CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a post office sheltering Gaza residents killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 50, medics said, and the Israeli military said on Friday it had been targeting a senior Islamic Jihad member.
Families displaced by the 14-month-old conflict had sought refuge in the postal facility in the Nuseirat camp, and the strike late on Thursday brought the day’s death toll in the enclave to 66, the medics said.
Israel said its target was an Islamic Jihad leader of attacks on Israeli civilians and troops and accused the militant group of exploiting civilian infrastructure and population as a human shield for its activities.
An Israeli military statement said it was reviewing reports on the number of casualties.
Nuseirat is one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic camps originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war around the establishment of Israel. Today, it is part of a dense urban area crowded with displaced people from throughout the enclave.
Earlier on Thursday, two Israeli strikes in southern Gaza killed 13 Palestinians who Gaza medics and Hamas said were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid trucks. Israel’s military said they were Hamas militants trying to hijack the shipment.
Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis had links to Hamas, according to sources close to the militant group.
The Israeli military said in a statement the two airstrikes aimed to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent the aid from reaching Gaza civilians who need it.
Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks, and Hamas has formed a task force to confront them. The Hamas-led forces have killed over two dozen members of the gangs in recent months, Hamas sources and medics said.
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.
Separately, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents of several districts in the heart of Gaza City to evacuate, saying it would respond to rockets fired from those areas. At nightfall on Thursday, dozens of families streamed out of the areas heading toward the center of the city.
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.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in Tel Aviv on Thursday he believed a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release may be close as Israel had signalled it was ready and there were signs of movement from Hamas.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, 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 levelled swathes 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.
Israeli strike on Gaza post office kills 30 Palestinians
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Israeli strike on Gaza post office kills 30 Palestinians
- Medics say post office was sheltering displaced Palestinians
Freed Syrian prisoners return to their ‘death dormitory’
- “Every day in this room, which used to be called ‘Steel 1 — the death dormitory,’ one to three people would die inside every day,” Hanania, 35, told Reuters
“I came here today only to see that truly nothing lasts forever,” the 48-year-old said as he and another freed prisoner, Mohammed Hanania, visited the detention center where their guards never showed mercy.
They were among thousands who spilled out of Syria’s prison system on Sunday after a lightning militia advance overthrew President Bashar Assad and ended five decades of his family’s rule. Many detainees were met by tearful relatives who thought they had been executed years earlier.
“Every day in this room, which used to be called ‘Steel 1 — the death dormitory,’ one to three people would die inside every day,” Hanania, 35, told Reuters.
“The sergeant was — when he didn’t lose someone, when someone didn’t die from weakness, he would kill him. He took them to the toilets and hit them with the heel of his shoe on their heads.”
Hanania walked on past long rows of empty cells. Names of prisoners — Mohammed Al-Masry, Ahmed and others — were scratched on walls with dates.
The floors were littered with rubble and discarded clothes. A row of blankets was still set out in one cell where prisoners had slept.
Both men looked up at an image on a wall of Assad, who is accused of torturing and killing thousands, abuses that were also rampant during his father Hafez’s reign of terror.
“No one could have believed this would happen,” said Mawat.
MASS EXECUTIONS
In another room, he stood beside a rusty blue ladder and described how he was blindfolded and forced to climb up the steps. Then his torturer would kick away the ladder and he would be suspended by his arms from the ceiling in agony.
“My shoulders were torn, and I couldn’t say a single word. No one could bear more than five or 10 minutes,” he said.
Rights groups have reported mass executions in Syria’s prisons. In 2017, the United States said it had identified a new crematorium at the Sednaya military prison on the outskirts of Damascus to dispose of hanged prisoners.
Syrians have flocked to the prisons looking for their loved ones. Some have been released alive, others have been identified among the dead and thousands more have not yet been found.
Syrian militia leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa — better known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — the main commander of the militants who toppled Assad, has said he will close the prisons and hunt down anyone involved in the torture or killing of detainees.
Assad fled to his ally Russia where he was granted asylum.
“At this stage, if everyone thinks about taking revenge, we have no solution other than to forgive,” Hanania said.
“But the criminal who has blood (on their hands) should be held accountable. I will leave my rights to be granted by God.”
Syria Kurds warm up to new leaders but fear for hard-won gains
- Kurdish authorities have made overtures to Islamist-led militants who seized power in Syria last week
QAMISHLI: Kurdish authorities have made overtures to Islamist-led militants who seized power in Syria last week, but the long-oppressed community fears it could lose hard-won gains it made during the war, including limited self-rule.
