Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions

A man holds a walkie talkie device after he removed the battery during the funeral of persons killed when hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024 (AFP)
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Updated 26 September 2024
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Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions

  • Communication devices exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing at least 15 people and injuring thousands
  • Suspected Israeli attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that Hezbollah has almost no choice but to respond

LONDON: At precisely 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, an estimated 3,000 pagers carried by Hezbollah members beeped several times before exploding simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon and parts of Syria.

At least eight of the dead were reportedly members of Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the many wounded included Mojtaba Amini, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, who may have lost at least one eye.

But clips from security cameras in shops in Beirut and other locations, circulated on social media, illustrated the dangerously indiscriminate nature of the attack.

 

 

Many civilians going about their day also fell victim to the blasts as pagers exploded in supermarkets, on the streets, and in cars and homes. Among the dead were two children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fleets of ambulances ferried a reported 2,700 wounded to hospitals across Lebanon, where overwhelmed medics struggled to cope with multiple victims suffering serious wounds, mainly to their hips, where pagers are generally worn on belts, and to hands and eyes.

On Wednesday afternoon, further blasts were reported across Lebanon, this time reportedly involving hand-held radios, causing at least three further fatalities and a hundred more wounded, according to Lebanese state media.

 

 

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack. But on Wednesday a US official told AP that Israel had briefed Washington on the attack after it had been carried out and, with no other feasible suspect in the frame, there is little doubt that it was the handiwork of Mossad, Israel’s lethally inventive foreign intelligence agency.

It is also clear that, figuratively and literally, the pager attack was both designed and timed to send a message.

The opportunity to use pagers as an offensive weapon arose in February when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly warned members to stop using cell phones, which are easily bugged and traced and have been linked with many assassinations executed by missile attacks.

 

According to a senior Lebanese security source quoted by The Times of Israel, Hezbollah then ordered 5,000 pagers, which were imported into Lebanon earlier this year.

Initial speculation was that Israel had somehow infected the pagers with code designed to cause lithium batteries inside them to overheat and explode. However, it has since emerged that the pagers used only ordinary AAA batteries.

Besides, the near-instantaneous and synchronized detonations, apparently triggered by incoming messages, suggest the pagers had all been fitted with a small amount of explosive and a miniature electronic detonator.

On Tuesday, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters: “The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means, even with any device or scanner.”

On Wednesday, Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese firm whose brand name was found on the pagers used in the attack, denied involvement, saying the AR-924 models widely identified after the blasts had been made under license by a Budapest-based company, BAC Consulting KFT.




Hsu Ching-kuang, head of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, speaks to the media outside the company's office in New Taipei City on Sept. 18, 2024, saying his company had nothing to do with the pager explosion attack in Lebanon. (AFP)

In a statement issued at 1:40 p.m. Taiwan time on Wednesday, Gold Apollo said: “This model is produced and sold by BAC. Our company only provides the brand trademark authorization and is not involved in the design or manufacturing of this product.”

Images of BAC’s headquarters — a modest, semi-detached building on Szonyi Street in the north of Budapest — have spread on social media, but BAC has yet to comment. Its website went offline on Wednesday and the profile of its owner and managing director was deleted from LinkedIn.

It is, however, extremely unlikely that any genuine company would knowingly take part in such an operation, risking Hezbollah’s wrath, knowing full well that the devices would be easily traced back to it. This has provoked some speculation that BAC, established only in 2022, might have been a front company operated by Israeli intelligence.




Combo image showing a walkie-talkie (right frame) that was exploded inside a house in Baalbek, east Lebanon, on Sept. 17, 2024, and a man holding a walkie talkie device after he removed the battery following the pager explosions. (AP/AFP)

A more likely scenario is that the batch of pagers ordered by Hezbollah were intercepted en route to Lebanon by Israeli agents — most probably at a port or airport, where typical customs and shipping delays may have given agents, working with local collaborators, enough time to meddle with the devices.

Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is a major transport hub on the River Danube and is home to Csepel Freeport, the country’s principal port.

Wherever the devices were tampered with, “the use of pagers bears the hallmark of Israel weaponizing digital technology to achieve political ends,” Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor in the Department of History at California State University San Marcos, told Arab News.




