TEHRAN: Syrian President Bashar Assad met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a close ally, in Tehran on Thursday to offer condolences for the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s Student News Network (SNN) reported.
Raisi died when his helicopter crashed on May 19 near the Azerbaijan border.
Khamenei and Assad met last in 2022 in Tehran, during which both sides called for stronger relations.
On Thursday, Assad and Khamenei said ties were strong, according to a statement by the Syrian presidency.
Assad was able to turn the tide of Syria’s civil war, which erupted from mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, with crucial help from Iran’s proxy militias and Russia’s military intervention in 2015.
Israel, whose existence is not recognized by the Islamic Republic, has mounted frequent attacks on what it has described as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia have deployed over the past decade to support Assad in Syria’s war.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei hosts Syria’s Assad in Tehran
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei hosts Syria’s Assad in Tehran
- Assad and Khamenei said ties were strong
UN rights chief Shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
