BENGHAZI: Libyan forces fighting in Benghazi have lost four men and seen 10 wounded so far in December, five months after declaring victory in a campaign to control the eastern city, a medical source said on Monday.
Three of the dead from the Libyan National Army (LNA) were killed by snipers and one by a land mine as it faces resistance from a group of fighters in the Benghazi district of Khreibish.
There have been daily clashes in the area and occasional air strikes.
LNA commander Khalifa Haftar declared victory in a three-year military campaign against an array of extremists and other fighters in Benghazi in early July.
The fighting is part of a broader conflict that developed following the 2011 fall of strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Haftar has opposed a UN-backed government based in the capital, Tripoli, as he has gradually strengthened his position on the ground.
Also on Monday, he UN urgently appealed for countries to take in 1,300 “extremely vulnerable” refugees stranded in Libya, following revelations of horrific abuse of migrants in the country.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said there was a dire need for 1,300 resettlement places by the end of March 2018.
“This is a desperate call for solidarity and humanity,” Volker Turk, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, said in a statement.
“We need to get extremely vulnerable refugees out of Libya as soon as possible,” he said. The chaos-ridden country has long been a major transit hub for migrants trying to reach Europe. Many refugees and migrants have fallen prey to serious abuse there at the hands of human traffickers and others.
European and African leaders have already vowed to evacuate nearly 4,000 distressed migrants from Libya after global outrage erupted last month over video footage showing African migrants being auctioned off as slaves in the country.
“Many refugees, asylum seekers and stateless persons in Libya are victims of serious violations of human rights, including different forms of inhumane, cruel and degrading treatment,” the UNHCR warned in Monday’s appeal.
It stressed that many of them had been detained for an indefinite period of time in deplorable conditions, denouncing the “routine detention of refugees and displaced people.”
The UN refugee agency in early November evacuated a first group of 25 vulnerable refugees — 15 women, six men and four children of Eritrean, Ethiopian and Sudanese nationalities — to Niger.
“Given the imminent humanitarian needs and the rapidly deteriorating conditions in detention centers in Libya, UNHCR is actively working to organize more life-saving refugee evacuations to Niger in the coming weeks and months,” Turk said.
UNHCR said the vulnerable refugees included unaccompanied children, single mothers, people with serious medical conditions and people who had been severely tortured during their journey or in detention in Libya.
The agency said it aimed to evacuate them to Niger and hopefully other emergency transit centers pending their final resettlement to other countries.
“Given the seriousness of the situation for refugees in Libya, we need to explore all sorts of solutions, including resettlement, family reunification, evacuation to UNHCR-run emergency facilities in other countries, or voluntary return,” Turk said.
Libyan forces suffer casualties as fighting drags on in Benghazi
Libyan forces suffer casualties as fighting drags on in Benghazi
Syrian military tells civilians to evacuate contested area east of Aleppo amid rising tensions
- Syria’s military has announced it will open a “humanitarian corridor” for civilians to evacuate from an area in Aleppo province
- This follows several days of intense clashes between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces
DAMASCUS: Syria’s military said it would open a corridor Thursday for civilians to evacuate an area of Aleppo province that has seen a military buildup following intense clashes between government and Kurdish-led forces in Aleppo city.
The army’s announcement late Wednesday — which said civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday — appeared to signal plans for an offensive in the towns of Deir Hafer and Maskana and surrounding areas, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) east of Aleppo city.
The military called on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and other armed groups to withdraw to the other side of the the Euphrates River, to the east of the contested zone.
Syrian government troops have already sent troop reinforcements to the area after accusing the SDF of building up its own forces there, which the SDF denied. There have been limited exchanges of fire between the two sides, and the SDF has said that Turkish drones carried out strikes there.
The government has accused the SDF of launching drone strikes in Aleppo city, including one that hit the Aleppo governorate building on Saturday shortly after two Cabinet ministers and a local official held a news conference there.
The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo city that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters and government forces taking control of three contested neighborhoods. The fighting killed at least 23 people, wounded dozens more, and displaced tens of thousands.
The fighting broke out as negotiations have stalled between Damascus and the SDF, which controls large swaths of northeast Syria, over an agreement to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.
Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, which was formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkiye-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The SDF for years has been the main US partner in Syria in fighting against the Daesh group, but Turkiye considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkiye. A peace process is now underway.
Despite the long-running US support for the SDF, the Trump administration has also developed close ties with the government of interim Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and has pushed the Kurds to implement the integration deal. Washington has so far avoided publicly taking sides in the clashes in Aleppo.
The SDF in a statement warned of “dangerous repercussions on civilians, infrastructure, and vital facilities” in case of a further escalation and said Damascus bears “full responsibility for this escalation and all ensuing humanitarian and security repercussions in the region.”
Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, said in a statement Tuesday that the US is “closely monitoring” the situation and called for “all parties to exercise maximum restraint, avoid actions that could further escalate tensions, and prioritize the protection of civilians and critical infrastructure.” He called on the parties to “return to the negotiating table in good faith.”
Al-Sharaa blasts the SDF
In a televised interview aired Wednesday, Al-Sharaa praised the “courage of the Kurds” and said he would guarantee their rights and wants them to be part of the Syrian army, but he lashed out at the SDF.
He accused the group of not abiding by an agreement reached last year under which their forces were supposed to withdraw from neighborhoods they controlled in Aleppo city and of forcibly preventing civilians from leaving when the army opened a corridor for them to evacuate amid the recent clashes.
Al-Sharaa claimed that the SDF refused attempts by France and the US to mediate a ceasefire and withdrawal of Kurdish forces during the clashes due to an order from the PKK.
The interview was initially intended to air Tuesday on Shams TV, a broadcaster based in Irbil — the seat of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region — but was canceled for what the station initially said were technical reasons.
Later the station’s manager said that the interview had been spiked out of fear of further inflaming tensions because of the hard line Al-Sharaa took against the SDF.
Syria’s state TV station instead aired clips from the interview on Wednesday. There was no immediate response from the SDF to Al-Sharaa’s comments.