Social media photo showing a pager battery that exploded during an apparent Israeli attack on Sept. 17, 2024 against users of the device in southern Lebanon. (AFP)

Israel has “form” in such warfare. In 2010, “a code known as Stuxnet, snuck into a USB drive, caused Iranian centrifuges to accelerate to the point that they destroyed themselves.”

In 1996, Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash was killed when explosives hidden inside his cell phone were triggered remotely by Israeli agents.

“The advantage of the most recent attack in Lebanon is that it allows Israel to strike from a distance while claiming plausible deniability, avoiding a US rebuke at a time when Washington has pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike Hezbollah,” said Al-Marashi.

But the pager attack, he warned, could lead to a dangerous escalation.




Ambulances are surrounded by people at the entrance of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on Sept.17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon. (AFP)

“Hezbollah does have the ability to weaponize the digital in retaliation, raising the possibility that violent non-state actors might even pursue artificial intelligence to retaliate against their adversaries.”

Given the complexities of the operation, and the sheer workload involved in sabotaging thousands of devices, there is little doubt that the attack would have been weeks, if not months, in the planning.

But it is the timing of the attack that sends the most worrying signal.

The day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, its ally Hezbollah began firing missiles into northern Israel — a near-daily bombardment that has increased steadily in intensity, forcing the evacuation of thousands of Israelis from the border region.




Lebanese army soldiers stand guard in Beirut on September 17, 2024, after an Israeli pager device attack against the Hezbollah in southern  Lebanon on September 17. (AFP

After a meeting of its Security Cabinet on Monday night, barely 12 hours before the pagers were detonated, Netanyahu’s office announced that “the Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”

At the same time, reports suggested Netanyahu was on the brink of buckling to the extremist elements in his cabinet by sacking his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has criticized him for having no postwar plan for Gaza, and replacing him with Gideon Saar, leader of the New Hope — The United Right party.

On Wednesday, the day after the pager attack, reports in Israeli and other media, citing anonymous US and Israeli officials, suggested it had been planned originally as “an opening blow in an all-out war against Hezbollah.”





Relatives mourn Fatima Abdallah — a 10-year-old girl killed in Israel's pager device attack — during her funeral in the village of Saraain in the Bekaa valley on September 18, 2024. (AFP)
 

According to The Times of Israel, a Hezbollah operative “had come to suspect the devices had been tampered with.” He was killed before he could alert his superiors, but the decision was taken to detonate the pagers before the plot was uncovered.

The question now is whether Israel is poised to follow up the pager attack, perhaps as was planned, with an all-out assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“We have been teetering on the brink of a wider war for many months now,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told Arab News.

“Hezbollah and Iran have made it clear they don’t want this broader conflict to erupt, but Israel cannot end the war in Gaza without addressing the security crisis on its northern borders with Iran, Lebanon and Syria.




Mourners carry the coffin of Mohammed Mahdi, son of Hezbollah legislator Ali Ammar, who was killed Tuesday after his handheld pager exploded, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 18, 2024. (AP)

“In order to address this security imbalance, which puts at risk the safety of the broader population but also that of those displaced since the war began, Israel is trying to target and degrade the ‘Axis of Resistance’ to stave off further threats,” she said, referring to the loose network of Iranian proxies throughout the region.

“But this strategy could certainly push the groups and Iran to respond and eventually draw in regional states and above all the US.”

Most Israelis, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of the nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, “will tell you that war with Hezbollah is inevitable, but a large percentage say: ‘Not now.’

“The priorities for many are a ceasefire in Gaza, release of the hostages and dialing down the tension in Lebanon. Hezbollah can wait,” he told Arab News.

“Hezbollah, actively backed by Iran, is a much greater threat to Israel than Hamas and the general perception is that there will eventually be a war with Hezbollah, but Israelis know this will be much different than what we have witnessed in the past. It would mean years of war and vast devastation.

“But Netanyahu has a vested interest in the perpetuation of the war, which would be good for Netanyahu but intolerable for Israel.”

 

 

What happens next, added Seidemann, “is not only an Israeli decision. Will the US provide the munitions and the rest of the world the legitimization to pursue a protracted war in Lebanon?

“The bottom line is that right now, anything can happen.”

