BEIRUT: Syrian Kurdish forces said Monday they are increasing security at prisons and detention facilities holding tens of thousands of Daesh militants and supporters, including foreigners, following the death of the extremist group’s leader in a US military raid.
The heightened security also comes as Kurdish forces said they are continuing operations to hunt down Daesh leaders in Syria. Hours after the raid that killed Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in northwestern Syria, another attack based on Kurdish intelligence killed one of his aides and possible successors, Kurdish forces said.
If confirmed, the death of Abu Hassan Al-MuHajjir would be another blow to Daesh. US officials had no immediate comment.
Forces from the Kurdish-led internal security agency were “on high alert” after Al-Baghdadi’s death in anticipation of possible riots or attacks on the prisons and camps for displaced people in northeastern Syria where Daesh members or supporters are located, an official with the agency said.
One of the camps is home to 70,000 people, most of them relatives of the extremists. More than 10,000 prisoners, including 2,000 foreigners, are held in detention facilities in northeastern Syria.
Fear of chaos already was running high over the fate of those detained after this month’s Turkish military invasion of northeastern Syria, which ushered in major troop changes in the area. Turkey moved troops into areas along the border, while Syrian border guards were deployed in others.
Kurdish officials had said they needed to divert fighters and logistics to the front line to ward off the Turkish offensive. A shaky cease-fire is in place and an agreement to redeploy Kurdish forces away from the borders.
Security forces have been able to secure the prisons, according to another official with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
News of Al-Baghdadi’s death had not yet been formally announced to those in the camps on Monday, but many of them have telephones and news has most likely reached them.
President Donald Trump announced Al-Baghdadi’s death in a nationally televised address from the White House on Sunday, saying he exploded his suicide vest while being pursued by US troops.
His death left Daesh without an obvious leader — a major setback for a terror organization that in March was forced by US and Kurdish forces out of the last portion of its self-declared “caliphate,” which once spanned parts of Iraq and Syria.
Later Sunday, Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Kurdish-led forces, said his group’s intelligence cooperated with the US military to target Al-MuHajjir in a village near Jarablus in northwestern Syria. It was part of ongoing operations to hunt down Daesh leaders, Abdi said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported Al-MuHajjir’s death, saying he was traveling in a convoy made up of an oil tanker and a sedan. The bodies of those killed were badly burned and it wasn’t immediately clear how Al-MuHajjir’s identity was confirmed.
The US raid that killed Al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of Daesh who presided over its global jihad and became one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, took place just before midnight Saturday in Syria’s Idlib province.
It was a milestone in the fight against Daesh, which brutalized thousands of people in Syria and Iraq and sought to direct a global campaign from a self-declared “caliphate.” A military campaign by US and allied forces led to the recapture of the territory the group held, but its violent ideology has continued to inspire attacks.
Syrian Kurdish forces spokesman Mustafa Bali said his fighters believe Al-MuHajjir was in Jarablus to facilitate Al-Baghdadi’s travel to the area, which is administered by Turkey-backed fighters.
“More (IS figures) remain hiding in the area,” Bali said Sunday.
Little is known about Al-MuHajjir, who assumed the role of a spokesman after his predecessor was killed in a 2016 airstrike. Al-MuHajjir is a nom-de-guerre that indicates he is a foreigner, and he also was believed to be a possible successor to Al-Baghdadi.
Trump’s decision to pull back US troops from northeastern Syria raised a storm of bipartisan criticism in Washington, including statements that the move could help IS regain strength after its territorial losses. It also was viewed as an abandonment of the only US ally in Syria, the Kurdish-led forces, who fought Daesh for years with the US-led coalition.
Trump said the troop pullout “had nothing to do with this,” and said Kurdish forces were among the many sides cooperating in the Al-Baghdadi operation. Both Iraqi and Kurdish officials claimed a role, and the Turkish military also tweeted that prior to the operation, it exchanged information and coordinated with US military.
