HOMS, Syria: Syrian rebels began evacuating the last opposition-held district in Homs on Wednesday, paving the way for President Bashar Assad’s regime to take full control of the country’s third-largest city.
Hundreds of Syrian rebels and civilians were leaving the Waer district under a rare local cease-fire agreed with the regime at the start of December.
Some 2,000 rebels and their families will abandon Waer in Homs — once dubbed the “capital” of Syria’s revolution — to travel to other opposition-held areas, after enduring a three-year siege that saw the district heavily shelled.
The evacuation comes as a broad range of Syrian opposition groups, including armed factions, hold unprecedented talks in the Saudi capital on forming a united front for talks with Assad.
The talks follow a major diplomatic push to resolve Syria’s nearly five-year civil war, and intensified foreign military action including Russia’s first strikes from a submarine Tuesday.
An AFP journalist in Homs saw women and children boarding white buses as the evacuation began early on Wednesday. Many appeared haggard but some smiled, waved and gave the thumbs-up from inside the buses.
More than 100 opposition fighters, some carrying light weapons, boarded five green buses further away.
Provincial Governor Talal Barazi told reporters that some 700 people — including 400 women and children and 300 fighters — would be evacuated from the district Wednesday.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the buses headed to the northwestern province of Idlib.
Under the deal, Waer’s rebel forces, who range from secular fighters to jihadists including fighters with Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, are to completely leave the district by the end of January.
Once the evacuation is complete, police, but not troops, will reenter the district, where some 75,000 people currently live, down from 300,000 before the conflict began.
Symbolic victory
Homs saw some of the largest protests of the early uprising against Assad in 2011, and later some of the fiercest fighting after opposition forces took up weapons in response to a government crackdown.
Regaining total control of the city is an important symbolic victory for the regime, which has lost large swathes of the surrounding province to rebels and the Daesh terrorist group.
The United Nations has been pushing for such localized cease-fires as broader efforts have failed to end Syria’s war, despite the deaths of more than 250,000 people and millions being forced from their homes.
The biggest diplomatic push yet was launched last month in Vienna with top diplomats from 17 countries — including key international backers and opponents of Assad — agreeing on a roadmap to set up a transition government in six months and hold elections within 18 months.
The plan calls for negotiations between opposition representatives and the regime by January 1. Washington is hoping to host another round of international talks in New York on December 18.
The two-day meeting that began Wednesday in Riyadh marks the first time a broad range of Syrian political and armed opposition factions have come together.
Some 100 delegates aim to form a unified bloc for talks with Assad, though analysts say deep divisions will be difficult to overcome.
The fate of Assad is a key question, with some Western- and Arab-backed rebel groups insisting he must step down immediately.
Internal opposition groups disagree, as do Assad’s key international backers Iran and Russia.
Daesh threat
International concern over the conflict has grown with the emergence of Daesh as a major threat, after it seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and carried out operations abroad including last month’s Paris attacks.
The terrorists have also kidnapped hundreds of people, including more than 200 members of Syria’s Assyrian Christian minority in the northeast province of Hasakeh in February.
On Wednesday, Daesh freed 25 Assyrian captives, including two children, the Assyrian Human Rights Network said.
Up to 125 hostages are believed to still be held after successive releases.
A US-led coalition launched air strikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria last year.
Russia in September began its own intervention, though critics have accused Moscow of mostly hitting moderate rebels.
The latest Russian strikes hit hundreds of targets, Moscow’s defense chief said, and helped Syrian special forces recover the black box of a Russian warplane downed by Turkey last month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday invited British experts to help analyze the black box.
Eight civilians, including five children, were killed Wednesday in suspected Russian air strikes on a village in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region, near Damascus, the Observatory said.
Elsewhere in Syria, four civilians were killed in rebel mortar fire that hit government-controlled neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, state media reported.
Syria rebels begin leaving Homs under truce deal
Syria rebels begin leaving Homs under truce deal
At least 46 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, hospital hit, says Gaza ministry
- Strike on hospital torches medical supplies, officials say
- Israel says militants were hiding in hospital
CAIRO: At least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there. Health officials and Hamas deny the charge.
