LATAKIA: In Syria’s northwestern port town of Latakia, Christian worshippers attending Mass on Sunday at St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral were hopeful that the country’s new largely Sunni Muslim leadership would respect their religion.
Like other Christians around the country, they were attending the first Mass since militants overthrew President Bashar Assad a week ago
Last Sunday, Church authorities warned people to stay away from worship amid the upheaval as militants — led by former al Qeada offshoot Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham — swept into Damascus and ended 50 years of brutal rule by the Assad family.
Athanasios Fahed, the Metropolitan of Latakia and its dependencies for the Greek Orthodox Church, led Sunday’s service in Latakia and the cathedral filled with people in brisk morning weather.
“Last Sunday, we were surprised just like all Syrian people, of the change that happened. Of course, we had many fears, especially for those who are called minorities,” Fahed told Reuters, although he added he did not consider Christians minorities since they were “part of this country.”
“But of course, a lot of questions rose because obviously there was chaos in the street due to the fall of the state and its security, military, official and civil institutions,” Fahed said.
Fahed said that while many Christians were displaced to other regions under Assad’s rule, the coastal regions such as areas around Latakia were unaffected. Latakia was a stronghold of Assad’s rule.
Syria’s population includes historic ethnic and religious minority communities including Christians, Armenians, Kurds and Shiite Muslims, who like many other Syrian Muslims had feared during the 13-year civil war that any future Islamist rule would imperil their way of life.
Lina Akhras, a parish council secretary at the church, said Christians had been “comfortable” under Assad in terms of their freedom of belief.
“It happened all of a sudden, we didn’t know what to expect. So in order to protect everybody, we stopped (worship) until we saw how it will develop,” she told Reuters.
“Thank God, we received a lot of assurances and we saw that members of the (HTS) committee reached out to our priest... God willing we will return to our previous lives and live in our beautiful Syria,” she told Reuters.
“Your religion is yours, but our country is for all of us.”
Hoping for religious harmony, Christians in a Syrian town attend Mass
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Hoping for religious harmony, Christians in a Syrian town attend Mass
- Syria’s population includes historic ethnic and religious minority communities including Christians, Armenians, Kurds and Shiite Muslims
Israeli troops kill 22 in Gaza, attack school sheltering displaced Palestinians
- Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in three towns
- Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing to depopulate the areas at the northern edge to create a buffer zone
CAIRO: Israeli troops killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on Sunday in airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said.
They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.
Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.
The Israeli military said the three Gaza City houses belonged to militants planning imminent attacks. It said steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians beforehand, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance.
The military issued a photo showing the weapons it said were seized in Beit Lahiya that included explosives and dozens of grenades.
In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head toward Gaza City, the medics and residents said.
Medics said several people were killed and wounded during the raid on the school while the army detained many men. The number killed was not immediately clear.
The military said it struck down dozens of militants from the air and on the ground and captured others in Beit Hanoun.
Separately, Israel said its air force struck a command and control center in a compound in the Abu Shabak clinic in northern Gaza used by Hamas to store weapons and plan attacks. The Gaza health ministry said the medical center, which also included a mental health clinic, was destroyed.
Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing to depopulate the areas at the northern edge to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it and says the campaign targets Hamas militants and aims to prevent them from regrouping. The military says it has instructed civilians to evacuate battle zones for their own safety.
The war began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel then launched an air, sea and land offensive that has killed almost 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.
A bid by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce has gained momentum in recent weeks, yet there has been no news of a breakthrough.
Paramilitary attack in North Darfur kills 3: activists
PORT SUDAN: Three civilians have been killed and 20 wounded in a drone attack by paramilitaries in the western Sudanese town of El-Fasher in North Darfur, activists said on Sunday.
The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan, said in a statement the attack took place on Saturday night.
It said the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been battling the regular army since mid-April 2023, targeted “Awlad Al-Reef neighborhood in the center of the city with four high-explosive missiles, killing three civilians and injuring more than 20 others with serious wounds.”
El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been under paramilitary siege since May.
The city has seen fierce clashes as both sides fight to secure a last foothold in the Darfur region.
Nearly all of Darfur is now controlled by the RSF, which has also taken over swathes of the southern Kordofan region and central Sudan, while the army holds the north and east.
Both are battling for full control of the war-torn capital Khartoum, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) east of El-Fasher.
The army-aligned health ministry said another drone attack on Friday killed nine people and wounded 20 at the main hospital in El-Fasher, forcing it to halt operations.
The RSF targeted the facility known as the Saudi Hospital with “four drone-guided missiles,” a health ministry statement said.
It said the attack “struck areas where patients’ companions were gathered as well as key locations of the hospital.”
In a post on X Saturday, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described continued attacks on health care facilities across Sudan as “deplorable.”
“We urge for the protection of all patients and health professionals, and for all attacks on and around health facilities to stop,” he added.
The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, creating what the United Nations calls one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians and medical facilities, as well as deliberately bombing residential areas.
