UN food agency says aid convoy turned away by Israel, looted
UN food agency says aid convoy turned away by Israel, looted/node/2471776/middle-east
UN food agency says aid convoy turned away by Israel, looted
In this image grab from an AFPTV video, people carry food parcels that were air-dropped from US aircrafts above a beach in the Gaza Strip, on Mar. 2, 2024. (AFP)
UN food agency says aid convoy turned away by Israel, looted
WFP said the 14-truck food convoy waited at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint for three hours before being turned away by the Israeli army
After the trucks were rerouted they were stopped by “a large crowd of desperate people who looted the food,” taking about 200 tons
Updated 05 March 2024
AFP
ROME: The UN’s food agency said Tuesday that its aid convoy had been turned away by Israeli forces at the Gaza border, after which it was looted by “desperate people.”
The World Food Programme said the 14-truck food convoy waited at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint for three hours before being turned away by the Israeli army.
It was the first convoy attempted since the agency halted deliveries to the north of Gaza on February 20, after its convoy of trucks faced gunfire and looting.
At the time, the agency described the situation in northern Gaza as “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order.”
In Tuesday’s incident, after the trucks were rerouted they were stopped by “a large crowd of desperate people who looted the food,” taking about 200 tons, the WFP said in a statement.
The agency said that it was exploring all ways to bring food to northern Gaza, but that roads were the only way to transport large quantities of food needed to avert famine.
An airdrop earlier Tuesday, in conjunction with Jordan’s air force, dropped six tons of food, enough for 20,000 people, it said.
“Airdrops are a last resort and will not avert famine. We need entry points to northern Gaza that will allow us to deliver enough food for half a million people in desperate need,” the agency’s deputy executive director Carl Skau said.
Skau told the UN Security Council last week that a famine was imminent in northern Gaza if conditions remain unchanged.
The UN estimates that 2.2 million people — most of Gaza’s population — are on the brink of famine, particularly in the north where Israeli forces block aid from entering.
On Tuesday, the WFP said hunger had reached “catastrophic levels” in the north.
“Children are dying of hunger-related diseases and suffering severe levels of malnutrition,” it said, calling for more entry points into Gaza, including the north.
It said a ceasefire was urgently needed.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Gaza has been plunged into a food crisis, with outside aid severely restricted.
US-backed commander says his Kurdish-led group wants a secular and civil state in post-Assad Syria
The Assad family’s 54-year rule in Syria came to an end in early December when insurgents led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, captured Damascus
Updated 03 February 2025
AP
HASSAKEH, Syria: The commander of the main US-backed force in Syria said Sunday the recent ouster of the Assad family from power should be followed by building a secular, civil and decentralized state that treats all its citizens equally no matter their religion or ethnicity.
The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, said in an interview Sunday that he recently met with Syria’s newly named interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in Damascus. He said the two sides are negotiating with the help of mediators to find compromises regarding Syria’s future — including the future of the Kurds.
Abdi added that US troops should stay in Syria because the Daesh group will benefit from a withdrawal, which would affect the security of the whole region.
A new leader chosen after the fall of Assad
The Assad family’s 54-year rule in Syria came to an end in early December when insurgents led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, captured Damascus. The fall of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8. came after a nearly 14-year conflict that has killed half a million people and displaced half the country’s population.
Syrian factions that toppled Assad met in Damascus last week and named HTS leader Al-Sharaa as the country’s interim president. The groups suspended the country’s constitution adopted by Assad in 2012 and officially dissolved the army and Syria’s dreaded security agencies.
“The fall of the regime was a historic step and based on that a new Syria should be built without restoring the Baath party or its ideology,” Abdi said referring to Assad’s once ruling Baath party that was also dissolved last week. “We want to move Syria forward together.”
‘The matter was not discussed with us’
Asked about the meeting in Damascus last week in which Al-Sharaa was named interim president while the parliament, constitution and the army were dissolved, Abdi said: “We were not present there and we will not comment.”
“The matter was not discussed with us,” Abdi said adding that there are negotiations between Al-Sharaa and the SDF and “our stance will be based on the results of the negotiations.”
