ANKARA: Türkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan said he still hopes to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad to repair ties with the neighboring country, broadcaster CNN Turk reported on Wednesday.
“Restoring ties with Bashar Assad will soothe regional tensions, hopefully,” Erdogan was quoted as telling reporters on his flight back from Azerbaijan.
Erdogan still hopes to meet Assad to repair Turkiye-Syria ties, CNN Turk reports
https://arab.news/cfqqv
Erdogan still hopes to meet Assad to repair Turkiye-Syria ties, CNN Turk reports
- “Restoring ties with Bashar Assad will soothe regional tensions, hopefully,” Erdogan was quoted as saying
UN chief slams ‘systematic’ looting of Gaza humanitarian aid
- Aid distribution in Gaza is complicated by shortages of fuel, war-damaged roads and looting
- On Monday, Gaza’s interior ministry said it had carried out a major operation targeting looters
“Armed looting has become systematic and must end immediately. It is hindering life saving aid operations and further endangering the lives of our staff,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“However, the use of law enforcement operations must be lawful, necessary and proportionate.”
Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza in the early stages of the war last year, and the UN warned on November 9 that famine was looming in some areas due to a lack of aid.
Aid distribution in Gaza is complicated by shortages of fuel, war-damaged roads and looting, as well as fighting in densely populated areas and the repeated displacement of much of the territory’s 2.4 million people.
Several humanitarian officials have told AFP on condition of anonymity that almost half the aid that enters Gaza is looted, especially basic supplies.
On Monday, Gaza’s interior ministry said it had carried out a major operation targeting looters.
“More than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks were killed in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees,” the ministry said in a statement.
It said the operation was “the beginning of a broad security campaign that has been long planned and will expand to include everyone involved in the theft of aid trucks.”
On Tuesday, the US-based Washington Post newspaper cited a UN memo as saying some of the gangs were receiving “passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israel Defense Forces.
Dujarric said he was unaware of the memo, but that the allegation was “fairly alarming” if true.
“The idea that the Israeli forces may be allowing looters or not doing enough to prevent it is frankly, fairly alarming, given the responsibilities of Israel as the occupying power to ensure that humanitarian aid is distributed safely,” he said.
Gazans walk miles for bread and flour amid war shortages
Essential goods like water, fresh produce and medicines are also scarce
GAZA: Faced with major food shortages after nearly 14 months of war, Palestinians describe long days hunting for flour and bread in the conflict-ravaged Gaza Strip.
Every morning crowds form outside the few bakeries open in the Palestinian territory, as people desperately try to get a bag of bread at distribution points.
Since the outbreak of war in Gaza last year, charities and international aid organizations have repeatedly warned of crisis levels of hunger for nearly two million people.
A United Nations-backed assessment last month warned of famine looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid a near-halt in food aid after Israel launched an offensive in the area.
Essential goods like water, fresh produce and medicines are also scarce.
Gazans across the territory have told AFP in recent months how they wake up at the crack of dawn just to ensure they can get some flour or bread, with current availability reaching an all-time low.
In the southern city of Khan Yunis, AFP photographers saw dozens of people at a distribution point, bodies pressed against each other.
Over each other’s heads, everyone tries to reach out as far as possible to grab the round bread.
A small child, her face covered in tears, squeezes a coin between her fingers as she makes her way through the crowd of adults.
“I walked about eight kilometers (five miles) to get bread,” Hatem Kullab, a displaced Palestinian living in a neighborhood of makeshift tents, told AFP.
It was in the middle of one of these crowds that two women and a child were trampled to death in a stampede at a bakery in the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah Friday.
“To get a loaf of bread you need a whole day of eight to 10 hours,” said the brother of one of the women killed, describing his sister’s ordeal as she tried to get bread to feed 10 family members.
“The suffering that my sister went through is suffered by all the Palestinian people,” Jameel Fayyad told AFP, criticizing what he described as poor management of the bakeries.
Fayyad’s anger was largely directed at Israel, but he also blamed the World Food Programme (WFP) and “traders who want to make money on the backs of people.”
Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip told AFP journalists that it is extremely difficult to find the 50-kilogram (110 pounds) bags of flour that would last them several weeks before the war.
“There is no flour, no food, no vegetables in the markets,” Nasser Al-Shawa, 56, said, who, like most residents, was forced to leave his home because of the bombings and lives with his children and grandchildren in central Gaza.
Shawa, who now lives in a friend’s house in Deir el-Balah, says a 50-kilogram bag costs between 500 and 700 shekels ($137 and $192).
Before the war, it cost around 100 shekels.
Inside Gaza where more than half of the buildings have been destroyed, the production is at an almost complete standstill. Flour mills, warehouses storing flour and industrial bakeries are unable to function because they have been so heavily damaged by strikes.
Humanitarian aid is trickling in but aid groups have repeatedly slammed the many constraints imposed on them by Israel, which the country denies.
In the latest blow, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced Sunday it was halting aid deliveries to Gaza via a key crossing point with Israel.
UNRWA said delivery had become impossible, partly due to looting by gangs.
For Layla Hamad, who lives in a tent with her husband and seven children in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi, UNRWA’s decision was “like a bullet to the head.”
She said her family had regularly received “a small quantity” of flour from UNRWA.
“Every day, I think we will not survive, either because we will be killed by Israeli bombing or by hunger,” she said. “There is no third option.”
The majority of private companies that Israel had in the past allowed to bring in food to Gaza say they are no longer able to do so.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,502 deaths, also mostly civilians, according to data from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Israel threatens to expand war if Hezbollah truce collapses
- “If we return to war we will act strongly, we will go deeper,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said
- “If until now we separated the state of Lebanon from Hezbollah... it will no longer be [like this]“
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel threatened on Tuesday to return to war in Lebanon if its truce with Hezbollah collapses, and said this time its attacks would go deeper and target the Lebanese state itself, after the deadliest day since the ceasefire was agreed last week.
