefire continues, after four Israeli soldiers were freed by Palestinian Hamas militants in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners.

KEY QUOTES
“It is critical that the ceasefire implementation continues and that all of the hostages are freed from Hamas captivity and safely returned to their families,” the US State Department said in a statement on Saturday.
Statements by the State Department and the White House welcomed the release of Israeli hostages and did not mention the Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel.
“The United States celebrates the release of the four Israeli hostages held in captivity for 477 days,” the State Department added.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
The week-old ceasefire in Gaza began last weekend just before US President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20. Both Republican Trump and Democratic former President Joe Biden have been strong backers of Washington’s ally Israel.
Trump has credited his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff for the ceasefire deal reached after months of talks mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar. Before his inauguration, Trump warned there would be “hell to pay” if hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were not released.

CONTEXT
Hamas took around 250 hostages during an Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed, according to Israeli tallies. It sparked the latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed over 47,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and led to accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies. It also displaced nearly Gaza’s entire population and caused a hunger crisis.

 


Who are the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli hostages?

Updated 29 min 28 sec ago
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Who are the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli hostages?

  • An activist in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Aradeh, was sentenced to life in prison for a range of offenses going back to the second intifada, or uprising against Israel’s occupation in the early 2000s

RAMALLAH, West Bank: The release of four female Israeli soldiers from Hamas captivity on Saturday came at a heavy cost for Israel.
Israel released 200 Palestinian prisoners, 120 of them serving life sentences, from its jails as part of a ceasefire deal. They ranged in age from 16 to 67.
Some were set free into an exuberant West Bank, while those whose offenses were considered too serious were transferred to Egypt.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday, dozens of freed Palestinians, all looking wan and thin in stained gray Israeli prison jumpsuits, disembarked from a white Red Cross bus. They launched themselves into a jubilant crowd.
The images dredged up trauma for Israelis whose loved ones were killed by some of those released.

Palestinian prisoners released by Israel wave and cheer to people below gathering to receive them at a sports centre building of the Ramallah municipality, after arriving there aboard buses of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on January 25, 2025. (AFP)

Moshe Har Melech, whose son was killed in a Palestinian shooting attack in 2003, said that he was sickened by the released prisoners being greeted as “superheroes” and warned that even exile was no deterrent.
“They’ll continue remotely recruiting and establishing terrorist cells,” he said. “But this time, they’ll be more experienced.”
Adrenalized teenagers streamed the revelry on social media, and mothers wept as they hugged their sons for the first time in years.
“It can’t be described. To be between your mother and father, it’s an indescribable feeling,” said Azmi Nafaa, accused of trying to ram his vehicle into Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in 2015 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
After nine years in prison, Nafaa hugged his mother, Hadiya Hamdan. She suggested that she cook meat dumplings in yogurt sauce, and he laughed, suggesting instead the more elaborate “mansaf,” a Bedouin dish of lamb and rice.
“That will be difficult for you,” he said.
“No,” she replied. “Nothing will be difficult.”
There was no such reception for the 70 prisoners sent into exile, whose convoy made its way south and quietly slipped through Gaza’s Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
Underscoring the challenges for Israel, the reception for prisoners in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, revealed an outpouring of support for the rival Hamas group. Many young Palestinians waved the bright green flags of Hamas and called on the militant group to capture more Israelis in order to free all the prisoners.
Hard-line commentators criticized the deal as justice undone and capitulation to the enemy.
“A deal that releases brutal murderers ... endangers the lives of more Israelis down the road,” David M. Weinberg, a senior fellow at the conservative research group Misgav, wrote in the Makor Rishon right-wing newspaper. “And that road is not particularly long.”
Here’s a look at the more prominent Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday.
Mohammed Aradeh, 42
An activist in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Aradeh, was sentenced to life in prison for a range of offenses going back to the second intifada, or uprising against Israel’s occupation in the early 2000s. Some of the charges, according to the Israeli Prison Service, included planting an explosive device and attempting murder.
He was credited with plotting an extraordinary prison escape in 2021, when he and five other detainees used spoons to tunnel out one of Israel’s most secure prisons. They remained at large for days before being caught.
From an impoverished and politically active family Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, Aradeh has three brothers and a sister who have all spent years in Israeli prison.
He was welcomed as a sort of cult hero in Ramallah on Saturday as family, friends and fans swarmed him, some chanting “The freedom tunnel!” in reference to his prison escape. When asked how he felt, Aradeh was breathless.
Over and over he muttered, “Thank God, thank God.”
Mohammed Odeh, 52, Wael Qassim, 54, and Wissam Abbasi, 48
All three men hail from the neighborhood of Silwan, in east Jerusalem, and rose within the ranks of Hamas. Held responsible for a string of deadly attacks during the second intifada, the men were sentenced to multiple life sentences in Israeli jail in 2002.
They were accused of plotting a suicide bombing at a crowded pool hall near Tel Aviv in 2002 that killed 15 people. Later that year, they were found to have orchestrated a bombing at Hebrew University that killed nine people, including five American students. Israel had described Odeh, who was working as a painter at the university at the time, as the kingpin in the attack.
All three were among those transferred to Egypt. Their families all live in Jerusalem.
The Abu Hamid brothers

