Turkish and British officials to discuss post-Assad Syria in Ankara talks

DAMASCUS: Syrian state media said Israeli strikes hit the Tartus area on Monday, after a war monitor reported a blast near the city’s port and the Israeli army said it struck a “military site” further north.
Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes after a lightning offensive ousted president Bashar Assad in December, in what it said was a bid to prevent Syrian military assets from falling into hostile hands.
Official news agency SANA reported “air strikes carried out by Israeli occupation aircraft on the surroundings of Tartus city, without recording human losses so far.”
“Civil defense and specialized teams are working to confirm the location of the targets,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that “a strong explosion rocked the Tartus port” at the same time as aircraft flew overhead, reporting smoke rising from the site.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP the explosion was in a military base near the port.
The Israeli army said in a statement that its forces “struck a military site where weapons belonging to the previous Syrian regime were stored in the area of Qardaha.”
It added that the decision to strike the site was “due to recent developments in the area,” without elaborating.
Qardaha, the hometown of deposed president Assad, is located in Latakia province, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of the city of Tartus.
Last Tuesday, the Israeli army said it carried out air strikes targeting military sites containing weapons in southern Syria.
At least two people were killed by a strike on one of the sites, the headquarters of a military unit southwest of Damascus, the Observatory said at the time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that southern Syria must be completely demilitarised, warning that his government would not accept the presence of the forces of the new Syrian Islamist-led government near its territory.
Even before Assad’s fall, during Syria’s civil war which broke out in 2011, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes in the neighboring country, mainly on government forces and Iranian-linked targets.
The same day Assad was ousted, Israel announced that its troops were entering a UN-patrolled buffer zone that has separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights.
Israel seized much of the Golan Heights from Syria in a war in 1967, later annexing the area in a move largely unrecognized by the international community.
Participants in Syria’s national dialogue conference last week affirmed their rejection of “provocative” statements by Netanyahu and urged the international community to pressure Israel to stop any “aggression and violations,” condemning “the Israeli incursion into Syrian territory.”
Israel on the weekend threatened action if Syria’s new leaders harmed the country’s Druze community, after unrest in a Damascus suburb home to members of the religious minority.

CAIRO: Arab foreign ministers met behind closed doors in Cairo on Monday ahead of an extraordinary Arab League summit focused on a plan to counter US President Donald Trump’s proposal to take over Gaza and expel its residents.
The ministers held a “preparatory and consultative” session centered on an Arab plan to reconstruct the war-battered enclave without displacing its 2.4 million residents, a source at the Arab League told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The meeting was closed to the press, the source said, adding that the plan “would be presented to Arab leaders at Tuesday’s summit for approval.”
Ahead of the session, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty held separate meetings with Arab counterparts, including from Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia, Iraq and Yemen, as well as the Palestinian top diplomat.
During the meetings, Abdelatty called for “moving forward with early recovery projects” in Gaza without displacing Palestinians, an Egyptian foreign ministry statement said.
Trump triggered global outrage when he floated a plan for the United States to “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” while forcing its Palestinian residents to relocate to Egypt and Jordan.
The plan has united Arab countries in opposition, with Riyadh hosting a consultative meeting of Arab leaders last month to discuss “joint efforts in support of the Palestinian cause.”
At a news conference in Cairo on Sunday, Abdelatty said the Gaza reconstruction plan was ready and would be presented to Arab leaders at the summit in Cairo for approval.
Trump has recently appeared to soften his stance on the plan.
“I think that’s a plan that really works, but I’m not forcing it,” Trump said. “I’m just gonna sit back and recommend it.”