DAMASCUS: In the corridors of Damascus’s main hospitals, thousands of families have gathered for the foreboding mission of trying to find the bodies of loved ones captured years ago by the Syrian authorities.
“Where are our children?” women cried out as they grasped at the walls, desperate for closure after their years-long ordeal.
But no such closure was within reach for Yasmine Shabib, 37, who still could not locate her brother or father, both arrested in 2013.
Having traveled for more than four hours from the northwestern city of Idlib, the victorious militants’ wartime base, she had little hope of finding them alive.
But at very least, she hoped she would not leave without their bodies.
“Just open the prison vaults for us, we will search ourselves among the corpses,” she said in tears.
“They buried the people everywhere, not just in Saydnaya. There are Saydnayas everywhere under our feet in Syria,” she added, referring to Syria’s most notoriously brutal prison, dubbed a “slaughterhouse” by human rights groups.
Outside the hospital, voices echo.
“Does anyone recognize body number nine?” a doctor calls out to a group of families as a phone is passed around between them, the picture of a corpse lighting up the screen.
Every once in a while, someone recognizes a loved one, and the body is summarily brought out of the morgue to be taken to another mortuary freezer, where the family can finally confirm whether it is one of their own.
Having failed to locate her son, a mother comes out, her hand bloodstained from the bodies she inspected.
“Their blood is still fresh,” she said trying to catch her breath.
Pathologist Yasser Al-Qassem confirms: “We still don’t know the dates or causes of death for the bodies arriving from Harasta,” a suburb of Damascus where another morgue is located.
“But one thing is certain, these deaths are recent.”
As soon as he heard that Bashar Assad had fled, Nabil Hariri rushed to Damascus from his southern hometown Daraa to search for his brother.
Arrested in 2014 when he was just 13, Hariri had had no news of his brother since.
“When you’re drowning, you cling to anything,” Hariri, 39, told AFP.
“So we search everywhere.”
He was among the thousands of desperate relatives who gathered outside Saydnaya on Tuesday, hoping that his brother was among the thousands of prisoners freed after Assad’s fall.
“I didn’t find my brother there,” he said.
At dawn on Wednesday, there was a brief resurgence of hope when he heard that 35 bodies were arriving from Harasta. The hospital morgue there was used as a staging post for the bodies of prisoners who died of maltreatment, hunger or illness before they were buried in mass graves.
But that hope was swiftly dashed.
“In all the photos, the bodies were old,” he said. “My brother is young.”
Syria’s new militant authorities announced that they had found bodies in the Harasta morgue.
After opening the white body bags, militant official Mohammed Al-Hajj took video that he later showed to AFP.
The footage showed bodies bearing signs of torture — one without an eye, another without any teeth, a third covered in dried blood.
Another body bag simply contained bones, while yet another held the remains of a flayed corpse, its ribcage poking out from the flesh.
Harasta “is one of the main centers where bodies from Saydnaya or Tishrin,” another notorious prison, “were gathered before being buried in mass graves,” said Diab Seria, a member of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison.
Khaled Hamza found no traces of his son at Harasta, Saydnaya or the Damascus hospital.
But he has no intention of giving up, having stumbled across documents at the prison containing information about the detainees, which he then gathered and handed over to the new police authorities.
“We are millions searching for our children,” the taxi driver said. “We ask just one thing: are they alive or dead?“
Relatives of Syria’s disappeared seek closure in Damascus morgues
https://arab.news/ynsxb
Relatives of Syria’s disappeared seek closure in Damascus morgues
- No such closure was within reach for Yasmine Shabib, 37, who still could not locate her brother or father, both arrested in 2013
- Having failed to locate her son, a mother comes out, her hand bloodstained from the bodies she inspected
UNHCR suspends aid to refugees in Egypt over lack of funding
"The drastic reduction in humanitarian funding since the start of this year has led to critical shortages, forcing UNHCR to make impossible choices," the statement said
CAIRO: The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday a lack of funding was forcing it to suspend vital aid to refugees in Egypt, including medical care for many fleeing war-torn Sudan.
"The lack of available funds and deep uncertainty over the level of donor contributions this year has forced UNHCR to suspend all medical treatment for refugees in Egypt except emergency life-saving procedures, affecting around 20,000 patients," the UN agency said in a statement.
This includes cancer treatment, heart surgeries, and medication for high blood pressure and diabetes.
UNHCR public health officer Jakob Arhem said that without the agency's services, some patients "will not be able to find the means to pay for health care themselves and they will get sicker, weaker and many will die".
The agency last year received less than half of the $135 million needed to assist more than 939,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers from Sudan and 60 other countries currently residing in Egypt.