The Kurds faced discrimination during more than 50 years of Assad family rule. They were barred, for example, from offering education in their own language.
As militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) seized power, ousting president Bashar Assad, the Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have multiplied overtures to the new leaders, like adopting the three-starred flag used by the opposition.
Mutlu Civiroglu, a Washington-based analyst and expert on the Kurds, said that the fate of Syria’s Kurdish authorities “remains uncertain,” noting “the rapidly shifting dynamics on the ground.”
Syria’s Kurds face “mounting pressure from the Turkish government and factions under its control,” he said, as Ankara-backed fighters seized two Kurdish-held areas in the north during the militant offensive.
Last week, Mazloum Abdi who heads the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) welcomed “an opportunity to build a new Syria based on democracy and justice that guarantees the rights of all Syrians.”
But many in the northeast are concerned about the future of their autonomous region.
“The factions in Damascus... don’t recognize the Kurds, and now they want to whitewash their image in front of the international community,” Ali Darwish, a Kurdish resident of the northeastern city of Qamishli told AFP.
“But we hope that we, as Kurds, will be able to preserve our areas and improve the economic situation,” the 58-year-old said.
“We hope for positive solutions in the future.”
Minority groups suffered during the civil war that broke out in 2011, particularly after the Islamic State (IS) group overran large parts of the country three years later.
HTS, the Islamist group that led the offensive that toppled Assad, is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and is proscribed as a terrorist organization by many Western governments, though it has sought to moderate its rhetoric.
The SDF spearheaded the fight that defeated IS jihadists in Syria in 2019 with US backing — putting Washington at odds with NATO ally Ankara, which has operated militarily against the Kurds.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the SDF was “critical” to preventing a resurgence of IS jihadists in Syria following Assad’s ouster.
On the same day, Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin visited Damascus and Ankara named a new chief of mission for its long-closed embassy in Damascus, which it has pledged to reopen.
Civiroglu said that “Syrian Kurds face several significant challenges, the most pressing of which is Turkiye’s ongoing hostility toward them.”
Since 2016, Turkiye has staged multiple operations against the SDF.
Ankara views the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a key part of the SDF, as an extension of the banned Kurdish militants who have fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkiye.
“All Turkish attacks and threats against the Kurds are seen as directly or indirectly aimed at undermining Kurdish autonomy and expanding Turkish control in northern Syria,” Civiroglu said.
On the ground, fighters of Syria’s new government have taken over the eastern city of Deir Ezzor from Kurdish-led forces, who had briefly moved in as government troops and their Iran-backed allies withdrew.
Syria’s new leaders have said repeatedly that religious minorities will not be harmed under their rule, but they have not mentioned ethnic minorities like the Kurds.
In Qamishli, residents told AFP they were glad Assad was ousted, but had mounting concerns.
Kurds, who represent the largest ethnic minority in Syria, want a “democratic state that respects everyone’s rights and religion,” said Khorshed Abo Rasho, 68.
“We want a federal state, not a dictatorship,” he added.
Fahd Dawoud, a 40-year-old lawyer, was hopeful that an inclusive government can be formed.
“We hope that the new government will represent all Syrians and won’t exclude any party,” he said.
Reassured ‘for now’, Aleppo’s Christians prepare for Christmas
- The country’s new rulers have sought to reassure Syria’s religious minorities
- In multi-confessional Syria, Catholic and Orthodox Christmas and Easter holidays have always been marked
ALEPPO, Syria: For the Catholic Marist Brothers of Aleppo, one of nearly a dozen Christian communities in Syria’s second city, today’s most pressing question is how to decorate the Christmas tree.
In the days since a lightning offensive spearheaded by Islamist militants overthrew former president Bashar Assad, the country’s new rulers have sought to reassure Syria’s religious minorities.
The efforts have been successful, at least “for now,” said Brother Georges Sabe, who took part earlier this week in a meeting between militants and local Christian representatives.
It was the second since the December 8 capture of the capital Damascus.
“They were very reassuring,” he said.
“’Continue to live normally, you’re coming up to your Christmas holiday, nothing will change for you,’” he said he was told.
“So far, nothing has changed,” he added.
Assad, a member of Syria’s Alawite minority, sought to present his government as a protector of secularism and the country’s many confessions though government intolerance for dissent extended to all groups.
During the civil war, militants routinely repressed minority groups.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Islamist group that led Assad’s overthrow, has its roots in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, though it has sought to moderate its rhetoric.