Abdi said that visits by SDF officials to Damascus will continue to try to reach an understanding with the new authorities. “We will continuously try to see how Syria of the future will look like,” Abdi said, adding that the vision of the SDF is based on dialogue and understanding.
Abdi revealed that members of the US-led coalition to fight the Daesh group, including the US, Britain and France, are mediating between the SDF and authorities in Damascus. He did not go into details.
Abdi said his group wants Syria to remain a united country with a central government in Damascus.
“Our vision of Syria is a decentralized, secular and civil country based on democracy that preserves the rights of all of its components,” he said referring to the country’s different religious groups, such as Sunni Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze and Yazidis and ethnic groups such as Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Armenians.
“Syria is mixed and is not made up of Sunnis only. There are other identities,” Abdi said referring to the country’s Sunni Muslims who are the majority in the country. There have been concerns that HTS, which is rooted in the Salafi-jihadi ideology, might be working on turning Syria into an Islamic state, although in recent years Al-Sharaa has distanced himself from the group’s earlier stances and preached religious coexistence.
Kurds want a decentralized state but not autonomy
Abdi said the Kurds of Syria do not want to break away from the country or set up their own autonomous government and parliament as is the case in northern Iraq. He said the people of northeast Syria want to run their local affairs in a decentralized state.
“Syria is not Iraq and Iraq is not Syria and northeast Syria is not (Iraq’s) Kurdistan,” Abdi, whose forces control 25 percent of Syria, said.
Most of the country’s former insurgent factions have agreed to dissolve and to become part of the new army and security services, although it remained unclear exactly how that will work in practice. The SDF has not so far agreed to dissolve.
Asked whether he is ready to dissolve the SDF, Abdi said that in principle they want to be part of the defense ministry and part of Syria’s defense strategy. He said the details still need to be discussed and they have sent a proposal regarding this issue to Damascus and “we are waiting for the response.”
He said the SDF fighters have been fighting IS for 12 years and the rights of his fighters should be guaranteed.
US troops should stay in Syria
Speaking about IS, which his group played a major role in defeating, Abdi said that the extremists took advantage after the fall of Assad and captured large amounts of weapons from posts abandoned by Assad’s forces.
Abdi said US troops should stay in Syria because they are needed in the fight against IS.
In 2019, President Donald Trump decided on a partial withdrawal of US troops form the northeast before he halted the plans. “The reason for them (US troops) to stay is still present because Daesh is still strong,” Abdi said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS.
“We hope that the coalition does not withdraw,” Abdi said, adding that they are not aware of any US plans to withdraw from Syria. “We ask them to stay.”
Algeria’s president sacks finance minister, state TV says
Updated 03 February 2025
Reuters
ALGIERS: Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune sacked his Finance Minister Laaziz Faid on Sunday, without giving details on the reasons behind the decision, state TV reported.
Tebboune appointed Abdelkrim Bou El Zerd to replace him.
New Syria leader faces territorial, governance hurdles
In his first address as president Thursday, he vowed to “form a broad transitional government, representative of Syria’s diversity” that will “build the institutions of a new Syria” and work toward “free and transparent elections”
Updated 03 February 2025
AFP
DAMASCUS: The ousting of Bashar Assad ended decades of iron-fisted rule, but despite power now resting in Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s hands, Syria faces a fragile transition amid territorial and governance challenges.
Military commanders appointed Sharaa interim president weeks after Islamist-led rebel forces overran Damascus.
His nomination has been welcomed by key regional players Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia.
Syrians are “now fully dependant” on the intentions of the new authorities over the future of their country, said Damascus-based lawyer Ezzedine Al-Rayeq.
“Will they really take the country toward democracy, human rights?” he asked.
Sharaa led the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group, which spearheaded the rebel offensive that toppled Assad on December 8.
The group and other factions have been dissolved, with fighters set to be integrated into a future national force.
Sharaa has now traded his fatigues for a suit and a tie.
In his first address as president Thursday, he vowed to “form a broad transitional government, representative of Syria’s diversity” that will “build the institutions of a new Syria” and work toward “free and transparent elections.”