Later on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike on two houses in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza killed at least 16 Palestinians, medics at Al-Awda Hospital in the camp told Reuters. The dead included a paramedic and two local journalists, they added.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled Hamas’ command structure, is currently the main focus of the military’s assault in the enclave. Earlier this month it sent tanks into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya to flush out militants it said had regrouped.
Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan — which is in Beit Lahiya — told Reuters some staff suffered minor burns after the Israeli strike hit the third floor of the hospital.
There were no reports of any casualties at the hospital, which Israeli forces stormed and briefly occupied last week. Israel said it had captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants in that raid. Israeli tanks are still stationed nearby.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the (Israeli) occupation.”
The Israeli military has said its forces are operating in the hospital area based on intelligence about the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure in the vicinity.
“During the operation, it was found that dozens of terrorists were hiding in the hospital, with some even posing as hospital staff,” said the military in a statement following Thursday’s strike.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care.”
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.
Iraq tries to avoid regional fight as militias fire at Israel
- Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful of the armed factions, said Israel and the US would have to pay a price for Israel’s strikes on Iran last week
BAGHDAD: Nervously watching Israel’s destructive campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, Iraq is working to avoid being drawn into the growing regional conflict as Iran-backed armed groups launch attacks on Israel from Iraqi soil, sources familiar with the matter say.
Two decades after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq is experiencing relative stability with high revenue from oil sales funding a service-based agenda that has turned much of the country into a construction site.
Iraq does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani’s government is wary of regional conflicts that could affect its delicate balancing act between Washington and Tehran, both states it is allied with.
Spillover from regional conflict resulted in months of tit-for-tat attacks between Iran-backed armed groups and US forces stationed in Iraq and the region that only subsided after Iran intervened in February.
But Sudani’s government has not been successful in a push to convince the Islamic Resistance in Iraq — a coalition of Iran-backed armed groups — to stop firing rockets and drones at Israel, according to four sources in Iran-backed armed groups and two government advisers.
Two visits to Iran by Iraq’s top security officials in the past two months, seeking Tehran’s help to rein in its allied Iraqi factions, failed, the sources said.
“The Iraqi delegation received a cold reception in Tehran ... The answer was: those groups have their own decision and it is their call to decide how to support their brothers in Lebanon and Gaza,” said a senior Iraqi security official briefed on the visits.
Baghdad turned to Washington, asking US officials to intervene with Israel to prevent retaliation for the attacks, including one that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded more than 20 on Oct. 4, the sources said, the first time such an attack has been reported to cause fatalities.
“Washington was understanding of the repercussions of possible Israeli strikes in Iraq and pledged to help,” said an Iraqi foreign ministry official.
A spokesperson for the US embassy in Baghdad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Four militia sources said the Kataib Hezbollah and Nujaba groups, which are leading the attacks on Israel, have warned the prime minister against pressuring them to halt their actions and vowed to continue their attacks as long as Israel continued its Gaza and Lebanon operations.
The issue has divided parties in Iraq’s ruling coalition, all of whom are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and view Israel as an enemy, though some differ over how involved Iraq should be in the regional confrontation.
Shiite leaders discussed the risk of repercussions from attacks on Israel and possible Israeli retaliation during two meetings in October, said Ahmed Kenani, a Shiite lawmaker from the ruling alliance.
Key players in the Shiite coalition view direct confrontation with Israel as counterproductive and potentially damaging to Iraq, according to four Shiite lawmakers.
“Those groups who have the rockets and drones should go to Gaza and Lebanon to fight Israel rather than pushing Iraq toward destruction,” said Iraqi PM adviser Abul Ameer Thuaiban.
Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful of the armed factions, said Israel and the US would have to pay a price for Israel’s strikes on Iran last week.
Senior Iraqi security sources told Reuters ahead of that attack that any strike by Israel against Iran outside what the sources called the established rules of engagement could prompt pro-Iran armed groups to significantly expand their attacks on Israel and US assets in the region.
Blinken says ‘good progress’ made toward Lebanon ceasefire deal
- Said that Washington “working very hard” on concluding arrangements on a deal
- US has stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon
WASHINGTON DC: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that negotiators have made “good progress” toward a deal that would bring a ceasefire in Israel’s offensive in Lebanon.
The top US diplomat said that Washington was “working very hard” on concluding arrangements on a deal that would include the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the border region with Israel.
