DAMASCUS: The leader of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham confirmed on Wednesday that the militants did not receive any international support to confront former President Bashar Assad’s government.
HTS’ leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa, said that the weapons they fought the Assad government with were manufactured locally, according to Al Arabiya news channel.
He added: “The Syrian people are exhausted from years of conflict, and the country will not witness another war.”
Those responsible for killing Syrians, and security and army officers in the former administration involved in torturing will be held accountable by the Military Operations Department, said Al-Sharaa.
He said in a statement: “We will pursue the war criminals and demand them from the countries to which they fled so that they may receive their just punishment.”
The leader confirmed that “a list containing the names of the most senior people involved will be announced.”
He added that “rewards will also be offered to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes.”
Al-Sharaa said that the military leadership is “committed to tolerance for those whose hands are not stained with the blood of the Syrian people,” adding that it granted amnesty to those in compulsory service.
Militants ‘did not receive any international support to confront the Assad government,’ says HTS’ Al-Sharaa
https://arab.news/wevrt
Militants ‘did not receive any international support to confront the Assad government,’ says HTS’ Al-Sharaa
- He says the weapons they fought with were manufactured locally
- ‘The Syrian people are exhausted from years of conflict, the country will not witness another war’
Shooting at Israeli bus in occupied West Bank wounds 4
JERUSALEM: A gunman wounded four people including a 12-year-old when he opened fire Wednesday on an Israeli bus in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military and medics reported.
The attack at around 11:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) happened south of Jerusalem, near Bethlehem at the so-called tunnels checkpoint.
Israel’s emergency medical service Magen David Adom said its medics treated four people, including “a 12-year-old child in serious condition with gunshot wounds.”
The boy was “in a critical condition,” according to Hadassah hospital, west of Jerusalem.
The military said: “Israeli security forces are pursuing the terrorist, setting up roadblocks and encircling the area of Bethlehem.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the war in Gaza erupted on October 7 last year after Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 790 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also killed at least 24 people in the West Bank in the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
US announces first Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon under ceasefire deal
WASHINGTON: Israeli forces conducted a first withdrawal from a town in south Lebanon and were replaced by the Lebanese military under a ceasefire deal, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Wednesday.
The command’s leader General Erik Kurilla “was present at the implementation and monitoring headquarters today during the ongoing first Israeli Defense Forces withdrawal and Lebanese Armed Forces replacement in Al-Khiam, Lebanon as part of the (ceasefire) agreement,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
“This is an important first step in the implementation of a lasting cessation of hostilities and lays the foundation for continued progress,” the statement quoted Kurilla as saying.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that the stationing of troops “in the Khiam and Marjayoun areas today represents a fundamental step toward strengthening the army’s deployment in the south, in implementation of the ceasefire decision.”
“We salute the army’s efforts” toward establishing “stability in the south,” Mikati said in a post on X.
The Israeli military meanwhile said its 7th Brigade had “concluded their mission in Khiam in southern Lebanon.”
“In accordance with the ceasefire understandings and with the coordination of the United States, soldiers of the Lebanese Armed Forces are being deployed in the area together” with UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping mission in the area, the Israeli statement said.
Israel stepped up its military campaign in south Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas, following the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
A ceasefire came into effect on November 27 and is generally holding, though both sides have accused the other of repeated violations.
As part of the agreement, the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers will deploy in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws over a period of 60 days.
Hezbollah is also meant to withdraw its forces north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza hit Palestinians tasked with securing aid trucks
CAIRO: At least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in two Israeli airstrikes that targeted groups of Palestinians tasked with securing trucks bringing aid into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics said.
Medics said at least 30 people were wounded and with several in critical condition, they feared the death toll may rise in the first strike in the western area of Rafah City, in the south of the enclave.
In the nearby city of Khan Younis, another group of men tasked with security for aid shipments was hit by a separate Israeli airstrike that wounded several of them, medics said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks shortly after they roll into the enclave, prompting the Islamist Hamas group to form a task force to confront them. The Hamas-led forces have killed over two dozen members of the gangs in recent months, according to Hamas sources and medics.
In Gaza City, medics said at least six people were killed in an airstrike that hit a house, taking the death toll on Thursday to at least 14.
Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police tasked with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023.
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt, and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.
On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to demand an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the immediate release of all hostages.
General Assembly resolutions are not binding but carry political weight, reflecting a global view on the war. The United States, Israel and seven other countries voted against the ceasefire resolution, while 13 countries abstained.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities in October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Hamas-run Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s military has leveled swaths of Gaza, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 44,800 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
UN General Assembly calls for ‘unconditional’ ceasefire in Gaza
UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture rejected by the United States and Israel.
The resolution — adopted by a vote of 158-9, with 13 abstentions — urges “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire,” and “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” — wording similar to a text vetoed by Washington in the Security Council last month.
At that time, Washington used its veto power on the Council — as it has before — to protect its ally Israel, which has been at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
It has insisted on the idea of making a ceasefire conditional on the release of all hostages in Gaza, saying otherwise that Hamas has no incentive to free those in captivity.
Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood repeated that position Wednesday, saying it would be “shameful and wrong” to adopt the text.
Ahead of the vote, Israel’s UN envoy Danny Danon said: “The resolutions before the assembly today are beyond logic. (...) The vote today is not a vote for compassion. It is a vote for complicity.”