"The drastic reduction in humanitarian funding since the start of this year has led to critical shortages, forcing UNHCR to make impossible choices over which life-saving programmes to suspend or maintain," the statement said, noting that Sudanese refugees will be the hardest hit.
Egypt has hosted more than 1.5 million Sudanese, some 670,000 of whom are registered with UNHCR, as war rages in the neighbouring country since April 2023 between the army and paramilitaries.
"The Sudanese health system was one of the first things that collapsed after the onset of fighting, and many of the families who fled did so with sick members who could no longer find treatment in Sudan," Arhem said.
UNHCR has supported some the most vulnerable, including unaccompanied children and survivors of sexual violence and torture, but these programmes are at risk without urgent funding.
South Sudan opposition decries arrests, strike as US urges talks
- Uganda’s involvement was condemned by Machar’s party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), which said it was a breach of a UN arms embargo
- “This provocative action is a violation of the (2018 peace agreement),” a spokesperson said
JUBA: South Sudan’s opposition said Tuesday that several key political figures had been arrested, a day after one of its army bases was bombed as international concern mounts over the risk of a return to civil war.
Clashes between forces allied to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, First Vice President Riek Machar, have threatened a fragile power-sharing agreement from 2018.
The renewed insecurity in the world’s youngest nation has prompted concerns from regional partners, with Uganda — which has a long history of intervening in South Sudan — deploying troops to the capital Juba this month.
Uganda’s involvement was condemned by Machar’s party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO), which said it was a breach of a United Nations arms embargo.
The SPLM-IO said its military cantonment at Wunaliet, around 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Juba, was attacked on Monday.
“This provocative action is a violation of the (2018 peace agreement),” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Lul Ruai Koang, spokesman for the Kiir-aligned army, earlier warned that Machar’s forces in the area were “scaling up their movements” and had sent out a patrol toward army positions “clearly in military formation.”
The army was yet to confirm the later strikes, but local media reported that it consisted of “heavy shelling.”
South Sudan gained independence in 2011 and soon after fell into a five-year civil war between Kiir and Machar that killed some 400,000 people until a peace deal in 2018 brought them into a unity government.
Analysts say Kiir has been taking steps in recent months to sideline Machar, promoting new members to the cabinet without consultation as the 73-year-old prepares his succession.
On Tuesday, the SPLM-IO said four of its officials had been arrested, including the minister for animal resources and fisheries, Gai Magok.
“Their arbitrary detention is considered part of a broader crackdown” on the party, it said in a statement.
At least 22 political and military officials had already been detained since February, the party has said, many held incommunicado.
Machar’s SPLM-IO said the presence of Ugandan forces was a “grave violation” of the peace agreement.
“The Ugandan military entered South Sudan fully equipped with armored and air-force units in violation of the UN Security Council resolution,” the SPLM-IO said, referencing the arms embargo that is in place until at least May this year.
The statement, issued over the weekend but publicized on Monday, claimed Ugandan forces were “currently taking part in air strikes against civilians” in Upper Nile and Jonglei states.
Ugandan army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, known for his unfiltered posting on X, warned Tuesday that the SPLM-IO’s military wing were “about to be annihilated.”
“Our airforce is doing a great job of destroying them,” he posted, saying they should surrender “to me as soon as possible.”
“Otherwise, not even a rat will survive in Nuer country,” he added.
The focus of recent clashes has been Nasir County in the northeastern Upper Nile State.
A loose band of armed youth known as the White Army, allied to Machar, overran a military base in Nasir in early March.
The army responded with aerial strikes in nearby areas, including the use of bombs containing a highly flammable liquid that acts as an accelerant upon explosion, according to a statement Monday by Nicholas Haysom, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
“These indiscriminate attacks on civilians are causing significant casualties and horrific injuries, especially burns,” Haysom said, adding that an estimated 63,000 people have been displaced.
Kiir replaced the Machar-allied governor of Upper Nile State with one of his own allies last week.
The UN envoy said the country was “teetering on the edge of a relapse into civil war.”
On Monday, the United States State Department said Kiir and Machar “must engage in direct dialogue to curb escalating violence in South Sudan.”
“Non-state militia attacks, govt-backed airstrikes, and promotion of sanctioned officials to high office are deeply concerning,” it said in a statement on X.
Palestinian behind Oscar-winning documentary arrested by Israeli army — co-director
- Dozens of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area, destroying property
- They attacked Hamdan Ballal, one of the documentary’s co-directors, leaving his head bleeding, the activists said
JERUSALEM: Israeli settlers beat up one of the Palestinian co-directors of the Oscar-winning documentary film “No Other Land” on Monday in the occupied West Bank before he was detained by the Israeli military, according to two of his fellow directors and other witnesses.
The filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was one of three Palestinians detained in the village of Susiya, according to attorney Leah Tsemmel. Police told her they’re being held at a military base for medical treatment and she said she hasn’t been able to speak with them.
Basel Adra, another co-director, witnessed the detention and said around two dozen settlers — some masked, some carrying guns, some in Israeli uniform — attacked the village. Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones.
“We came back from the Oscars and every day since there is an attack on us,” Adra told The Associated Press. “This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”
The Israeli military said it detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a “violent confrontation” between Israelis and Palestinians — a claim witnesses interviewed by the AP disputed. The military said it had transferred them to Israeli police for questioning and had evacuated an Israeli citizen from the area to receive medical treatment.
“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. Ballal and Adra, both from Masafar Yatta, made the joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary.
Adra said that settlers entered the village Monday evening shortly after residents broke the daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A settler — who according to Adra frequently attacks the village — walked over to Ballal’s home with the military, and soldiers shot in the air. Ballal’s wife heard her husband being beaten outside and scream “I’m dying,” according to Adra.
Adra then saw the soldiers lead Ballal, handcuffed and blindfolded, from his home into a military vehicle. Speaking to the AP by phone, he said Ballal’s blood was still splattered on the ground outside his own front door.
Some of the details of Adra’s account were backed up by another eyewitness, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
A group of 10-20 masked settlers with stones and sticks also assaulted activists with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, smashing their car windows and slashing tires to make them flee the area, one of the activists at the scene, Josh Kimelman, told the AP.
Video provided by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night. The activists rush back to their car as rocks can be heard thudding against the vehicle.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.
Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.
During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations, and there has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians. There has been a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
South Sudan is teetering on the edge of renewed civil war, UN envoy says
- The country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions
- More than 400,000 people were killed in the war, which ended with a 2018 peace agreement
- The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country’s north between government troops and a rebel militia, known as the White Army
UNITED NATIONS: South Sudan is teetering on the edge of renewed civil war, the top UN official in the world’s youngest nation warned on Monday, lamenting the government’s sudden postponement of the latest peace effort.
Calling the situation unfolding in the country “dire,” Nicholas Haysom said international efforts to broker a peaceful solution can only succeed if President Salva Kiir and his rival-turned-vice president, Riek Machar, are willing to engage “and put the interests of their people ahead of their own.”
There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into a civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, battled those loyal to Machar, an ethnic Nuer.
More than 400,000 people were killed in the war, which ended with a 2018 peace agreement that brought Kiir and Machar together in a government of national unity. Under the agreement, elections were supposed to be held in February 2023, but they were postponed until December 2024 — and again until 2026.
The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country’s north between government troops and a rebel militia, known as the White Army, which is widely believed to be allied with Machar.
Earlier this month, a South Sudanese general was among several people killed when a United Nations helicopter on a mission to evacuate government troops from the town of Nasir, the scene of the fighting in Upper Nile state, came under fire. Days earlier on March 4, the White Army overran the military garrison in Nasir and government troops responded by surrounding Machar’s home in the capital, Juba, and arresting several of his key allies.
Haysom said tensions and violence were escalating “particularly as we grow closer to elections and as political competition increases, sharpens between the principal players.”
He said Kiir and Machar don’t trust each other enough to display the leadership needed to implement the 2018 peace deal and move to a future that would see a stable and democratic South Sudan.
“Rampant misinformation, disinformation and hate speech is also ratcheting up tensions and driving ethnic divisions, and fear,” Haysom said.
“Given this grim situation,” he said, “we are left with no other conclusion but to assess that South Sudan is teetering on the edge of a relapse into civil war.”
Haysom, who heads the nearly 18,000-member UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, warned that a relapse into open war would lead to the same horrors that ravaged the country, especially in 2013 and 2016.
He said the UN takes the threat of the “ethnic transformation” of the conflict very seriously.
To try to prevent a new civil war, the UN special envoy said the peacekeeping mission is engaging in intense shuttle diplomacy with international and regional partners, including the African Union.
Haysom said the collective message of the regional and international community is for Kiir and Machar to meet to resolve their differences, return to the 2018 peace deal, adhere to the ceasefire, release detained officials and resolve tensions “through dialogue rather than military confrontation.”
Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 23 people overnight
- The dead include three children and their parents, who were killed in a strike on their tent near the southern city of Khan Younis
Palestinian medics said Israeli strikes killed at least 23 people in the Gaza Strip overnight into Tuesday.
The dead include three children and their parents, who were killed in a strike on their tent near the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, which has received a flood of dead and wounded since Israel resumed heavy bombardment of Gaza last week, shattering the ceasefire that had halted the 17-month war.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 113,000, according to the Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Israel launched the campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251. Israel says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because it operates in densely populated areas.