“Based on my recent trip to the region, and the work that’s ongoing right now, we have made good progress on those understandings,” Blinken told reporters.
“We still have more work to do,” he said, calling for a “diplomatic resolution, including through a ceasefire.”
Two senior US officials, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, met Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that any deal on Lebanon must guarantee Israel’s security.
Unlike in the year-old war in Gaza, the US has stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and has largely backed Israeli strikes against Hezbollah, while voicing concern for the fate of civilians.
Blinken called again for implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, dating from 2006, which calls for the disarmament of non-state groups in Lebanon and a full Israeli withdrawal from the country.
“It’s important to make sure that we have clarity, both from Lebanon and from Israel, about what would be required under 1701 to get its effective implementation — the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the border, the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces, the authorities under which they’d be acting, an appropriate enforcement mechanism,” Blinken said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking alongside Blinken and their South Korean counterparts, said there was an “opportunity” in Lebanon.
“We’re hopeful that we will see things transition in Lebanon in a not too distant future,” Austin said.
Israel says another rocket barrage from Lebanon kills 2 in Israel, hours after 5 were killed
- The attack came as senior US diplomats were in the region to push for ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza
TEL AVIV: Israel’s rescue service said projectiles fired from Lebanon on Thursday killed two more people in northern Israel, raising death toll there to seven in what’s been the deadliest rocket barrage since the Israeli military’s invasion of southern Lebanon.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said its medics confirmed the deaths of a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman in a suburb of the northern city of Haifa. They also treated two other people who suffered mild injuries and were hospitalized.
The Israeli military said that roughly 25 rockets crossed into Israel from Lebanon as part of the volley that struck an olive grove where people had gathered for the harvest.
The deadly attack came just hours after officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that five people were killed, including four foreign workers, in a rocket barrage Thursday that struck an Israeli agricultural area.
The back-to-back attacks made Thursday one of the deadliest days for civilians in Israel since the Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on Oct. 1 as part of a widening campaign against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group.
The attack came as senior US diplomats were in the region to push for ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East in the Biden administration’s final months.
The Hezbollah militant group has been firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel, and drawing retaliatory strikes, since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies backed by Iran.
The conflict along the border escalated into a full-blown war last month, when Israel launched a wave of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies. Israeli ground forces pushed into Lebanon at the start of October.
The Metula regional council reported Thursday’s attack, without detailing the number or type of projectiles used. The nationalities of the workers were also not immediately known.
Metula, Israel’s northernmost town which is surrounded by Lebanon on three sides, has suffered heavy damage from rockets. The town’s residents evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas along Israel’s border, where much of the country’s orchards are located, are closed military areas that can only be entered with official permission.
Hezbollah’s newly named top leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in a video statement Wednesday that the militant group will keep fighting Israel until it is offered ceasefire terms it deems acceptable. He said it has recovered from a series of setbacks in recent months, including attacks using explosive pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel.
“Hezbollah’s capabilities are still available and compatible with a long war,” he said.
Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli military warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, as airstrikes in different parts of the country killed eight people, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.
Israel has warned people to evacuate from large areas of the country, including major cities in the south and east. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced since the escalation in September.
Thousands of people have fled from Baalbek, the main city in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, and surrounding areas after Israeli evacuation warnings and aerial bombardment on Wednesday.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir Al-Ahmar region, some 17 kilometers (10 miles) to the southeast, said the main highway “turned into a parking lot.” He said around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, with most being hosted in private homes.
At one of the shelters, families with luggage were still arriving on Thursday.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else — and took shelter here.”
More than 2,800 people have been killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Lebanon since the conflict began last year, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
In Israel, rockets, missiles, and drones launched by Hezbollah have killed at least 68 people, about half of them soldiers. More than 60,000 Israelis from towns and cities along the border have been evacuated from their homes for more than a year.
Thousands displaced in Lebanon as Israel expands evacuation zones
- Short-term outlook ‘remains bleak,’ warns Mikati
- Israeli attacks intensified in south Lebanon and the Bekaa region
BEIRUT: Israel expanded its evacuation warnings to new areas of Lebanon on Thursday as Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati warned that the short-term outlook for his country “remains bleak.”
