ISTANBUL: Turkey and Russia have agreed a cease-fire plan for all of Syria that should come into force this evening at midnight, Turkish state media said on Wednesday, as Ankara and Moscow tighten cooperation to find an end to the civil war.
The plan aims to expand a cease-fire in the city of Aleppo, brokered by Turkey and Russia earlier this month to allow the evacuation of civilians, to all of the country, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Like previous cease-fire plans that had been brokered by the United States and Russia, it excludes “terror” groups, the agency said.
A Syrian rebel source, who asked not to be named, told AFP in Beirut that details still had to be submitted to the rebel groups and said there was no agreement as yet.
There was no immediate official confirmation of the plan from Moscow or Ankara.
If successful, the plan will form the basis of upcoming political negotiations between the Damascus regime and opposition overseen by Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana, it added.
Turkey and Russia will work for the plan to come into force at midnight, the agency said, without giving further details.
It was not immediately clear how and where the plan had been agreed but there have been talks in the last weeks between Turkey, Russia and Syrian opposition representatives in Ankara.
Qatar-based channel Al-Jazeera said a new meeting is planned on Thursday in Ankara, this time between military representatives of Syrian rebels and Russia.
Ankara and Moscow have been on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, with Turkey seeking the ouster of President Bashar Assad and Russia, along with Iran, his key international ally.
But the two countries have started in the last months to cooperate more tightly on Syria, especially after a deal in summer to normalize ties battered by Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian warplane last year.
Ankara remained conspicuously quiet as Assad’s forces, backed by Russia, took control last week of all of Aleppo in the biggest defeat for the rebels in the civil war so far.
No date has yet been set for the Astana talks and Russian foreign ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said the meeting was still at the planning stage.
She emphasised that the talks were not intended to replace the peace process based in Geneva which has sought to find a solution for the Syrian conflict.
But the direct bilateral involvement of Turkey and Russia comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is increasingly expressing impatience at the role of the United States in Syria.
Previous cease-fire plans had been brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. They met with only temporary success and failed to lead to a solution for the conflict.
It remains unclear how the latest cease-fire plan will apply to the Fateh Al-Sham, formerly the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which has worked more closely with the rebels since changing its name.
Erdogan had on Tuesday launched one of his most bitter attacks yet on US and Western policy in Syria, which he said was marked by broken promises.
He accused the West of not just supporting Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as a “terror group” but even Daesh jihadists.
Turkey has been enraged by the US policy of using the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) as a trusted ally on the ground against Daesh. To Ankara’s pleasure, Russia has steered clear of overt cooperation with the YPG.
The Turkish strongman accused the West of failing to back Turkey’s own incursion inside Syria in support of pro-Ankara fighters to oust Daesh from the border area, which has taken increasing casualties in recent weeks.
But he vowed: “There is no going back on the path we have set out on.”
Backing the talks in Astana, Erdogan was dismissive of the Geneva process. “Unfortunately, Geneva came up empty. How many meetings were held? And no results were obtained,” he said.
In continued bloodshed, air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft killed at least 22 civilians, including 10 children, in a village held by Daesh in Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 as an uprising against Assad, has now lasted nearly six years and killed more than 310,000 people.
Russia, Turkey ‘agree Syria cease-fire plan’
Russia, Turkey ‘agree Syria cease-fire plan’
Israel orders Spain to stop consular services for Palestinians from June 1
- Israel statement: Spain’s consulate in Jerusalem is ‘authorized to provide consular services to residents of the consular district of Jerusalem only’
JERUSALEM: Israel’s foreign ministry said Monday it had told the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem to stop offering consular services to Palestinians from June 1 over Madrid’s recognition of a Palestinian state.
The ministry said in a statement that Spain’s consulate in Jerusalem is “authorized to provide consular services to residents of the consular district of Jerusalem only, and is not authorized to provide services or perform consular activity vis-a-vis residents of the Palestinian Authority.”
Israel army kills Palestinian teen after West Bank ‘attempted attack’
- The deadly incident took place near Hebron in the southern West Bank, the army and the Palestinian ministry said
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said its troops killed a Palestinian assailant in the occupied West Bank, with the Palestinian health ministry identifying him as a teenager.
Israeli forces “identified a terrorist who came in their direction and attempted to carry out a stabbing attack,” a military statement said.
“The soldiers fired at him and killed him,” it said.
The Palestinian health ministry identified the fatality as Majd Shahir Aramin, 14, and said he had been killed by Israeli forces.
The deadly incident took place near Hebron in the southern West Bank, the army and the Palestinian ministry said.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7.
According to Palestinian officials, at least 519 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israeli police and Jewish pilgrims clash at beleaguered festival site
- The all-night sessions of prayer, mystical songs and dance had in previous years drawn crowds in the tens of thousands
- Police limited the number of attendees since the 2021 tragedy in which 45 people died in a crowd rush
JERUSALEM: Clashes erupted on Sunday between police and Jewish pilgrims at a religious festival site in northern Israel where three years ago 45 people died in a crowd crush, and which authorities closed this year due to rocket fire from Lebanon.
Since the 2021 tragedy at the tomb of a 2nd-century sage during the annual Lag B’Omer celebration, police have limited the number of attendees.