Sabe noted that the representatives of the new government he met — “three fighters and two politicians” — were all from Aleppo.
“One of them was finishing his doctorate in mechanical engineering before the war. He told us that he’d had a Christian neighbor.”
So, the community has resumed “normal life, with morning and evening masses,” and Christmas decorations are going up, he added.
“During 13 years of war, I learned to live day by day. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
In multi-confessional Syria, Catholic and Orthodox Christmas and Easter holidays have always been marked, along with the new year.
The community has been hard hit by emigration during the civil war. Of the approximately 200,000 Christians who lived in Aleppo before 2011, just 30,000 remain in the city, according to community leaders.
But it remains fully integrated and considers itself Syrian before anything else.
“We don’t want to go, we want to stay on good terms with the Muslims. We speak the same language,” insisted Sabe.
So far, a promise to allow churches to continue ringing their bells has been kept, and they sound at dusk to mark mass at the Church of Saint Francis, also known as the Latin Cathedral.
“People here have a deep spiritual sense,” explained Father Bahjat as several dozen parishioners arrived for the service.
“During all the years of war, they never stopped coming to church.”
He said he could understand why some have expressed concern, especially abroad.
“On the ground, we didn’t see any acts of discrimination, so we are full of hope that our people will coexist in peace,” he said.
Marina Ayoub was arriving for mass as usual. She said she never misses a service, as they give her “hope.”
“The bishop has told us that he is not worried and that we can continue to come as usual, and celebrate our masses and holidays.”
Opposite the church sits a property that had been occupied by the ruling Baath party and has now been reclaimed by the community.
The Vatican flag hangs outside, and the new government has told Christians that church property will not be touched.
The decision by the head of the transitional government to appear before an Islamist flag earlier this week sparked some fears.
“But the next day, during an interview with Al Jazeera, it had disappeared,” Sabe noted.
“That shows that they are ready for dialogue.”
Still, among some in the community there are concerns.
“They say that they will respect all faiths... but I’m waiting to see,” said one worshipper, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject.
“I’ll judge them by their actions.”
He said he was watching for “little signs.” noting that restaurants in Aleppo were no longer openly serving alcohol.
“They hide it,” he said.
For now, the Marist Brothers charitable association is focusing on preparations for a concert it will put on for 120 Muslim children it helps.
“They are poor and displaced by the war,” said Mariam Arab as she debated how best to decorate the Christmas tree.
“The most important thing is to find a way to cheer them up.”
Top militant leader Golani urges Syrians to take to streets and celebrate ‘victory of the revolution’
- Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani is now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa
- His call comes ahead of the first Friday prayers since Syria’s new leadership took control
DAMASCUS: The leader of the Islamist militants that seized power in Syria last week called on people to take to the streets to celebrate “the victory of the revolution” on Friday.
“I would like to congratulate the great Syrian people on the victory of the blessed revolution and I call on them to go to the streets to express their joy,” said Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, who is now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group was wearing a dark waistcoat, a white shirt and a watch in the video message shared on Telegram.
His call comes ahead of the first Friday prayers since Syria’s new leadership took control. During the early days of Syria’s uprising in 2011, protesters would usually gather after Friday prayers.
He is set to attend Friday prayers at Damascus’s landmark Umayyad mosque.
Militant forces led by HTS launched a lightning offensive last month, taking control of Damascus and ousting president Bashar Assad in less than two weeks.
On Tuesday, they appointed an interim prime minister to lead Syria until March.
Blinken sees ‘encouraging signs’ on reaching Gaza ceasefire
- Blinken called on Turkiye to influence Hamas to achieve the exchange deal and ceasefire in Gaza
ANKARA: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he saw “encouraging signs” of progress toward a ceasefire in the war-torn Gaza Strip on a visit to Ankara.
“We discussed Gaza, and we discussed I think the opportunity... to get a ceasefire in place. And what we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks are more encouraging signs that that is possible,” Blinken said after meeting Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
Blinken called on Turkiye to influence Hamas to achieve the exchange deal and ceasefire in Gaza and said US wants to see Syria in a completely different direction than it was.
“In my discussions with President Erdogan and with Minister Fidan we talked about the imperative of Hamas saying yes to the (Gaza) agreement that's possible to finally help bring this to an end,” Blinken said.
“We appreciate very much the role that Turkiye can play in using its voice with Hamas, to try to bring this to conclusion.”
Blinken also discussed efforts toward a Gaza ceasefire when he arrived in Jordan on Thursday on what was his 12th visit to the Middle East since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
