ISTANBUL: Police in Istanbul have launched a “large-scale investigation” after a Palestinian was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting as they sat in a car, officials and media said Monday.
The killer dropped a handgun fitted with a silencer at the scene, the Istanbul Governor’s Office said in a brief statement.
The Demiroren News Agency reported that the man sitting in the driver’s seat was killed and his friend seriously wounded in the shooting late Sunday. Another man, who the governor’s office described as the dead man’s bodyguard, was injured in the foot.
The killing was carried out by a masked assailant or assailants, the agency said. The victims were sitting on Dilaver Street in the Kagithane district of north Istanbul when the attack happened. It described the seriously wounded victim as a businessman.
Photographs of the scene showed a semi-automatic handgun with a silencer attached to the barrel lying on the sidewalk next to a white saloon car parked between two other vehicles.
The white car’s rear passenger door nearest the sidewalk appeared to have been punctured by several bullets.
1 Palestinian killed, 2 wounded in Istanbul street shooting
https://arab.news/4yu5y
1 Palestinian killed, 2 wounded in Istanbul street shooting
- The killer dropped a handgun fitted with a silencer at the scene
- The killing was carried out by a masked assailant or assailants
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