Three brothers from the prominent Abu Hamid family of the Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah — Nasser, 51, Mohammad, 44, and Sharif, 48 — were deported together on Saturday. They had been sentenced to life in prison over deadly militant attacks against Israelis in 2002.
Their brother, a different Nasser Abu Hamid, was one of the founders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed militia affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority.
He was also sentenced to life in prison for several deadly attacks. His 2022 death from lung cancer behind bars unleashed a wave of angry protests and strikes across the West Bank as Palestinian officials accused Israel of medical neglect.
The family has a long arc of Palestinian militancy. The mother, Latifa Abu Hamid, 72, now has three sons exiled, one still imprisoned, one who died in prison and one who was killed by Israeli forces. Their family house has been demolished at least three times by Israel, which defends such punitive home demolitions as a deterrent against future attacks.
Mohammad Al-Tous, 67
Al-Tous had held the title of longest continuous Israeli imprisonment until his release on Saturday, Palestinian authorities said.
First arrested in 1985 while fighting Israeli forces along the Jordanian border, the activist in the Fatah party spent a total of 39 years behind bars. Originally from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, he was among the prisoners exiled to Egypt.

 


White House makes 2,000-pound bombs available to Israel, undoing Biden’s pause

Updated 1 min 38 sec ago
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White House makes 2,000-pound bombs available to Israel, undoing Biden’s pause

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s White House has instructed the US military to release a hold imposed by the Biden administration on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, a White House source told Reuters on Saturday.

The move was widely expected. Biden put the hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concern over the impact they could have in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. A ceasefire to halt the war was recently agreed.
The Biden administration’s particular concern had been over the use of such large bombs in the city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians in Gaza had taken refuge.

File photo showing US Air Force weapons loaders preparing a 2,000-pound bomb for loading into a B-1 bomber during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. (AFP)

 


Nearly 30 percent of Syrians want to go home, up from almost zero, UN refugee chief says

Updated 25 January 2025
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Nearly 30 percent of Syrians want to go home, up from almost zero, UN refugee chief says

  • Filippo Grandi says "needle has moved" on refugees wanting to return now Bashar Assad has been deposed

DAMASCUS: Almost 30 percent of the millions of Syrian refugees living in Middle Eastern countries want to return home in the next year, following the fall of President Bashar Assad, up from almost none last year, the head of the UN’s refugee agency said.
The shift is based on an assessment done by the UN in January, weeks after Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels, bringing an abrupt end to a 13-year civil war that had created one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times.
“We have seen the needle move, finally, after years of decline,” Filippo Grandi told a small group of reporters in Damascus, after holding meetings with the Syria’s new ruling administration.
The number of Syrians wishing to return “had reached almost zero. It’s now nearly 30 percent in the space of a few weeks. There is a message there, which I think is very important, must be listened to and must be acted upon,” he said.
Around 200,000 Syrian refugees have already returned since Assad fell, he said, in addition to around 300,000 who fled back to Syria from Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israel war in September and October, most of whom are thought to have stayed.
Returning the roughly 6 million Syrians who fled abroad and the millions who became internally displaced has been a main aim of Syria’s new administration.
But the civil war has left large parts of many major cities in ruins, services decrepit and the vast majority of the population living in poverty. Syria remains under a harsh Western sanctions regime that effectively cuts off its formal economy from the rest of the world.
To aid Syrians returning, many of whom often sell all their belongings to pay for the trip, UN agencies are providing some cash aid for transportation and will help with food and to reconstruct at least parts of broken homes, Grandi said.
More aid is needed from donors, Grandi said, and sanctions should be reconsidered. He did not comment directly on an announcement on Friday by the new US administration of a broad suspension of foreign aid programs.
“If sanctions are lifted, this will improve the conditions in the places where people return,” he said.
The US earlier this month provided a six-month sanctions exemption for some sectors, including energy, but Syria’s new leaders say much more relief is needed.
Grandi said refugees were responding to a political process that the new administration’s leader Ahmed Sharaa has committed to, aimed at producing a governing authority by March 1 that better represents Syria’s diversity.
“Refugees are listening to what he’s saying, to what his people are saying, and that’s why I think many people decided to go back,” Grandi said. “But many more will come if these things continue to be positive.”


Turkiye says will fight terror after death of Iraqi border guards

Updated 25 January 2025
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Turkiye says will fight terror after death of Iraqi border guards

  • Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said: “We are deeply saddened by the deaths of two border guards”
  • “It is clear that the PKK terrorist organization poses a threat to the national security of Turkiye and Iraq“

ISTANBUL: Turkiye vowed on Saturday to work closely with Iraq to secure their common frontier after two Iraqi border guards were killed in a shooting blamed on outlawed PKK militants.
On Friday, Iraq’s interior ministry said the two Iraqi guards were killed near the Turkish border in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.
“When the Iraqi border forces were carrying out their duties securing the Iraqi-Turkish border, they were fired at by terrorists from the banned PKK organization” in Zakho district, the ministry said.
A third guard was wounded, it added.


The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, has several outposts in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases.
Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said on X that “we are deeply saddened by the deaths of two border guards as a result of the attack carried out by the PKK terrorist organization.”
“It is clear that the PKK terrorist organization poses a threat to the national security of Turkiye and Iraq and violates Iraq’s sovereignty,” he said.
“We will continue to fight together with Iraq against terrorism.”
The attack comes ahead of a planned visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to Baghdad on Sunday.