The all-night sessions of prayer, mystical songs and dance had in previous years drawn crowds in the tens of thousands.
This year’s festival was canceled since the site at Meron in the Galilee region has been targeted by rocket fire from Lebanon.
Many northern Israeli towns have been evacuated since Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon began firing at them following Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Both sides have traded blows since. Despite the closure, police said they turned away thousands of pilgrims over the weekend, though hundreds managed to reach the site, where things got out of hand.
The visitors damaged property and hurled objects at officers, police said. Nineteen officers were injured.
Israeli media reported that several people among the unauthorized crowd were hurt. At least one officer was suspended for pushing an older man to the ground, and police said it was examining other incidents from the site.
Ten dead, 39 injured in southern Turkiye highway collision
ISTANBUL: Ten people died and 39 others were injured in southern Turkiye on Sunday when an intercity bus collided with three other vehicles on a main highway, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.
The bus, traveling to Istanbul from Diyarbakir, crashed into a transport truck and two other vehicles in the Tarsus district near the Mediterranean city of Mersin, he said on social media platform X.
The government said an investigation had been launched.
Israel war cabinet to discuss new push for Gaza hostage deal
- Hamas eader Izzat Al-Rishq jas accused Netanyahu earlier Sunday of “trying to buy more time to continue the aggression"
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he “strongly opposes” ending the war in Gaza, ahead of his war cabinet convening amid intense diplomacy to forge a truce and hostage release deal.
Meanwhile deadly fighting rocked the Gaza Strip and Hamas militants fired a salvo of rockets at Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv for the first time in months, sending people scrambling for shelter.
Netanyahu has long rejected Hamas’s demand in negotiations for a permanent end to the fighting, which was triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack and has left vast areas of besieged Gaza in ruins.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had earlier told AFP that “the war cabinet is expected to meet... tonight at 9 p.m. (1800 GMT) to discuss a hostage release deal.”
A statement issued by Netanyahu’s office before the meeting said Hamas chief in Gaza Yahya “Sinwar continues to demand the end of the war, the withdrawal of the IDF (army) from the Gaza Strip and leaving Hamas in place, so that it will be able to carry out the atrocities of October 7 again and again,” referring to the attack that triggered the war.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly opposes this,” the statement said.
A member of Hamas’s political leadership, Izzat Al-Rishq, accused Netanyahu earlier Sunday of “trying to buy more time to continue the aggression.”
In Brussels, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists before meeting Palestinian premier Mohammed Mustafa that a strong Palestinian Authority (PA) was in Israel’s interest.
EU members Ireland and Spain, and also Norway, have said they will recognize the State of Palestine from Tuesday, drawing furious Israeli condemnation.
“A functional Palestinian Authority is in Israel’s interest too, because in order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,” Borrell said.
Mustafa, whose government is based in the occupied West Bank, said the “first priority” was to support people in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority” there after Hamas seized it from the PA in 2007.
US President Joe Biden has pushed for renewed international efforts to halt the war, now in its eighth month.
The Israeli official had said Saturday that “there is an intention to renew these talks this week” after negotiations involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators stalled in early May.
However, Rishq said Sunday that so far, “we have not received anything from the mediators.”
He insisted on Hamas’s long-standing demand for a permanent cessation of hostilities as “the foundation and the starting point for anything.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas following the October 7 attack, but has also faced growing domestic and international criticism.
The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The military on Sunday announced the death of a soldier in north Gaza, taking to 289 the number of troops killed since Israel began its ground offensive in late October.
As the war ground on, the families of hostages still held by Palestinians militants have piled pressure on Netanyahu to secure a deal to free them.
Washington has also taken a tougher line with its close ally as outrage over the war and US support for Israel has become a major issue for Biden, seeking re-election in a battle against Donald Trump.
With more strikes reported Sunday across Gaza, Israel’s military said that over the past 24 hours it had destroyed “over 50 terror targets.”
Fighting has centered on the far-southern city of Rafah, where Israel launched a ground operation in early May despite widespread opposition over concerns for civilians sheltering there.
Rafah resident Moaz Abu Taha, 29, told AFP of “constant bombardment from land and air, which has destroyed many houses.”
Gaza’s civil defense agency said it had retrieved six bodies after a house was targeted in eastern Rafah.
Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted Tel Aviv “with a large rocket barrage in response to the Zionist (Israeli) massacres against civilians.”
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a televised briefing that “Hamas terrorists in Gaza fired eight rockets at central Israel from Rafah.”
“Hamas launched these rockets from near two mosques in Rafah,” Hagari said. “Hamas is holding our hostages in Rafah, which is why we have been conducting a precise operation” there.
Analyst Neomi Neumann said the militants were not trying to “cause damage to Israel, but to maintain continuity of fire.”
They “shoot relatively few rockets per barrage from their diminishing arsenal, and choose when to concentrate their efforts,” said Neumann, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
The UN has warned of looming famine in the besieged territory, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.
Amid the bloodiest ever Gaza war, Israel has faced growing global outcry over the surging civilian death toll, and landmark moves last week at two international courts.
Last Monday, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defense minister as well as for three top Hamas figures.
And on Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive or any other operation there that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.
