BEIRUT: A car bombing killed two pro-Iran fighters in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor on Saturday, a war monitor said.
An explosive device went off in an SUV near the Iranian cultural center, killing two Iran-backed fighters, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Government forces and Iran-backed groups imposed a security cordon around the site of the attack, said the Observatory, a Britain-based organization with a network of sources on the ground in the war-torn country.
It was unclear who was behind the attack in Deir Ezzor city, a stronghold of Tehran that is home to Iranian advisers, institutions, and the cultural center.
Control of Deir Ezzor province, an oil-rich region bordering Iraq, is split between Kurdish forces to the east of the Euphrates and Iran-backed Syrian government forces and their proxies to the west.
Iran-backed groups including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement have bolstered President Bashar Assad’s forces since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.
The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered a conflict that has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and militants.
Car bombing kills two pro-Iran fighters in Syria: monitor
https://arab.news/b43qw
Car bombing kills two pro-Iran fighters in Syria: monitor
- An explosive device went off in an SUV near the Iranian cultural center
- It was unclear who was behind the attack in Deir Ezzor city
Medical charity ‘may have to halt Gaza operations in March’
- MSF called this demand a “scandalous intrusion” but Israel says it was needed to stop extremists from infiltrating into humanitarian structures
PARIS: Banned from the Gaza Strip with 36 aid bodies, medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Saturday it will have to end its operations there in March if Israel does not reverse its decision.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Israel confirmed on Thursday that it was barring 37 major international humanitarian organizations from entering the Gaza Strip, accusing them of failing to provide the list of their employees’ names, which is now officially required for “security” reasons.
FASTFACT
MSF has approximately 40 international staff in the Gaza Strip and employs 800 Palestinian staff across eight hospitals.
MSF called this demand a “scandalous intrusion” but Israel says it was needed to stop extremists from infiltrating into humanitarian structures.
“To work in Palestine, in the occupied Palestinian territories, we have to be registered ... That registration expired on Dec. 31, 2025,” said Isabelle Defourny, a physician and president of MSF France, on France Inter.
“Since July 2025, we have been involved in a re-registration process, and to date, we have not received a response. We still have 60 days during which we could work without being re-registered, and so we would have to end our activities in March,” if Israel maintains its decision, she said.
MSF has approximately 40 international staff in the Gaza Strip and employs 800 Palestinian staff across eight hospitals.
“We are the second-largest distributor of water (in the Gaza Strip). Last year, in 2025, we treated just over 100,000 people who were wounded, burned, or victims of various traumas. We are second in terms of the number of deliveries performed,” the president of MSF France said.
According to her, the Israeli decision is explained by the fact that NGOs “bear witness to the violence committed by the Israeli army” in Gaza.
The UN chief “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in the statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than 2 million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