Sharaa had already been acting as the country’s leader before Wednesday’s appointment, which followed a closed-door meeting with faction leaders who backed the overthrow of Assad.
Rayeq said he wished the presidential nomination had been made “in a more democratic, participatory way.”
Authorities have pledged to hold a national dialogue conference involving all Syrians, but have yet to set a date.
“We thought that the national conference would see the creation of (new) authorities and allow the election of a president — perhaps Sharaa, or someone else,” Rayeq said.
“But if we are realistic and pragmatic, (appointing Sharaa) was perhaps the only way forward,” said Rayeq, who since Assad’s fall has helped found an initiative on human rights and political participation.
Authorities have suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament, while the army and security services collapsed after decades of Baath party rule.
Ziad Majed, a Syria expert and author on the Assad family’s rule, said Sharaa’s appointment “could have been negotiated differently.”
“It’s as if the heads” of the different armed groups chose Sharaa, Majed said, while noting the leader was effectively “already acting as a transitional president.”
Sharaa said his appointment followed “intense consultations” with legal advisers, promising a “constitutional declaration” and a “limited legislative council.”
Majed said most armed groups “recognize Sharaa’s leadership,” but noted unresolved tensions with fighters in the south and northeast.
Armed groups in the southern province of Sweida, including from the Druze minority, have been cautious about the new authorities, though two groups said last month they were ready to join a national army.
In the north and northeast, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces from a semi-autonomous Kurdish administration have been battling pro-Turkiye fighters.
Syria’s new rulers, also backed by Ankara, have urged the SDF to hand over its weapons, rejecting any Kurdish self-rule.
Majed said he expected “Sharaa and those close to him” to seek to “consolidate territorial control and control over armed groups,” but that other priorities would include reviving the war-battered economy.
He also cited sectarian challenges and the need for efforts to avoid “acts of revenge,” particularly against members of the Alawite community, from which the Assads hail.
Lawyer Rayeq said he supported grouping Syria’s ideologically diverse armed groups “under a single authority, whatever it is.”
If such a move were successful, “we will have put the civil war behind us,” he said.
Assad’s toppling has finally allowed Syrians to speak without fear, after years of repression, but concerns remain.
Dozens of Syrian writers, artists and academics have signed a petition urging “the restoration of fundamental public freedoms, foremost among them the freedoms of assembly, protest, expression and belief.”
The petition also called for the right to form independent political parties and said the state must not “interfere in people’s customs,” amid fears Islamic law could be imposed.
Spare car parts seller Majd, 35, said the authorities’ recent announcements were “positive,” but expressed concern about the economy.
“Prices have gone down, but people don’t have money,” he told AFP from a Damascus park with his family, noting hundreds of thousands of civil servants had been suspended from work since Assad’s overthrow.
Near the capital’s famous Ummayad square, vendors were selling Syrian flags, some bearing Sharaa’s image.
“It’s too early to judge the new leadership,” Majd said, giving only his first name.
He said he preferred to wait to see the “results on the ground.”
Explosive remnants of Syrian civil war pose a daunting challenge
Unexploded ordnance and landmines threaten civilians, with children most at risk of death or injury
As displaced Syrians return, accidents are expected to rise due to inadequate clearance, experts warn
Updated 03 February 2025
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: The sudden fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in early December prompted around 200,000 Syrians to return to their war-ravaged homeland, despite the widespread devastation. But the land they have come to reclaim harbors a deadly threat.
Almost 14 years of civil war contaminated swathes of the Syrian Arab Republic with roughly 324,600 unexploded rockets and bombs and thousands of landmines, according to a 2023 estimate by the US-based Carter Center.
In the last four years alone, the Syrian Arab Republic has recorded more casualties resulting from unexploded ordnance than any other country, yet no nationwide survey of minefields or former battlefields has been conducted, according to The HALO Trust.
Those explosives have maimed or killed at least 350 civilians across the Syrian Arab Republic since the Assad regime fell on Dec. 8, Paul McCann, a spokesperson for the Scotland-based landmine awareness and clearance charity, told Arab News.