Security increased at Daesh prisons after leader’s death
Security increased at Daesh prisons after leader’s death
- Kurdish forces said they are continuing operations to hunt down Daesh leaders in Syria
- Forces from the Kurdish-led internal security agency were “on high alert” after Al-Baghdadi’s death
Canadian man shot dead in Egypt, says security source
- Security sources made no link between the shooting and the dead man’s ethnic background
- A statement claiming the killing by a previously unknown group called “Liberation Vanguards” was circulating on social media
CAIRO: A Canadian man “of Jewish Israeli descent” has been shot dead during a robbery in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and authorities are investigating the incident as a criminal case, a security source said late on Tuesday.
The security source told Reuters the man had been killed “with the motive of robbery.” The source made no link between the shooting and the dead man’s ethnic background.
The interior ministry confirmed the shooting and said the man had been a permanent resident of Egypt. Neither the ministry nor the source gave any further details.
A statement claiming the killing by a previously unknown group called “Liberation Vanguards” was circulating on social media, but security sources said they had no information on the existence of such a group or whether it had been involved in the incident.
The shooting happened on Tuesday as Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter during Israel’s seven-month-old offensive.
One day after the war in Gaza began last October following an attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel, two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian guide were shot dead in Alexandria, in the first such attack on Israelis in Egypt in decades.
A policeman who said he had “lost control” was placed in custody regarding that incident.
Israel pounds Gaza as truce talks resume in Cairo
- AlQahera News: ‘Truce negotiations have resumed in Cairo today with all sides present’
- Moscow so far sees no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israel bombarded the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah, where it has launched a ground incursion, as talks resumed Wednesday in Cairo aimed at agreeing the terms of a truce in the seven-month war.
Despite international objections, Israel sent tanks into Rafah on Tuesday and seized the nearby crossing into Egypt that is the main conduit for aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries, with a senior US official later revealing Washington had paused a shipment of bombs last week after Israel failed to address US concerns over its Rafah plans.
The Israeli military said hours later it was reopening another major aid crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, as well as the Erez crossing.
But the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the Kerem Shalom crossing — which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday — remained closed.
It came after a night of heavy Israeli strikes and shelling across Gaza. AFPTV footage showed Palestinians scrambling in the dark to pull survivors, bloodied and caked in dust, out from under the rubble of a Rafah building.
Russia said on Wednesday that the war in Gaza was escalating due to Israel’s incursion into Rafah and that Moscow so far saw no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East.
“An additional destabilizing factor, including for the entire region, was the launch of an Israeli military ground operation in Rafah,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“About one and a half million Palestinian civilians are concentrated there. In this regard, we demand strict compliance with the provisions of international humanitarian law.”
Speaking more broadly about efforts to find a lasting settlement in the Middle East, Zakharova said: “I would like to call it a settlement, but, alas, it is far from a settlement.”
“There are no prospects for resolving the situation in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the situation in the conflict zone is escalating daily.”
“We are living in Rafah in extreme fear and endless anxiety as the occupation army keeps firing artillery shells indiscriminately,” said Muhanad Ahmad Qishta, 29.
“Rafah is a witnessing a very large displacement, as places the Israeli army claims to be safe are also being bombed,” he said.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel in response vowed to crush Hamas and launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Militants also took around 250 people hostage, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 who are believed to be dead.
Talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire resumed in Cairo on Wednesday “in the presence of all parties,” Egyptian media reported.
A senior Hamas official said the latest round of negotiations would be “decisive.”
“The resistance insists on the rightful demands of its people and will not give up any of our people’s rights,” he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the negotiations.
The official had previously warned it would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the scores of hostages still in militants’ hands.
Mediators have failed to broker a new truce since a week-long ceasefire in November saw 105 hostages freed, the Israelis among them in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Mediator Qatar urges international community to prevent Rafah ‘genocide’
- Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt
- African Union condemns the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah
DOHA: Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah following Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault.
In a statement the Gulf state, which has been mediating between Israel and militant group Hamas, appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed.”
Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt. Israel has vowed for weeks to launch a ground incursion into Rafah, despite a clamour of international objection.
The attacks on the southern city, which is packed with displaced civilians, came as negotiators and mediators met in Cairo to try to hammer out a hostage-release and truce deal in the seven-month war.