Sudan’s army launched one of its deadliest air strikes last week on a market in North Darfur, killing more than 100 people, according to a pro-democracy lawyers’ group.
Thousands protest in Israel for Gaza hostage deal
- Hamas abducted 251 hostages during its October 2023 attack on Israel, 96 of whom remain in Gaza
- Qatar, a key mediator in the negotiations, said last week there was new “momentum” for hostage talks
JERUSALEM: Thousands of Israelis demonstrated Saturday for a deal to release the remaining hostages still held in Gaza after more than 14 months of war against Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
“We all can agree that we have failed until now and that we can reach an agreement now,” Lior Ashkenazi, a prominent Israeli actor, told a crowd gathered in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Itzik Horn, whose sons Eitan and Iair are still being held captive in Gaza, said: “End the war, the time has arrived for action and the time has arrived to bring everyone home.”
There has been guarded optimism in recent days that a ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza might finally be within reach after months of abortive mediation efforts.
Palestinian militants abducted 251 hostages during Hamas’s October 2023 attack, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Qatar, a key mediator in the negotiations, said last week there was new “momentum” for talks.
US Security of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Jordan on Saturday: “This is the moment to finally conclude that agreement.”
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met on Saturday with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Middle East envoy Brett McGurk.
“The meeting addressed efforts to reach an agreement for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange in Gaza,” El-Sisi’s office said.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack last year that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,930 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
UN special envoy for Syria calls for sanctions relief following Assad’s fall
- The Syrian government has been under strict sanctions by the US, EU and others for years
- ‘We can hopefully see a quick end to the sanctions so that we can see really a rallying around building of Syria’
DAMASCUS: The United Nations special envoy for Syria on Sunday called for a quick end to Western sanctions after the ouster of President Bashar Assad.
The Syrian government has been under strict sanctions by the United States, European Union and others for years as a result of Assad’s brutal response to what began as peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 and later spiraled into a civil war.
The conflict has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. Rebuilding has been stymied to a large degree by sanctions that aimed to prevent rebuilding of damaged infrastructure and property in government-held areas in the absence of a political solution.
“We can hopefully see a quick end to the sanctions so that we can see really a rallying around building of Syria,” UN envoy Geir Pedersen told reporters during a visit to Damascus.
Pedersen came to the Syrian capital to meet with officials with the new interim government set up by the former opposition forces who toppled Assad, led by the Islamic militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS.
HTS is designated a terrorist group by the US, which could also complicate reconstruction efforts, but officials in Washington have indicated that the Biden administration is considering removing the designation.
The interim government is set to govern until March, but it has not yet made clear the process under which a new permanent administration would replace it.
“We need to get the political process underway that is inclusive of all Syrians,” Pedersen said. “That process obviously needs to be led by the Syrians themselves.”
He called for “justice and accountability for crimes” committed during the war and for the international community to step up humanitarian aid.
Syrian authorities reopen schools, a week after upheaval that overthrew Assad
- Officials said most schools were opening around the country on Sunday, which is the first day of the working week in most Arab countries
- However some parents were not sending their children to class due to uncertainty over the situation
DAMASCUS: Students returned to classrooms in Syria on Sunday after the country’s new rulers ordered schools reopened in a potent sign of some normalcy a week after militants swept into the capital in the dramatic overthrow of President Bashar Assad.
The country’s new de facto leader, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, faces a massive challenge to rebuild Syria after 13 years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Cities were bombed to ruins, the economy was gutted by international sanctions and millions of refugees still live in camps outside Syria.
Officials said most schools were opening around the country on Sunday, which is the first day of the working week in most Arab countries. However some parents were not sending their children to class due to uncertainty over the situation.
Pupils waited cheerfully in the courtyard of a boys’ high school in Damascus on Sunday morning and applauded as the school secretary, Raed Nasser, hung the flag adopted by the new authorities.
“Everything is good. We are fully equipped. We worked two, three days in order to equip the school with the needed services for the students’ safe return to school,” Nasser said, adding the Jawdat Al-Hashemi school had not been damaged.
In one classroom, a student pasted the new flag on a wall.
“I am optimistic and very happy,” said student Salah Al-Din Diab. “I used to walk in the street scared that I would get drafted to military service. I used to be afraid when I reach a checkpoint.”
As Syria starts trying to rebuild, its neighbors and other foreign powers are still working out a new stance on the country, a week after the collapse of the Assad government that was backed by Iran and Russia.
Sharaa — better known by his militant nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — leads the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that swept Assad from power last week. HTS is a group formerly allied with Al-Qaeda that is designated a terrorist organization by many governments, and is also under United Nations sanctions.
UN Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said on Sunday he hoped for a swift end to the sanctions to help facilitate economic recovery.
“We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria,” Pedersen said as he arrived in Damascus to meet Syria’s caretaker government and other officials.
Top diplomats from the United States, Turkiye, the European Union and Arab nations met in Jordan on Saturday and agreed that a new government in Syria should respect minority rights, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