In its strongest threat since the truce was agreed to end 14 months of war with Hezbollah, Israel said it would hold Lebanon responsible for failing to disarm militants who violated the truce.
“If we return to war we will act strongly, we will go deeper, and the most important thing they need to know: that there will be no longer be an exemption for the state of Lebanon,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
“If until now we separated the state of Lebanon from Hezbollah... it will no longer be [like this],” he said during a visit to the northern border area.
Despite last week’s truce, Israeli forces have continued strikes in southern Lebanon against what they say are Hezbollah fighters ignoring the agreement to halt attacks and withdraw beyond the Litani River, about 30 km (18 miles) from the frontier.
On Monday, Hezbollah shelled an Israeli military post, while Lebanese authorities said at least 12 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon.
Katz called the Hezbollah attack “the first test” and described Israel’s strikes as a strong response.
The Beirut government must “authorize the Lebanese army to enforce their part, to keep Hezbollah away beyond the Litani, and to dismantle all the infrastructure,” Katz said.
“If they don’t do it and this whole agreement collapses then the reality will be very clear.”
Top Lebanese officials urged Washington and Paris to press Israel to uphold the ceasefire, after dozens of military operations on Lebanese soil that Beirut has deemed violations, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
The sources said caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally who negotiated the deal on behalf of Lebanon, spoke to officials at the White House and French presidency late on Monday.
Mikati, quoted by the Lebanese news agency, said that diplomatic communications had intensified since Monday to stop Israeli violations of the ceasefire. He also said a recruitment drive was under way by the Lebanese army to strengthen its presence in the south.
US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller told reporters on Monday that the ceasefire “is holding” and that the US had “anticipated that there might be violations.”
Neither the French presidency nor the foreign ministry were immediately available to comment. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot spoke to his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar on Monday, saying both sides should adhere to the ceasefire.
The truce came into effect on Nov. 27 and prohibits Israel from conducting offensive military operations in Lebanon, while requiring Lebanon to prevent armed groups including Hezbollah from launching attacks on Israel. It gives Israeli troops 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon.
INTERNATIONAL MONITORING
A mission chaired by the United States is tasked with monitoring, verifying and helping enforce the truce, but it has yet to begin work.
Berri on Monday called on the mission to “urgently” ensure Israel halts its breaches, saying Beirut had logged at least 54 Israeli violations of the ceasefire so far.
Israel has said its continued activity in Lebanon is aimed at enforcing the ceasefire.
Lebanon’s Mikati met in Beirut on Monday with US General Jasper Jeffers, who will chair the monitoring committee.
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that France’s representative to the committee, General Guillaume Ponchin, would arrive in Beirut on Wednesday and that the committee would hold its first meeting on Thursday.
“There is an urgency to finalize the mechanism, otherwise it will be too late,” the source said, referring to Israel’s gradual intensification of strikes despite the truce.
Flights resume between Mashhad and Dammam
DUBAI: Iran Air on Tuesday resumed flights between Mashhad and Dammam after a nine year hiatus, the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) reported.
“A deputy from Iran’s embassy, the representative of Iran Air and representatives from Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation welcomed arriving passengers in Dammam and stressed the need to facilitate the movement of people between the two countries,” ISNA said.
Lebanon asked US, France to press Israel to halt truce breaches, say sources
- The truce came into effect on Nov. 27 and prohibits Israel from conducting offensive military operations in Lebanon
- Lebanon’s parliament speaker says Beirut had logged at least 54 Israeli violations of the ceasefire so far
BEIRUT: Top Lebanese officials have urged Washington and Paris to press Israel to uphold a ceasefire, after dozens of military operations on Lebanese soil that Beirut has deemed violations, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
Deadly Israeli strikes on south Lebanon and Hezbollah rocket launches on an Israeli military post on Monday have put a US-brokered ceasefire between the two in an increasingly fragile position less than a week after it came into effect.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally who negotiated the deal on behalf of Lebanon, spoke to officials at the White House and French presidency late Monday and expressed concern about the state of the ceasefire, the sources said.
Neither the French presidency nor the foreign ministry were immediately available to comment. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot spoke to his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar on Monday, saying both sides should adhere to the ceasefire.
US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller told reporters on Monday that the ceasefire “is holding” and that the US had “anticipated that there might be violations.”
The truce came into effect on Nov. 27 and prohibits Israel from conducting offensive military operations in Lebanon while requiring Lebanon to prevent armed groups, including Hezbollah, from launching attacks on Israel. It gives Israeli troops 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon.
A monitoring mechanism chaired by the United States is tasked with monitoring, verifying and helping enforce the truce, but it has yet to begin work.
Berri on Monday urged it to “urgently” ensure Israel halts its breaches, saying Beirut had logged at least 54 Israeli violations of the ceasefire so far.
Israel says its continued military activity in Lebanon is aimed at enforcing the ceasefire and does not violate its obligations under the truce.
Mikati on Monday met in Beirut with US General Jasper Jeffers, who will chair the monitoring committee, and stressed the need for Israeli troops to swiftly withdraw.
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that France’s representative to the committee, General Guillaume Ponchin, will arrive in Beirut on Wednesday and that the committee would hold its first meeting on Thursday.
“There is an urgency to finalize the mechanism, otherwise it will be too late,” the source said, referring to Israel’s gradual intensification of strikes despite the truce.
Miller said the monitoring mechanism would begin its work “in the coming days.”
At least 12 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Monday, Lebanese authorities said, in the deadliest day since the ceasefire came into effect.
They included six people in the southern town of Hariss and another four people in the southern town of Taloussa, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.