MAARET AL-NUMAN, Syria: Bombardments by the Syrian regime killed six civilians in north-west Syria Monday, hours after US President Donald Trump urged Damascus and its allies to “stop bombing the hell” out of the region, held by hard-line militants.
Trump’s call came after US ally Israel carried out a series of strikes against Syria in recent days, killing at least 15 dead among pro-government forces, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The bombardment by Damascus and its ally Moscow of Idlib province and neighboring areas has killed more than 300 people since late April, according to the Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor.
It also displaced nearly 270,000 people in May alone, according to the UN.
The violence, which comes despite a truce deal brokered by Russia and Turkey in September, has raised fears of a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale yet unseen in Syria’s eight-year conflict, which has already claimed more than 370,000 lives.
The Kremlin insisted Monday that the Russian army was only targeting “terrorists” in Syria’s Idlib region, which is controlled by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, a group dominated by former members of Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate.
It accused them of firing at civilians and Moscow’s troops.
“Terrorist fire in Idlib is of course unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Measures are being taken to neutralize such firing positions.”
The comments came in response to a tweet by Trump on Sunday calling for an end to the bombing on the jihadist-dominated enclave, a large area which is home to almost three million people.
“Hearing word that Russia, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iran, are bombing the hell out of Idlib Province in Syria, and indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians.
“The World is watching this butchery. What is the purpose, what will it get you? STOP!” the US president said.
But the aerial bombardment on Monday was unrelenting.
The Observatory said at least four civilians were killed in regime strikes on the town of Maaret Al-Numan.
Another civilian was killed in the nearby town of Heish, while a sixth was killed by rocket fire on a village in the neighboring province of Hama, it said.
Human Rights Watch on Monday accused the Syrian regime and Russia of using “internationally banned and other indiscriminate weapons in unlawful attacks on civilians in northwest Syria in recent weeks.”
It said they “used banned cluster munitions and incendiary weapons... along with large air-dropped explosive weapons with wide-area effects, including ‘barrel bombs’.”
A total of 24 health facilities and 35 schools have been hit in the latest escalation, according to the UN’s humanitarian office.
Analysts predict that President Bashar Assad and his allies will continue to chip away at the area, but not unleash a major assault that would create chaos on Turkey’s doorstep.
In recent weeks, the militants and pro-government forceshave engaged in fierce battles over positions on the fringes of the enclave.
On Monday, clashes between the militants and pro-government fighters killed dozens of combatants in southern Idlib and parts of Latakia.
The latest violence in Syria’s militant-held northwest comes amid soaring tensions between Syria and neighboring Israel.
Syria accused Israel of targeting an air base in Homs province overnight, reportedly killing five people, just hours after carrying out raids on military and intelligence posts south of Damascus that killed 10.
“Our air defenses thwarted an Israeli aggression and destroyed two of the rockets that targeted the T-4 air base,” a military source told state news agency SANA.
The remaining rockets “killed one soldier, wounded two others, and damaged an arms warehouse,” the source added.
The Observatory reported five killed, including one Syrian soldier, adding that a rocket warehouse was destroyed.
In addition to the Syrian army, Iranian fighters and Hezbollah paramilitary forces are also stationed at the air base, according to the monitor.
Israel did not claim the attack.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli army told AFP: “We do not comment on foreign reports.”
But hours earlier, Israel said it had carried out strikes in the province of Quneitra.
It said that attack was in response to rare rocket fire from its neighbor late Saturday.
The Observatory said 10 people were killed, including Syrian soldiers and foreign fighters.
Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria, most of them against what it says are Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
The country says it is determined to prevent its arch foe Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria, where Tehran backs Assad in the country’s war.
Assad forces pound Syria’s northwest, ignoring Trump warning
Assad forces pound Syria’s northwest, ignoring Trump warning
- Bombardments by the Syrian regime killed six civilians in north-west Syria Monday
Israel confirms death of hostage held in Gaza
Dror Or, 49, is the latest hostage to have been confirmed dead by Israel after begin captured during the Hamas attack that triggered war with Israel.
Or was killed and his body held in Gaza since October 7, the Beeri kibbutz said. It was one of the communities hardest hit in the Hamas attack on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.
