ANKARA: Turkey on Friday called for an end to regime attacks on Idlib, accusing Damascus of seeking to extend its control of the province’s south in violation of previously agreed boundaries.
Syrian regime forces together with their Russian allies have increased air strikes and shelling in the militant-controlled northwestern province since last April.
“We expect Russia to take effective and decisive measures to ensure regime forces end their attacks on the south of Idlib and the (forces) immediately withdraw to the borders agreed as part of Astana Process,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said.
“The regime is trying to widen its area of control in Idlib’s south in violation of the Astana agreement,” Akar added, quoted by state news agency Anadolu.
He said the attacks were also a “risk” to Turkey’s 12 military observation posts around the region.
Akar made his comments during a visit to the Turkish border with Syria, joined by top military commanders.
While Moscow backs Syrian President Bashar Assad, Ankara has called for his ouster and supports Syrian rebels in the civil war which began with anti-government protests in 2011.
Despite being on opposing sides of the war, Turkey has been working closely with regime backers Russia and Iran to find a political solution to the Syrian civil war.
Their talks have been known as the Astana process which was launched in early 2017 in the Kazakh capital now called Nur-Sultan.
A separate deal agreed by Moscow and Ankara last year aimed to set up a buffer zone around Idlib, and avoid a massive Syrian regime assault on the province.
Turkey urges end to regime attacks on Idlib
Turkey urges end to regime attacks on Idlib
- “We expect Russia to take effective and decisive measures to ensure regime forces end their attacks on the south of Idlib,” Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said
- Akar made his comments during a visit to the Turkish border with Syria, joined by top military commanders
Israeli tanks push back in northern Gaza Strip, warplanes hit Rafah
- Israel obstructing access to victims of Hamas Oct. 7 attack: UN probe
GENEVA/CAIRO: Israeli tanks pushed back into some areas of the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday which they had left weeks ago, while warplanes conducted airstrikes on Rafah, the Palestinians’ last refuge in the south of the territory, killing and wounding several people, medics and residents said.
Residents reported an internet outage in the areas of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in northern Gaza.
Tanks advanced into Beit Hanoun and surrounded some schools where displaced families have taken refuge, said the residents and media outlets of the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
“Occupation soldiers ordered all families inside the schools and the nearby houses where the tanks had advanced to evacuate.
The soldiers detained many men,” one resident of northern Gaza said via a chat app.
Beit Hanoun, home to 60,000 people, was one of the first areas targeted by Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza last October.
Heavy bombardment turned most of Beit Hanoun, once known as “the basket of fruit” because of its orchards, into a ghost town comprising piles of rubble.
Many families who had returned to Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in recent weeks after Israeli forces withdrew, began moving out again on Tuesday because of the new raid, some residents said.
Palestinian health officials said in one strike, Israel killed four people and wounded several others in Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering and bracing for a planned Israeli ground offensive into the city, which borders Egypt.
The Israeli military said its forces continued to operate in the central Gaza Strip and that they had killed several gunmen who attempted to attack them.
“Furthermore, over the past day, IDF fighter jets and aircraft destroyed a missile launcher along with dozens of terrorist infrastructure, terror tunnels, and military compounds where armed Hamas terrorists were located,” it added.
In Al-Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, residents said Israeli planes had bombed and destroyed four multi-story residential buildings on Tuesday.
Israel is still imposing “unlawful” restrictions on humanitarian relief for Gaza, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday, despite assertions from Israel and others that barriers have eased.
The amount of aid now entering Gaza is disputed, with Israel and Washington saying aid flows have risen in recent days but UN agencies say it is still far below bare minimum levels.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 33,843 Palestinians have so far been killed by Israeli fire since Oct. 7, including 46 in the past 24 hours.
Israel is preventing UN investigators from speaking to witnesses and victims of the Oct. 7 attack, former UN rights chief Navi Pillay, who is chairing a three-person probe, said.
The unprecedented Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“I deplore the fact that people inside Israel who wish to speak to us are being denied that opportunity, because we cannot get access into Israel,” Pillay said.
The investigation briefed diplomats at the UN in Geneva on its work and said that since Oct. 7, it had focused on the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.
“So far as the government of Israel is concerned, we have faced not merely a lack of cooperation but active obstruction of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims to the events that occurred in southern Israel,” said Chris Sidoti, one of the three members of the inquiry.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s attack against Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
The militants also took about 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.
Pillay, 82, a South African former High Court judge, said the commission was investigating alleged crimes during the Hamas attack as well as some allegedly committed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank.
Sidoti, speaking via video-link, said the investigation had found it difficult to collect evidence from large numbers of witnesses.
Israel kills local Hezbollah commander in Lebanon strike
Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.
Tuesday’s exchanges came with regional tensions high after Iran launched missile and drone attacks on Israel over the weekend in retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.
The Israeli military said its “aircraft struck and eliminated Ismail Yusef Baz, the commander of Hezbollah’s coastal sector,” adding he was killed in south Lebanon’s Ain Baal area.
Aircraft also hit “Hezbollah military structures and terrorist operatives” elsewhere in south Lebanon on Tuesday, it said in a separate statement.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported one dead in an Israeli strike on a car in Ain Baal, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the border.
Hezbollah said in a statement that Baz had been killed, without mentioning his rank or role, while a source close to the group told AFP that “the field commander in charge of the Naqura region” had been killed “in an Israeli strike.”
The NNA also said an “enemy strike” targeted two cars in Shehabiya, about 10 kilometers from Ain Baal, reporting an unspecified number of dead and wounded.