The actual toll, however, is likely much higher. “We think that’s an undercount because large areas of the country have no access or monitoring, particularly in the east,” he added.
Children bear the brunt of these hidden killers.
Ted Chaiban, deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations at the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, warned that explosive debris is the leading cause of child casualties in Syria, killing or injuring at least 116 in December alone.
According to McCann, the bulk of the documented incidents involving landmines and unexploded ordnance took place in Idlib province, north of Aleppo, and Deir Ezzor, where intense battles between regime forces and opposition groups had occurred.
“There is a long frontline — maybe several hundred kilometers — running through parts of Latakia, Idlib, and up to north of Aleppo, where the government was on one side, and they built large earthen barriers,” he said.
“They used bulldozers to push up big walls and dig trenches, and in front of their military positions they put a lot of minefields.”
McCann said the exact number of landmines, across the Syrian Arab Republic and in the northwest specifically, remains unknown. “We don’t know exactly how many, because there hasn’t been a national survey,” he said.
After the regime’s forces withdrew from these areas, locals discovered maps detailing the location of dozens of minefields. Although it will take time and resources to clear these explosives, such maps make containment far easier.
“There was a battalion command post, and when the troops left, local residents went in and found some maps of local minefields,” McCann said. “So, for that one area, we’ve discovered there were 40 minefields, but this could be repeated up and down this line for all the different military positions.”
Landmines planted systemically by warring parties are not the only threat. HALO reported “huge amounts of explosive contamination anywhere that there might have been a battle or been any kind of fighting.”
One such area is Saraqib, east of Idlib. The northwestern city endured a major battle in 2013, fell to rebel forces, was recaptured by the Syrian Army in 2020, and was then seized during the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham-led offensive on Nov. 30.
“The city was fought over by the government and multiple different opposition groups, who sometimes fought each other,” McCann said. “And in a big spread south of there, there are dozens of villages that we’ve been through which are contaminated with explosives.”
The Carter Center warned in a report published in February 2024 that the “scale of the problem is so large that there is no way any single actor can address it.”
Since Assad’s ouster, HALO has seen a 10-fold surge in calls to its emergency hotline in areas near the Turkish border where it operates.
“Every time our teams dispose of a piece of ordnance… people hear the explosion and they come running to say, ‘I found something in my house’ or ‘I found something on my land, can you come and have a look? Can you come and take care of that?” McCann said.
“We are hoping to be able to increase the size of the program as quickly as possible to deal with the demand.”
As the only mine clearance operator in northwest Syria, HALO is struggling to keep up with surging demand. With funding for only 40 deminers, the organization is desperately understaffed, HALO’s Syrian Arab Republic program manager Damian O’Brien said in a statement.
HALO urgently needs emergency funding “to help bring the Syrian people home to safety,” he said. “Clearing the debris of war is fundamental to getting the country back on its feet,” he added.
The urgency of clearing unexploded ordnance in Syria has grown as displaced communities, often unaware of those hidden dangers, rush to return home and rebuild their lives.
“One of the problems we’re finding is the people are coming back now,” McCann said. “They want to plant the land for spring. They want to start getting the land ready because they’re going to need the income to rebuild.
“Millions of homes have been either destroyed by fighting, or they’ve been destroyed by the regime that stripped out the windows and the doors and the roofs and the copper pipes and the wiring to sell for scrap.”
The war in the Syrian Arab Republic created one of the largest displacement crises in the world, with more than 13 million forcibly displaced, according to UN figures. With Assad’s fall, hundreds of thousands returned from internal displacement and neighboring countries.
And as host countries, including Turkiye, Lebanon and Jordan, push to repatriate Syrian refugees, UNICEF’s Chaiban warned in January that “safe return cannot be achieved without intensified humanitarian demining efforts.”
HALO’s O’Brien warned in December that “returning Syrians simply don’t know where the landmines are lying in wait. They are scattered across fields, villages and towns, so people are horribly vulnerable.”
He added: “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Tens of thousands of people are passing through heavily mined areas on a daily basis, causing unnecessary fatal accidents.”
