GENEVA: The United Nations called on Thursday for a humanitarian pause to allow an estimated 20,000 trapped civilians to escape the Syrian city of Raqqa, and urged the US-led coalition to rein in air strikes that have caused casualties.
“Boats on the Euphrates must not be attacked, people who come out cannot risk air raids when they come out,” Jan Egeland, humanitarian adviser on Syria, told reporters in Geneva.
“So now is the time to think of possibilities, pauses or otherwise that might facilitate the escape of civilians, knowing that Daesh fighters are doing their absolute best to keep them in place,” he said.
The United Nations is still assessing the outcome of talks held this week in Riyadh between the three Syrian opposition groups — who failed to unite — Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, the UN deputy special envoy for Syria, said.
Asked whether Syria peace talks would be held in Geneva in September, he said: “Based on our assessment of what happened in Riyadh we will decide how to move ahead in the future.”
UN calls for pause, sparing civilians in Syria’s Raqqa
UN calls for pause, sparing civilians in Syria’s Raqqa
Israeli strikes killed eight people in south Lebanon: state media
- Israeli strikes killed eight people in Lebanon on Thursday as Israel renewed its evacuation call for vast areas of the country’s south, long a stronghold of Hezbollah
BEIRUT: Israeli strikes killed eight people in Lebanon on Thursday as Israel renewed its evacuation call for vast areas of the country’s south, long a stronghold of Hezbollah.
The Iran-backed militant group, which dragged Lebanon into the regional war on Monday when it launched an attack on Israel, said it had launched missiles at positions in the Galilee area.
The National News Agency (NNA) reported that the mayor of a village in the Nabatieh region of south Lebanon and his wife were killed in one strike, while in a nearby village another strike killed two children and their parents.
The Lebanese health ministry said two people were killed by a strike on a car near the city of Zahle in the east of the country.
There were new strikes on the southern suburbs of the capital, Hezbollah’s main bastion, early on Thursday, NNA reported, with AFPTV footage showing smoke coming from the area.
It also said a pre-dawn Israeli drone strike hit an apartment in Beddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, killing senior Hamas official Wassim Atallah Al-Ali and his wife.
Also on Thursday, Israel renewed its warning to residents of hundreds of square kilometers (miles) of southern Lebanon to evacuate because of military action.
Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military Avichay Adraee posted on X: “Urgent warning to residents of southern Lebanon: you must immediately continue evacuating to the north of the Litani river.”
The warning included the cities of Tyre and Bint Jbeil.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it was creating a buffer zone inside Lebanon to protect Israeli residents.
The following day, it said troops from three divisions, including infantry, armored and engineering units were operating inside Lebanon.