For Al-Marashi, “there are a lot of variables in regard to further escalation that make predictions difficult, more difficult than at any time in analyzing systemic conflicts in the Middle East.

“Despite US sanctions on Iran, news emerged over the weekend that Iran has launched a satellite into space and allegedly has provided ballistic missiles to Russia.

“Second, the Houthis in Yemen have overcome a technical hurdle, launching a ballistic missile against Israel and having it hit Israeli soil, meaning Israel’s system that intercepts such missiles failed.




An Israeli firefighter works to put out a blaze after rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israel, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in Kiryat Shmona, Israel, on Sept. 18, 2024. (REUTERS)

“From that perspective, both Israeli adversaries have demonstrated they can overcome technical hurdles, signaling to Israel that it is not invulnerable.”

Were a regional war to escalate, he added, “it would put US positions in Bahrain and Iraq in the crosshairs of the Axis of Resistance. Biden, seeking to ensure a Kamala Harris victory in the US election, is most likely going to pressure Israel not to escalate matters prior to the election.

“At the same time, if war in the Middle East helped Donald Trump, that would work to the advantage of Netanyahu, who would prefer a Trump presidency.”

The Middle East, said Brian Katulis, senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, “has been teetering on the edge of a wider escalation for much of this past year, with the risk of nation-states going directly to war with one another growing.”




An armored personnel carrier of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrols along al-Khardali road along the Israel-Lebanon border on September 17, 2024. (PhotAFP)

It was, he told Arab News, important to keep in mind the two core drivers of events — “a regime in Iran that operates with a revolutionary ideology that seeks to upend the state order of the Middle East, and an increasingly right-wing Israeli government that rejects a two-state solution and is unable to see the historic opportunity it has in opening relations with key Arab states if it took steps to define a clear end to this war that leads to a State of Palestine.”

In this context, “the US and outside actors such as Europe, China, and Russia can play important roles in trying to shape the trajectory of events in the region, but the main drivers are the regional actors themselves.

“One interesting pivotal grouping is the Arab Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, who do not want to see a wider regional escalation with Iran but do want to advance a two-state solution.”

Right now, however, even as uncertainty remains about Israel’s next move, much depends on how Hezbollah will respond to the extraordinary blow it suffered on Tuesday.

The attack, described by a Hezbollah official as “the targeting of an entire nation,” has been condemned as “an extremely concerning escalation” by Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon.

 

 

In the past year, Hezbollah has suffered the loss of more than 400 fighters, including senior commander Fuad Shukr, to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.

But the pager attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that if it is to save face, Hezbollah’s leadership has almost no choice but to respond with more than the usual daily delivery of a handful of rockets.




Hashim Safieddine, a Shiite Muslim cleric and the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council, speaks during the funeral of persons killed after hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024. (AFP)

After Israel’s multiple airstrikes in southern Lebanon last week and now the pager attack, “we are more on the precipice of a regional war than ever,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.

“We will have to see how Hezbollah will retaliate now, and the level of that response will determine where this goes. But these episodes are an indication that things are heating up and we are close to the precipice.”

As for Netanyahu, after almost a year of fighting in Gaza, the fear now is that his answer to growing domestic criticism over the apparent absence of a postwar plan may be an even more nightmarish scenario — more war, only this time in Lebanon.

 


US general discusses Syria, other regional issues in Israel visit

Updated 57 min 50 sec ago
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US general discusses Syria, other regional issues in Israel visit

  • Washington has urged Israel to be in close consultation with the US over events unfolding in Syria
  • Israeli military said its jets conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria and destroyed the bulk of its strategic weapons stockpiles