Unless addressed, these hidden killers will impact multiple generations of Syrians, causing the loss of countless lives and limbs long after the conflict has ended, the Carter Center warned.
Economic development will also be disrupted, particularly in urban reconstruction and agriculture. Environmental degradation is another concern. As munitions break down, they leach chemicals into the soil and groundwater.
But safely demining an area is costly and securing adequate funding has been a challenge. Mouiad Alnofaly, HALO’s senior operations officer in the Syrian Arab Republic, said disposal operations could cost $40 million per year.
Remnants from a ShOAB-0.5 submunition that struck Jisr al-Shughour in Saraqib, Idlib, Syria, on July 22, 2016, killing 12 and injuring dozens. (HRW photo)
Faced with these limitations, locals eager to cultivate their farmland are turning to unofficial solutions, hiring amateurs who are not trained to international standards, resulting in more casualties, McCann warned.
“People are returning and trying to plant, and so we’re hearing reports that they’re hiring ex-military personnel with metal detectors to do some sort of clearance of their land, but it’s not systematic or professional,” he said.
“I met a man a few days ago who said his neighbor had hired an ex-soldier with a metal detector to find the mines on his land. The man (ex-soldier) was killed straight away, and the neighbor was injured.”
McCann emphasized that a field cannot be considered safe until every piece of explosive debris and every landmine has been removed.
Unexploded munitions dug up by farmers at a field in Syria. (The HALO Trust photo)
“If there are 50 mines in a field, and somebody finds 49 of them, the field still cannot be used,” he said. “You can only hand back land when you are 100 percent confident that every single mine is gone.
“So, even in places where some people are removing mines, we don’t know if all of them have been cleared, and we’ll have to do clearance again in the future.”
Although the northwest of the Syrian Arab Republic is riddled with unexploded ordnance, locals remain resolute in their determination to stay and rebuild their lives — a decision that is likely to lead to an increase in accidents.
“We think the number of accidents will increase because a lot of people don’t want to leave their displaced communities in Idlib in the winter,” McCann said. “They’re waiting for the weather to improve.”
Unexploded 220mm Uragan rocket found in the village of Lof near Saraqib, Idlib governorate. (The HALO Trust photo)
In the village of Lof near Saraqib, one resident HALO encountered returned to work on his land just hours after the charity’s team had neutralized an unexploded 220mm Uragan rocket. Had it detonated, it would have devastated the village.
“We took the rocket, dug a big hole, and evacuated the whole village,” McCann said. “We used an armored front loader to take it to this demolition site in the countryside.
“By the time we came back to the village, the landowner had started to rebuild his house where the rocket had been. He couldn’t touch it (before), and the rocket had been there probably since 2021.
“But within three or four hours of us removing the rocket, he had started to rebuild.”
Remnants from a ShOAB-0.5 submunition that struck Jisr al-Shughour, killing 12 and injuring dozens. (HRW photo)
Among the most common unexploded ordnance found in the northwest Syrian Arab Republic are TM-62 Russian anti-tank mines and ShOAB-0.5 cluster bombs.
Despite HALO’s 35 years of work in safely clearing explosive remnants of war, the scale of the problem, compounded by a lack of adequate resources, remains a significant challenge.
“To cover the whole country, there will have to be thousands of Syrians trained and employed by HALO over many years,” said program manager O’Brien.
And until international and local efforts are effectively coordinated to neutralize this deadly threat, the lives of countless civilians, particularly children, will continue to be at risk.
Drone attack targets Iraq’s northern Khor Mor gas field, security sources say
There was no damage to the field or Dana Gas company and production is normal, the Kurdish Regional Government’s Ministry of Natural Resources reported
Updated 03 February 2025
Reuters
BAGHDAD: A drone attack targeted the Khor Mor gas field in Iraq’s Kurdistan region on Sunday, two security sources told Reuters.
There was no damage to the field or Dana Gas company and production is normal, the Kurdish Regional Government’s Ministry of Natural Resources reported.
The Pearl Consortium, United Arab Emirates energy firm Dana Gas (DANA.AD), and its affiliate, Crescent Petroleum, have the rights to exploit Khor Mor.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