His wife Yonat was killed in the initial attack while two of their three children, Noam and Alma, aged 17 and 13, were abducted and then freed in November as part of a ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners swap deal between Israel and Hamas.
Israel estimates that 129 captives seized by militants during their attack remain in Gaza. The military says 35 of them are dead including Or.
“We are heartbroken to share that Dror Or, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, had been confirmed as murdered and his body is being held in Gaza,” the Israeli government said on X.
The two children and their brother Yahli are now orphans, it added.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it will provide assistance to Or’s family.
The forum and Israeli government did not say how they learned of Or’s death.
“Only by securing the release of all hostages, the living for rehabilitation, the deceased for burial can our people’s revival and future be ensured,” the forum said in a statement.
“Israeli government must exhaust every effort to bring Dror and... the other murdered hostages back for honorable burials in Israel.”
Or’s death was announced as mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt await Hamas’s response to a new Israeli proposal for a ceasefire and hostage release.
In late November during a week-long truce, 105 hostages were released including 80 Israelis and people from other countries in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinians held by Israel.
The war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Hamas sending delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks in latest sign of progress
- After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage
- Question remains whether Israel will accept end to war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas
BEIRUT: Hamas said Thursday that it was sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks, in a new sign of progress in attempts by international mediators to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the militant group to end the war in Gaza.
After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage, with Egyptian and American mediators reporting signs of compromise in recent days. But chances for the deal remain entangled with the key question of whether Israel will accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.
The stakes in the ceasefire negotiations were made clear in a new UN report that said if the Israel-Hamas war stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.
The proposal that US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages, but also negotiations over a “permanent calm” that includes some sort of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to an Egyptian official. Hamas is seeking guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end to the war.
Hamas officials have sent mixed signals about the proposal in recent days. But on Thursday, its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a statement that he had spoken to Egypt’s intelligence chief and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal.”
The statement said that Hamas negotiators would travel to Cairo “to complete the ongoing discussions with the aim of working forward for an agreement.” Haniyeh said he had also spoken to the prime minister of Qatar, another key mediator in the process.
The brokers are hopeful that the deal will bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, caused widespread destruction and plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. They also hope a deal will avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter after fleeing battle zones elsewhere in the territory.
If Israel does agree to end the war in return for a full hostage release, it would be a major turnaround. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack stunned Israel, its leaders have vowed not to stop their bombardment and ground offensives until the militant group is destroyed. They also say Israel must keep a military presence in Gaza and security control after the war to ensure Hamas doesn’t rebuild.
Publicly at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that is the only acceptable endgame.
He has vowed that even if a ceasefire is reached, Israel will eventually attack Rafah, which he says is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. He repeated his determination to do so in talks Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on a regional tour to push the deal through.
The agreement’s immediate fate hinges on whether Hamas will accept uncertainty over the final phases to bring the initial six-week pause in fighting — and at least postpone what it is feared would be a devastating assault on Rafah.
Egypt has been privately assuring Hamas that the deal will mean a total end to the war. But the Egyptian official said Hamas says the text’s language is too vague and wants it to specify a complete Israeli pullout from all of Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations.
On Wednesday evening, however, the news looked less positive as Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official, expressed skepticism, saying the group’s initial position was “negative.” Speaking to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, he said that talks were still ongoing but would stop if Israel invades Rafah.
Blinken hiked up pressure on Hamas to accept, saying Israel had made “very important” compromises.
“There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there,” Blinken said Wednesday before leaving for the US
An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, killed at least five people, including a child, in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. The bodies were seen and counted by Associated Press journalists at a hospital.
The war broke out on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants broke into southern Israel and killed over 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, taking around 250 others hostage, some released during a ceasefire on November.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the UN More than 80 percent of the population has been driven from their homes.
The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed” and poverty is rising sharply among Palestinians, according to the report released Thursday by the United Nations Development Program and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
It said that in 2024, the entire Palestinian economy — including both Gaza and the West Bank -– has so far contracted 25.8 percent. If the war continues, the loss will reach a “staggering” 29 percent by July, it said. The West Bank economy has been hit by Israel’s decision to cancel the work permits for tens of thousands of laborers who depended on jobs inside Israel.