WASHINGTON: A top US military officer visited Israel from Wednesday to Friday, meeting with Israeli defense officials and discussing the situation in Syria, among other regional topics, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.
Army General Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM’s commander, met Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, along with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, CENTCOM said.
Washington has urged Israel to be in close consultation with the US over events unfolding in Syria, where days earlier Syrian rebels led by rebel leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani brought an end to more than 50 years of rule by the Assad family, as ousted President Bashar Assad fled the country.
The world has been watching to see if Syria’s new rulers can stabilize the country in which more than a decade of civil war killed hundreds of thousands and sparked a refugee crisis.
Following the collapse of Assad’s regime, the Israeli military said its jets conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria and destroyed the bulk of its strategic weapons stockpiles.
Katz has ordered Israeli troops to prepare to stay over the winter on Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus, adding to signs that Israel is planning a prolonged military presence in Syria.
“The leaders discussed a range of regional security issues, to include the ongoing situation in Syria, and preparedness against other strategic and regional threats,” the CENTCOM statement said.
CENTCOM said Kurilla also visited Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon in recent days.
While Israel welcomed the removal of Assad, an ally of arch rival Iran, it is suspicious of the rebel groups that toppled him, many of which have origins linked to Islamist groups.
In Lebanon, Kurilla visited Beirut to monitor withdrawal of the first Israeli troops under a ceasefire reached last month for a war that killed thousands and displaced over a million.
Israel is separately waging a war in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, where its military assault over the last 14 months has killed tens of thousands and led to genocide and war crimes accusations that it denies.
Israel’s assault on Gaza followed an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian Hamas militants that killed 1,200.


Israel orders troops to ‘prepare to remain’ in Syria buffer zone through winter

Updated 14 December 2024
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Israel orders troops to ‘prepare to remain’ in Syria buffer zone through winter

  • Israel seized demilitarized zone hours after Syrian opposition forces wept president Bashar Assad from power
  • Israel says it seized UN-patrolled buffer zone to defend itself after Assad's ouster from office during civil war 

JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the military to “prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights.

Israel seized the demilitarized zone on Sunday, just hours after Syrian opposition forces swept president Bashar Assad from power.

Since then, the Israeli military has launched hundreds of air and naval strikes against Syrian military assets, targeting everything from chemical weapons stores to air defenses to prevent them from falling into opposition forces’ hands.

The plan to deploy troops in the buffer zone comes at a time when Israeli forces are still withdrawing from southern Lebanon after fighting Hezbollah militants for months and the war in Gaza with Palestinian militants continues.

“Due to the situation in Syria, it is of critical security importance to maintain our presence at the summit of Mount Hermon, and everything must be done to ensure the (army’s) readiness on-site to enable the fighters to stay there despite the challenging weather conditions,” Katz’s spokesman said in a statement on Friday.

Israel says it seized the buffer zone to defend itself.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday that the collapse of Assad’s rule had created a “vacuum on Israel’s border and in the buffer zone.”

“This deployment is temporary until a force that is committed to the 1974 (armistice) agreement can be established and security on our border can be guaranteed.”

Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

It held onto the territory during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and in 1981 annexed the area in a move since recognized only by the United States.

Israel’s seizure of the buffer zone has triggered widespread international criticism, including from UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Guterres “is deeply concerned by the recent and extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement on Thursday.

“The Secretary-General is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli air strikes on several locations in Syria.”

The UN says Israel’s seizure of the buffer zone violates the 1974 armistice.

Guterres urges “the parties to the agreement to uphold their obligations under this instrument, including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the ceasefire and stability in Golan,” Dujarric said.

Israel’s key military ally the United States has called for the Israeli incursion to be “temporary.”

Analysts say Israel is concerned that any remaining stocks of chemical or other strategic weapons that Assad’s forces had held onto could fall into the hands of jihadist groups, who might use them against it.


Jordan to host Syria talks after Damascus erupts in celebration

Updated 14 December 2024
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Jordan to host Syria talks after Damascus erupts in celebration

  • While Syrians celebrate the end of Assad’s brutal rule, they face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, sanctions and runaway inflation