The General Assembly often finds itself taking up measures that cannot get through the Security Council, which has been largely paralyzed on hot-button issues such as Gaza and Ukraine due to internal politics, and this time is no different.
The resolution, which is non-binding, demands “immediate access” to widespread humanitarian aid for the citizens of Gaza, especially in the besieged north of the territory.
Dozens of representatives of UN member states addressed the Assembly before the vote to offer their support to the Palestinians.
“Gaza doesn’t exist anymore. It is destroyed,” said Slovenia’s UN envoy Samuel Zbogar. “History is the harshest critic of inaction.”
That criticism was echoed by Algeria’s deputy UN ambassador Nacim Gaouaoui, who said: “The price of silence and failure in the face of the Palestinian tragedy is a very heavy price, and it will be heavier tomorrow.”
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. That count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza.
Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the United Nations.
“Gaza today is the bleeding heart of Palestine,” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said last week during the first day of debate in the Assembly’s special session on the issue.
“The images of our children burning in tents, with no food in their bellies and no hopes and no horizon for the future, and after having endured pain and loss for more than a year, should haunt the conscience of the world and prompt action to end this nightmare,” he said, calling for an end to the “impunity.”
The Gaza resolution calls on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to present “proposals on how the United Nations could help to advance accountability” by using existing mechanisms or creating new ones based on past experience.
The Assembly, for example, created an international mechanism to gather evidence of crimes committed in Syria starting from the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
A second resolution calling on Israel to respect the mandate of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and allow it to continue its operations was passed Wednesday by a vote of 159-9 with 11 abstentions.
Israel has voted to ban the organization starting January 28, after accusing some UNRWA employees of taking part in Hamas’s devastating attack.
Former prisoner revisits Syrian air base ordeal
- On Wednesday, 40-year-old father-of-three Riad Hallak was combing through the shattered ruins of a lecture theater that he said once held 225 detainees
- During the early days of Syria’s 13-year civil war, Hallak was arrested in 2012 while attending a funeral for protesters shot dead by government security forces
DAMASCUS: The surrender of the Mazzeh air base outside Syrian capital Damascus by Bashar Assad’s forces triggered a round of Israeli air strikes designed to prevent his former arsenal falling into the hands of Islamist rebels.
But it also allowed a Syrian former detainee to revisit the ordeal he suffered at the hand of Assad’s ousted forces.
The president’s long and brutal rule came to a sudden end last week, and on Wednesday young rebels were roaming Mazzeh, periodically firing an old Soviet-designed anti-aircraft gun into the sky.
Fighter jets and helicopters lay wrecked alongside the runway, some of them destroyed in an Israel strike, but the offices and workshops had been broken into by Assad’s local foes.
A pile of drugs, apparently the much-abused psychostimulant captagon, had been hauled out of an air force building and set alight in an impromptu bonfire, which was still smoldering as AFP visited the site.
Mazzeh was not only an air base for jets and attack helicopters, but also served as an ad hoc detention center run by Assad’s air force intelligence wing.
On Wednesday, 40-year-old father-of-three Riad Hallak was combing through the shattered ruins of a lecture theater that he said once held 225 detainees.
During the early days of Syria’s 13-year civil war, Hallak was arrested in 2012 while attending a funeral for protesters shot dead by government security forces.
The tailor was bound, beaten and held for a month in a room designed to instruct air force pilots, before being transferred to another facility and detained for another two months and 13 days.
When the bearded rebel fighters at the gate heard his story, they allowed him back to the scene of his torment, to seek out evidence he hopes might help other families find missing loved ones.
The once ubiquitous portrait of Assad now lies in the dust, alongside the logo of the air force intelligence wing and a roll of barbed wire, incongruous among the damaged college-style desks.
Hallak tells of how for a month he only left the room twice a day to use the toilet in batches of three prisoners, who otherwise slept in heaps, packed together on the cold concrete steps.
Once, when there was an explosion outside, he and his fellow inmates celebrated in the hope that rebels were storming the base — only to be mocked and threatened by a general and laughing soldiers.
“If anyone complained about the conditions, the general would tell us we were receiving five-star tourist treatment, and threaten to transfer us,” Hallak told AFP at the base.
Since his detention, Hallak and his wife have had three young children and now the family can hope to live more freely in a Syria that has shed the half-century rule of the Assad clan.
But looking in vain for records he hopes will shed light on his ordeal and the fate of missing friends, he struggled, like many in Syria, to express how this feels.
“It’s difficult to say,” he said, looking prematurely old with his close-trimmed grey beard.
“There’s no words. I can’t speak.”
International monitors have raised concerns that allowing former miliary bases to fall under the sway of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) rebel group will lead to chemical weapons falling into the hands of extremists.
Israel has used this fear as a justification for stepped up air strikes, including one on Mazzeh.
But the most dangerous substance that AFP journalists saw was the haul of captagon.
Assad’s government was notorious for producing the amphetamine-based drug in commercial qualities, flooding the lucrative Gulf market to bolster its wartime coffers.
The US government slapped sanctions on Syrian officials allegedly involved in the illicit trade, and Syria’s neighbors have seized millions of pills in a losing battle to prevent its spread.
But on Wednesday the fighters paid little attention to the haul, which their comrades had apparently set alight, as they passed by on motorbikes or manned the gates of the complex.