“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. He warned of a “serious development crisis that jeopardizes the future of generations to come.”
Israel builds ‘cyber dome’ against Iran’s hackers
- Israeli cybersecurity agency had thwarted around 800 significant attacks since the Oct. 7 Gaza war erupted
- But some attacks could not be foiled, including against hospitals in which patient data was stolen
TEL AVIV: Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has long shielded it from incoming rockets. Now it is building a “cyber dome” to defend against online attacks, especially from arch foe Iran.
“It is a silent war, one which is not visible,” said Aviram Atzaba, the Israeli National Cyber Directorate’s head of international cooperation.
While Israel has fought Hamas in Gaza since the October 7 attack, it has also faced a significant increase in cyberattacks from Iran and its allies, Atzaba said.
“They are trying to hack everything they can,” he told AFP, pointing to Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement but adding that so far “they have not succeeded in causing any real damage.”
He said around 800 significant attacks had been thwarted since the war erupted. Among the targets were government organizations, the military and civil infrastructure.
Some attacks could not be foiled, including against hospitals in the cities of Haifa and Safed in which patient data was stolen.
While Israel already has cyber defenses, they long consisted of “local efforts that were not connected,” Atzaba said.
So, for the past two years, the directorate has been working to build a centralized, real-time system that works proactively to protect all of Israeli cyberspace.
Based in Tel Aviv, the directorate works under the authority of the prime minister. It does not reveal figures on its staff, budget or computing resources.
Israel collaborates closely with multiple allies, including the United States, said Atzaba, because “all states face cyber terrorism.”
“It takes a network to fight a network,” he said.
Israel’s arch foe Iran is “an impressive enemy” in the online wars, said Chuck Freilich, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, which is affiliated with Tel Aviv University.
“Its attacks aim to sabotage and destroy infrastructure, but also to collect data for intelligence and spread false information for propaganda purposes,” he said.
Iran has welcomed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,596 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Regional tensions have soared, particularly after Iran for the first time fired hundreds of missiles directly at Israel last month in retaliation for a deadly Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
It was the most dramatic escalation yet after a years-long shadow war of killings and sabotage attacks between Israel and Iran.
Freilich argued in a study published in February that Iran was relatively slow to invest in cyberwarfare, until two key events triggered a change.
First, its leaders took note of how anti-government protesters used the Internet as a tool to mobilize support for a 2009 post-election uprising.
In the bloody crackdown that crushed the movement, Iran’s authorities cut access to social media and websites covering the protests.
Then, in September 2010, a sophisticated cyberattack using the Stuxnet virus, blamed by Iran on Israel and the United States, caused physical damage to Tehran’s nuclear program.
Freilich said the attack “demonstrated Iran’s extreme vulnerability and led to a severe national shock.”
Since then, Iran has gained substantial expertise to become “one of the most active countries in cyberspace,” he said
While Israel is considered a major cyber power, Iran was only likely to improve, said Freilich.
He pointed to assistance from Russia and China, as well as its much larger population and an emphasis on cyber training for students and soldiers alike, adding that the trend was “concerning for the future.”
Atzaba insisted that the quantity of hackers is secondary to the quality of technology and the use it is put to.
“For the past two years, we have been developing a cyber dome against cyberattacks, which functions like the Iron Dome against rockets,” he said.
“With cyber dome, all sources are fed into a large data pool that enables a view of the big picture and to invoke a national response in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.”
The Israeli system has various scanners that continuously “monitor Israeli cyberspace for vulnerabilities and informs the stakeholders of the means to mitigate them,” he said.
Israel’s cyber strength relied on close cooperation between the public, private and academic sectors, as well as Israel’s “white hat” hackers who help identify weaknesses.
“We work hand in hand,” he said.
Kurds deny torturing detainees in north Syria camps
- Rights group alleges cruelty against Daesh militant prisoners and their families
JEDDAH: Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria on Thursday denied claims by Amnesty International that they tortured Daesh militants and their dependents detained in internment camps.