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged — along with Egypt and the United States — in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian group.
The African Union condemned Wednesday the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah, calling for the international community to stop “this deadly escalation” of the war.
AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat “firmly condemns the extension of this war to the Rafah crossing,” said a statement after Israeli tanks captured the key corridor for humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
Faki “expresses his extreme concern at the war undertaken by Israel in Gaza which results, at every moment, in massive deaths and systematic destruction of the conditions of human life,” the statement said.
“He calls on the entire international community to effectively coordinate collective action to stop this deadly escalation.”
Israel says it has reopened Kerem Shalom border crossing for Gaza aid
- Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory
JERUSALEM: Israel said it reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to humanitarian aid for Gaza Wednesday, four days after closing it in response to a rocket attack that killed four soldiers.
“Trucks from Egypt carrying humanitarian aid, including food, water, shelter equipment, medicine and medical equipment donated by the international community are already arriving at the crossing,” the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the defense ministry body that oversees Palestinian civil affairs.
The supplies will be transferred to the Gaza side of the crossing after undergoing inspection, it added.
The statement said the Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory.
The Kerem Shalom crossing was closed after a Hamas rocket attack killed four soldiers and wounded more than a dozen on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt after launching an incursion into the eastern sector of the city.
The United Nations and Israel’s staunchest ally the United States both condemned the closure of the two crossings which are a lifeline for civilians facing looming famine.
‘A blessing’: Rains refill Iraq’s drought-hit reservoirs
- The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019
- Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change
Darbandikhan: The reservoir behind the massive Darbandikhan dam, tucked between the rolling mountains of northeastern Iraq, is almost full again after four successive years of drought and severe water shortages.
Iraqi officials say recent rainfall has refilled some of the water-scarce country’s main reservoirs, taking levels to a record since 2019.
“The dam’s storage capacity is three million cubic meters (106 million cubic feet). Today, with the available reserves, the dam is only missing 25 centimeters (10 inches) of water to be considered full,” Saman Ismail, director of the Darbandikhan facility, told AFP on Sunday.
Built on the River Sirwan, the dam is located south of the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
“In the coming days, we will be able to say that it’s full,” said Ismail, with the water just a few meters below the road running along the edge of the basin.
The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019, and since then “we’ve only had years of drought and shortages,” said Ismail.
He cited “climate change in the region” as a reason, “but also dam construction beyond Kurdistan’s borders.”
The central government in Baghdad says upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye have heavily reduced water flow in Iraq’s rivers, on top of rising temperatures and irregular rainfall.
This winter, however, bountiful rains have helped to ease shortages in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
In Iraq, rich in oil but where infrastructure is often run-down, torrential rains have also flooded the streets of Kurdistan’s regional capital Irbil.
Four hikers died last week in floods in Kurdistan, and in Diyala, a rural province in central Iraq, houses were destroyed.
Ali Radi Thamer, director of the dam authority at Iraq’s water resources ministry, said that most of the country’s six biggest dams have experienced a rise in water levels.
At the Mosul dam, the largest reservoir with a capacity of about 11 billion cubic meters, “the storage level is very good, we have benefitted from the rains and the floods,” said Thamer.
Last summer, he added, Iraq’s “water reserves... reached a historic low.”
“The reserves available today will have positive effects for all sectors,” Thamer said, including agriculture and treatment plants that produce potable water, as well as watering southern Iraq’s fabled marshes that have dried up in recent years.
He cautioned that while 2019 saw “a sharp increase in water reserves,” it was followed by “four successive dry seasons.”
Water has been a major issue in Iraq, a country of 43 million people that faces a serious environmental crisis from worsening climate change, with temperatures frequently hitting 50 degrees Celsius in summer.
“Sure, today we have rain and floods, water reserves that have relatively improved, but this does not mean the end of drought,” Thamer said.
About five kilometers (three miles) south of Darbandikhan, terraces near a small riverside tourist establishment are submerged in water.
But owner Aland Salah prefers to see the glass half full.
“The water of the Sirwan river is a blessing,” he told AFP.
“When the flow increases, the area grows in beauty.
“We have some damage, but we will keep working.”