His comments came as US envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Israeli orders for Lebanese civilians to evacuate large areas of Tyre and Baalbek were condemned by Mikati as an “additional war crime,” adding to the “series of crimes of killing, destruction and sabotage committed by the Israeli army.”
In response to Israel’s expansion of its air campaign, Mikati “requested increased pressure on Israel” from international and diplomatic bodies.
Hochstein reportedly told Mikati on Wednesday that he would urge Israel to end its campaign in return for a Lebanese commitment to implementing Resolution 1701.
As Lebanon awaited a diplomatic response, Israel’s Channel 12 said that the Israeli army is preparing to expand its ground operations in Lebanon “as negotiations might take time.”
Israeli attacks intensified in south Lebanon and the Bekaa region, with evacuation warnings extending to the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp in Tyre and civil defense centers in Baalbek.
The Israeli army warned residents of several southern towns, including the Rashidieh camp, to evacuate north of the Awali River.
The order sparked panic among the camp’s 323,000 residents, triggering mass displacement of people who had few options for shelter.
A similar event took place in the Baalbek region a day earlier as tens of thousands of Lebanese fled their homes following warnings of imminent Israeli bombardment.
This warning was repeated on Thursday, preventing the return of residents.
Many spent the night in their cars in harsh cold weather as nearby town shelters reached capacity from earlier evacuees.
Some residents sought shelter in the historic Baalbek Castle, assuming the site had international protection status, but Baalbek Gov. Bashir Khodr advised against this, warning that the castle fell within the “red zone” designated by Israel as a potential target.
Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee, in a new warning posted on X to people in Baalbek, Ain Bourday and Douris, said that residents of the three areas “are staying in a combat zone in which the Israeli army intends to attack.”
Israeli strikes later hit border areas in northern Bekaa and across the Syrian border, a common route for illegal crossings.
An airstrike in Bodai destroyed a home and killed its four inhabitants.
About 10,000 airstrikes have hit Baalbek in the last two days, killing about 70 people and injuring more than 500 others.
Israeli raids targeted an Amal Movement ambulance in Zefta and a civil defense center affiliated with Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Organization on the highway between Dardagia and Arzoun in southern Lebanon.
The strike killed a paramedic and injured two others, bringing the death toll of health workers in Lebanon to 174, with 279 wounded.
Israeli drone attacks against cars and motorcycles in southern Lebanon and western Bekaa continued on Thursday.
A car on the Araya-Kahala road was struck, killing two and injuring one.
On Wednesday, an Israeli drone struck a car on the same road, killing its driver, who was transporting anti-tank missiles.
A drone also struck a car on the Al-Amariyeh-Naqoura road, killing its driver, a Lebanese Army soldier.
A motorcycle rider was killed in the town of Qaraoun located in the West Bekaa region.
Meanwhile, Israel’s air campaign escalated across south Lebanon, targeting residential homes and neighborhoods. A missile struck a man’s home in Ebel El Saqi, injuring his eight-year-old granddaughter.
The town of Chihine was hit with Israeli white phosphorous artillery shells, while the Israeli army blew up four houses in Alma Al-Shaab, a town adjacent to the Blue Line.
A residential building in Aita Al-Shaab was also struck from the air.
On Wednesday evening, the Israeli army destroyed the only mosque in the border town of Boustane, along with several houses in the border town of Al-Dahira.
A new video showing extensive destruction in the southern border town of Kfar Kila was shared. All of the town’s buildings and houses had been leveled.
In a statement, Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director, warned: “At least one child is killed and 10 injured daily in Lebanon.
“Thousands more children who have survived the many months of constant bombings are now acutely distressed by the violence and chaos around them.”
Clashes on the ground between the Israeli army and Hezbollah continued on Thursday across the border region.
Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar TV reported that “violent clashes” took place east of Khiam, with militants repelling an Israeli incursion into the area.
Clashes near the border town have continued for three days following an Israeli assault.
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said that the international force had been targeted more than 50 times since the beginning of the conflict.
Seven of these attacks were “carried out deliberately by Israel,” he added.
Israel claimed it had killed Mohammed Khalil Alian, the commander of the anti-tank force affiliated with Hezbollah’s Nasr unit, in Burj Qallawiyah.
On Wednesday, Israel’s air force claimed the elimination of a Hezbollah air defense cell that had launched a missile at an Israeli aircraft in the region north of Tyre.