Damascus: Jordan will host US, EU, Turkish and Arab diplomats on Saturday for high-level talks on Syria, a day after celebrations in Damascus and nationwide rejoicing at the ouster of president Bashar Assad.
Syrians celebrated the day they called the “Friday of victory” with fireworks heralding the fall of the Assad dynasty.
More than half a century of brutal rule by his clan came to a sudden end on Sunday, after a lightning rebel offensive swept across the country and took the capital.
Assad’s fall has also led to fast-moving diplomatic developments, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken among envoys set to discuss Syria on Saturday in the Jordanian city of Aqaba.
Turkiye, meanwhile, will reopen its embassy in Damascus, closed since 2012 amid calls by Ankara for Assad to step down.
A Qatari diplomat said a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials and discuss aid and the reopening of their embassy.
Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.
Assad has fled Syria, closing an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed, and capping nearly 14 years of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
'Tears of joy'
Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded the offensive, had called on Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy.”
Celebrations continued into the night on the first Friday — the Muslim day of rest and prayer — since Assad took flight.
Umayyad Square in Damascus was jammed with vehicles, people and waving flags as fireworks shot into the air, AFPTV live images showed.
Thousands flocked to the capital’s landmark Umayyad Mosque, some raising the three-star Syrian independence flag that none dared wave in the capital during Assad’s repressive rule.
Crowds also gathered in the squares and streets of other Syrian cities, including Homs, Hama and Idlib.
There was a festive and relaxed atmosphere as hundreds rallied in the main square of Syria’s second city Aleppo, a scene of fierce fighting during the country’s civil war, AFP correspondents said.
A huge billboard depicting Assad and his father Hafez was set on fire.
Ahmad Abd Al-Majed, 39, an engineer who returned to Aleppo from Turkiye, said that many shed “tears of joy and happiness.”
“Syrians deserve to be happy,” he said.
In the southern city of Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druze minority, Bayan Al-Hinnawi, 77, never believed he would live to see such a day.
“It’s a wonderful sight. Nobody could have imagined this could happen,” said Hinnawi, who spent 17 years in prison.
Tens of thousands missing
Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and designated a terrorist organization by many Western governments.
The group has sought to moderate its rhetoric, and the interim government insists the rights of all Syrians will be protected — as will the rule of law.
The European Union was seeking “to establish contacts” with the new rulers soon, an EU official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The UN refugee agency said the new government had sent “constructive” initial signals, including asking the organization to stay in the country.
Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) democratic countries, who met virtually on Friday, expressed hope for “a peaceful and orderly transition through the definition of an inclusive political process” in Syria.
Inside much of Syria, the focus is turning toward unraveling the secrets of Assad’s rule, particularly the network of detention centers and suspected torture sites.
Syrians have descended upon prisons, hospitals and morgues in search of long-disappeared loved ones.
“I turned the world upside down looking,” Abu Mohammed told AFP as he searched for news of three missing relatives at the Mazzeh air base in Damascus.
“We just want a hint of where they were.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it documented more than 35,000 disappearances during Assad’s rule, with the actual number likely far higher.
While Syrians celebrate the end of Assad’s brutal rule, they face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, sanctions and runaway inflation.
On Friday, the EU announced the launch of an “air bridge” operation to deliver an initial 50 tons of health supplies via neighboring Turkiye.
Israel ready to stay in buffer zone
Assad was propped up by Russia — where a senior Russian official told US media he has fled — as well as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told private NTV television that his country had urged Russia and Iran not to intervene militarily “to ensure minimum loss of life.”
The rebels launched their offensive on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the Israel-Hezbollah war, which saw Israel inflict staggering losses on Assad’s Lebanese ally.
Both Israel and Turkiye, which backs some of the rebels who ousted Assad, have since carried out strikes inside Syria.
Israel’s latest strikes hit military sites in the Eastern Qalamun region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday.
Israel has also sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, in a move the UN said violated a 1974 armistice.
The army has been ordered to “prepare to remain” there throughout the winter, Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office said Friday.


OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens

Updated 27 min 37 sec ago
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OIC condemns ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat camp that killed dozens

  • Statement: The act is an extension of organized terrorism and continuous genocide that has been ongoing against the Palestinian people

RIYADH: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Friday denounced the killing of 33 Palestinians in a crowded Gaza camp as Israel continued its attacks on the enclave.
“The act is considered an extension of organized terrorism and continuous genocide that has been ongoing for more than fourteen months against the Palestinian people,” the organization said in an Arabic statement.
The attack, which the OIC called “horrific,” was on a post office in Nuseirat and follows a long list of Israeli attacks which have killed civilians in dense makeshift camps in the Gaza Strip. Israel claims to be targeting Palestinian militants in the strikes.
Relatives of the deceased wept and read verses of the Qur’an as they gathered at Al-Awda Hospital before burying their loved ones on Friday.
“Every time things happen and we say there will be a truce and we will rest... After that, they change their minds, they change their minds, we don’t know why,” Mattar said.
“They have killed the hope and optimism,” said Suheil Mattar, whose grandchildren and daughter-in-law were killed.
Gaza health officials said Friday that at least 44,875 people had been killed in more than 14 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants. Over 105,454 people have been wounded during the same period, according to the enclave’s health ministry.