More than 56,000 prisoners with links to the Islamist militant group are still being held five years after Daesh were driven out of their last territory in Syria. They include militants locked up in prisons, and Daesh fighters’ wives and children in Al-Hol and Roj camps.
Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard said Kurdish authorities had “committed the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, and probably committed the war crime of murder.”
The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in northeast Syria said it “respects its obligations to prevent the violation of its laws, which prohibit such illegal acts, and adheres to international law.”
Any such crimes that may have been perpetrated were “individual acts,” it said, and asked Amnesty to provide it with any evidence of wrongdoing by its security forces and affiliates.
“We are open to cooperating with Amnesty International regarding its proposed recommendations, which require concerted regional and international efforts,” it said.
Kurdish authorities said they had repeatedly asked the international community for help in managing the camps, which required “huge financial resources.”
Al-Hol is the largest internment camp in northeast Syria, with more than 43,000 detainees from 47 countries, most of them women and children related to Daesh fighters.
Hamas is sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks in the latest sign of progress
- US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas a proposal -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — that sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages
BEIRUT: Hamas said Thursday that it was sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks, in a new sign of progress in attempts by international mediators to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the militant group to end the war in Gaza.
After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage, with Egyptian and American mediators reporting signs of compromise in recent days. But chances for the deal remain entangled with the key question of whether Israel will accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.
The stakes in the ceasefire negotiations were made clear in a new UN report that said if the Israel-Hamas war stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.
The proposal that US and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas -– apparently with Israel’s acceptance — sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week ceasefire and partial release of Israeli hostages, but also negotiations over a “permanent calm” that includes some sort of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to an Egyptian official. Hamas is seeking guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end to the war.
Hamas officials have sent mixed signals about the proposal in recent days. But on Thursday, its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a statement that he had spoken to Egypt’s intelligence chief and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal.”
The statement said that Hamas negotiators would travel to Cairo “to complete the ongoing discussions with the aim of working forward for an agreement.” Haniyeh said he had also spoken to the prime minister of Qatar, another key mediator in the process.
The brokers are hopeful that the deal will bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, caused widespread destruction and plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. They also hope a deal will avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter after fleeing battle zones elsewhere in the territory.
If Israel does agree to end the war in return for a full hostage release, it would be a major turnaround. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack stunned Israel, its leaders have vowed not to stop their bombardment and ground offensives until the militant group is destroyed. They also say Israel must keep a military presence in Gaza and security control after the war to ensure Hamas doesn’t rebuild.
Publicly at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that is the only acceptable endgame.
He has vowed that even if a ceasefire is reached, Israel will eventually attack Rafah, which he says is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. He repeated his determination to do so in talks Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on a regional tour to push the deal through.
The agreement’s immediate fate hinges on whether Hamas will accept uncertainty over the final phases to bring the initial six-week pause in fighting — and at least postpone what it is feared would be a devastating assault on Rafah.
Egypt has been privately assuring Hamas that the deal will mean a total end to the war. But the Egyptian official said Hamas says the text’s language is too vague and wants it to specify a complete Israeli pullout from all of Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations.
On Wednesday evening, however, the news looked less positive as Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official, expressed skepticism, saying the group’s initial position was “negative.” Speaking to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, he said that talks were still ongoing but would stop if Israel invades Rafah.
Blinken hiked up pressure on Hamas to accept, saying Israel had made “very important” compromises.
“There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there,” Blinken said Wednesday before leaving for the US
An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, killed at least five people, including a child, in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. The bodies were seen and counted by Associated Press journalists at a hospital.
The war broke out on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants broke into southern Israel and killed over 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, taking around 250 others hostage, some released during a ceasefire on November.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the UN More than 80 percent of the population has been driven from their homes.
The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed” and poverty is rising sharply among Palestinians, according to the report released Thursday by the United Nations Development Program and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
It said that in 2024, the entire Palestinian economy — including both Gaza and the West Bank -– has so far contracted 25.8 percent. If the war continues, the loss will reach a “staggering” 29 percent by July, it said. The West Bank economy has been hit by Israel’s decision to cancel the work permits for tens of thousands of laborers who depended on jobs inside Israel.
“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. He warned of a “serious development crisis that jeopardizes the future of generations to come.”