Hezbollah later said that two more of its fighters had been killed, while its ally the Amal movement announced one dead in Ain Baal.
Hezbollah said it launched rockets at several Israeli military bases “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks” on Lebanese villages, in particular Ain Baal and Shehabiya.
Earlier Tuesday, Hezbollah had said its fighters launched an “air attack with suicide drones in two phases... striking the Iron Dome (air defense system) platforms and their crew” in the Beit Hillel area.
The Israeli military said “two armed” drones entered from Lebanon and exploded near Beit Hillel, with local Israeli authorities saying three people were wounded.
On Monday, Hezbollah targeted Israeli troops with explosive devices, wounding four soldiers who crossed into Lebanese territory, the first such attack in six months of clashes.
The violence has killed at least 368 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
In Israel, the military says 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed since hostilities began.
Tens of thousands of civilians have fled their homes on both sides of the border, with the violence fueling fears of all-out conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, which last went to war in 2006.
Gaza’s 2m Palestinians now a population of ‘survivors,’ UN humanitarian chief says
- Andrea De Domenico says the situation in the territory during Israel’s continuing war against Hamas is ‘dire, tense and very volatile’
- He warns it will ‘take years’ for Gaza’s 625,000 students to return to their studies as every university is destroyed and schools have been closed since the war began
LONDON: The 2 million Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip can now be accurately described as a population of “survivors,” a UN humanitarian chief said on Tuesday.
Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the situation in Gaza during Israel’s continuing war against Hamas is “dire, tense and very volatile.”
The OCHA is “making all effort possible” to deliver aid to the territory, he added, but “the reality is that there is very little that we can bring to inside Gaza to tackle displacement and battle the looming famine.”
De Domenico said that if the widely predicted famine in Gaza comes to pass, it would be “completely man-made and preventable.”
He added that while there have been recent additional efforts by the UN, and by the Israelis “to some extent,” to increase the amount of aid entering northern Gaza, the worst-affected part of the territory, the situation would require a “massive operation” simply to reach the “minimum standard” of aid that is needed, which is something the OCHA is not in a position to mount at this time.
On Sunday, the agency said Israel “impeded or denied access” to 41 percent of UN-coordinated aid missions in northern Gaza between April 6 and 12.
De Domenico also highlighted the “problematic situation” in and around hospitals in Gaza, especially at Al-Shifa where heavy fighting has caused widespread damage and destruction, which he said was proving to be another major obstacle to the delivery of aid and other relief supplies.
“Our team entered (Al-Shifa hospital) in the following days (after the fighting) and have had to deal with a scene of terror; the hospital is completely dysfunctional at this moment,” he said.
“The number of bodies that have been buried in or on the premises of Al-Shifa, or around the hospital, has also been problematic, to the point that UN and Palestinian colleagues have helped the families to start to recognize the remnants of the corpses.”
Also on Tuesday, it was revealed that relentless Israeli airstrikes have destroyed every university in Gaza. This, coupled with the fact that all schools in the territory have been closed since Israel launched its military offensive in October, means it will “take years” for the enclave’s 625,000 students to return to their studies, De Domenico said.
On Monday, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jamie McGoldrick, said about 800,000 Palestinians might be forced to flee Gaza if the Israeli military goes ahead with a threatened ground incursion in the southern city of Rafah, close to the border with Egypt, which has become the final refuge for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting in other parts of the territory.
He added that about 90 percent of approximately 4,000 buildings located along Gaza’s eastern border with Israel have been destroyed or damaged during the war, according to the UN Satellite Center.
Jordan completes six more airdrops of aid to northern Gaza
- Jordan has carried out 84 humanitarian airdrops independently, 190 in collaboration with other countries
AMMAN: Jordan’s armed forces completed another six airdrops of food aid to the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
The humanitarian operation was carried out by the Royal Jordanian Air Force, using aircraft provided by Egypt, the US and Germany, the Jordan News Agency reported.
Since the start of Israel's war on Gaza in October, Jordan has completed 84 humanitarian airdrops of its own and 190 in collaboration with other countries.
During an interview with CNN in March, Queen Rania explained why authorities in the country had decided to take action to help people in an area the UN reports to be suffering from the effects of a widespread and severe food crisis.
“We found that after trying so hard in vain to persuade Israel to open the land-access points, we had to do something. We couldn’t just sit idle and watch people starving,” she said.
The airdrops are desperate measures to address a desperate situation, the queen added, describing them as mere “drops in an ocean of unmet needs.”
The Jordanian army said it remains committed to assisting efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Emirati, British FMs discuss regional developments
- Call followed Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel on Saturday
LONDON: Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan received a phone call from his British counterpart David Cameron regarding the latest regional developments and their impact on global peace and security, Emirates News Agency reported.
The two officials reviewed international efforts aimed at bolstering the response to the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, emphasizing the need to expedite the delivery of safe and sustainable aid to the civilian population there.
The call followed Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel on Saturday.
The strike by more than 300 missiles and drones caused only modest damage in Israel as most were shot down by its Iron Dome defense system and with help from the US, Britain, France and Jordan.
Sheikh Abdullah highlighted the critical need for maximum restraint to prevent severe consequences and the potential escalation of instability in the region.
He underscored the importance of dialogue, diplomatic engagement, adherence to the rule of law, and respect for the UN Charter as vital means to resolve conflicts and enhance regional and global peace, stability, and prosperity.