— with input from Reuters


Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?

Updated 14 December 2024
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Who was in ousted Syrian President Assad’s inner circle and where are they now?

  • Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials & a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport

BEIRUT: After insurgents toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad this month, many senior officials and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away. Activists say some of them have managed to flee the country while others went to hide in their hometowns.
For more than five decades, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron grip, locking up those who dared question their power in the country’s notorious prisons, where rights groups say inmates were regularly tortured or killed.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham insurgent group — which led anti-government fighters who forced Assad from power — has vowed to bring those who carried out such abuses to justice.
“We will go after them in our country,” said HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was previously known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani. He added that the group will also ask foreign countries to hand over any suspects.
But finding those responsible for abuses could prove difficult.
Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials and a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Most of those are presumed to be regular people, and Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said earlier this week that no Syrian official entered Lebanon through a legal border crossing.
In an apparent effort to prevent members of Assad’s government from escaping, the security officials said a Lebanese officer who was in charge of Masnaa was ordered to go on vacation because of his links to Assad’s brother.
But Rami Abdurrhaman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says several senior officers have nonetheless made it to neighboring Lebanon using travel documents with fake names.
Here’s a look at Assad and some of the officials in his inner circle.
Bashar Assad
The Western-educated ophthalmologist initially raised hopes that he would be unlike his strongman father, Hafez, when he took power in 2000, including freeing political prisoners and allowing for a more open discourse.
But when protests of his rule erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to brutal tactics to crush dissent. As the uprising became an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.
He has fled to Moscow, according to Russian state media.
Maher Assad
The younger brother of the ousted president was the commander of the 4th Armored Division, which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers. He is under US and European sanctions. He disappeared over the weekend, and Abdurrhaman said he made it to Russia.
Last year, French authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Maher Assad, along with his brother and two army generals, for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including in a 2013 chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs.
Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk
Mamlouk was a security adviser to Assad and former head of the intelligence services. He is wanted in Lebanon for two explosions in the northern city of Tripoli in 2012 that killed and wounded dozens.
Mamlouk is also wanted in France after a court convicted him and others in absentia of complicity in war crimes and sentenced them to life in prison. The trial focused on the officials’ role in the 2013 arrest in Damascus of a Franco-Syrian man and his son and their subsequent torture and killing.
Abdurrahman said Mamlouk fled to Lebanon, and it is not clear if he is still in the country under the protection of Hezbollah.
Brig. Gen. Suheil Al-Hassan
Al-Hassan was the commander of the 25th Special Missions Forces Division and later became the head of the Syrian Special Forces, which were key to many of the government’s battlefield victories in the long-running civil war, including in Aleppo and the eastern suburbs of Damascus that long held off Assad’s troops.
Al-Hassan is known to have close ties to Russia and was praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin during one of his visits to Syria. Al-Hassan’s whereabouts are not known.
Maj. Gen. Hussam Luka
Luka, head of the General Security Directorate intelligence service, is not well known among the wider public but has played a major role in the crackdown against the opposition, mainly in the central city of Homs that was dubbed the “capital of the Syrian revolt.”
Luka has been sanctioned by the US and Britain for his role in the crackdown. It’s not clear where he is.
Maj. Gen. Qahtan Khalil
Khalil, whose whereabouts are also unknown, was head of the Air Force Intelligence service and is widely known as the “Butcher of Daraya” for allegedly leading a 2012 attack on a Damascus suburb of the same name that killed hundreds of people.
Other officials
— Retired Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, former head of the Air Force Intelligence service, is also suspected of bearing responsibility for the attack in Daraya. Hassan was among those convicted in France this year along with Mamlouk.
— Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Abbas and Maj. Gen. Bassam Merhej Al-Hassan, head of Bashar Assad’s office and the man in charge of his security, are accused of human rights violations.