DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad Al-Sharaa said on Saturday Israel is using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but that he is not interested in engaging in new conflicts as the country focuses on rebuilding following the end of Bashar Assad’s reign.
Sharaa — better known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — leads the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group that swept Assad from power last week, ending the family’s five-decade iron-fisted rule.
Israel has since moved into a demilitarized zone inside Syria created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus, where it took over an abandoned Syrian military post.
Israel, which has said that it does not intend to stay there and calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure border security, has also carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
“Israeli arguments have become weak and no longer justify their recent violations. The Israelis have clearly crossed the lines of engagement in Syria, which poses a threat of unwarranted escalation in the region,” Sharaa said in an interview published on the website of Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel.
“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations. The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”
He also said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not wanted.
On Russia, whose military intervention almost a decade ago helped tip the balance in Assad’s favor and which gave asylum to the ousted leader earlier this week, Sharaa said that its relations with Syria should serve common interests.
“The current stage requires careful management of international relations,” he added.
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Syria’s de facto leader not interested in new conflicts despite Israeli attacks
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Syria’s de facto leader not interested in new conflicts despite Israeli attacks
- Ahmad Al-Sharaa said on Saturday Israel is using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria
Sudanese trek through mountains to escape Kordofan fighting
- For eight days, Sudanese farmer Ibrahim Hussein led his family through treacherous terrain to flee the fighting in southern Kordofan — the latest and most volatile front in the country’s 31-month-old
PORT SUDAN: For eight days, Sudanese farmer Ibrahim Hussein led his family through treacherous terrain to flee the fighting in southern Kordofan — the latest and most volatile front in the country’s 31-month-old conflict.
“We left everything behind,” said the 47-year-old, who escaped with his family of seven from Keiklek, near the South Sudanese border.
“Our animals and our unharvested crops — all of it.”
Hussein spoke to AFP from Kosti, an army-controlled city in White Nile state, around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Khartoum.
The city has become a refuge for hundreds of families fleeing violence in oil-rich Kordofan, where the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — locked in a brutal war since April 2023 — are vying for control.
Emboldened by their October capture of the army’s last stronghold in Darfur, the RSF and their allies have in recent weeks descended in full force on Kordofan, forcing nearly 53,000 people to flee, according to the United Nations.
“For most of the war, we lived in peace and looked after our animals,” Hussein said.
“But when the RSF came close, we were afraid fighting would break out. So we left, most of the way on foot.”
He took his family through the rocky spine of the Nuba Mountains and the surrounding valley, passing through both paramilitary and army checkpoints.
This month, the RSF consolidated its grip on West Kordofan — one of three regional states — and seized Heglig, which lies on Sudan’s largest oil field.
With their local allies, they have also tightened their siege on the army-held cities of Kadugli and Dilling, where hundreds of thousands face mass starvation.
- Running for their lives -
In just two days this week, nearly 4,000 people arrived in Kosti, hungry and terrified, said Mohamed Refaat, Sudan chief of mission for the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
“Most of those arriving are women and children. Very few adult men are with them,” he told AFP, adding that many men stay behind “out of fear of being killed or abducted.”
The main roads are unsafe, so families are taking “long and uncertain journeys and sleeping wherever they can,” according to Mercy Corps, one of the few aid agencies operating in Kordofan.
“Journeys that once took four hours now force people to walk for 15 to 30 days through isolated areas and mine-littered terrain,” said Miji Park, interim country director for Sudan.
This month, drones hit a kindergarten and a hospital in Kalogi in South Kordofan, killing 114 people, including 63 children, according to the World Health Organization.
Adam Eissa, a 53-year-old farmer, knew it was time to run. He took his wife, four daughters and elderly mother — all crammed into a pickup truck with 30 others — and drove for three days through “backroads to avoid RSF checkpoints,” he told AFP from Kosti.
They are now sheltering in a school-turned-shelter housing around 500 displaced people.
“We receive some help, but it is not enough,” said Eissa, who is trying to find work in the market.
According to the IOM’s Refaat, Kosti — a relatively small city — is already under strain. It hosts thousands of South Sudanese refugees, themselves fleeing violence across the border.
It cost Eissa $400 to get his family to safety. Anyone who does not have that kind of money — most Sudanese, after close to three years of war — has to walk, or stay behind.
Those left behind
According to Refaat, transport prices from El-Obeid in North Kordofan have increased more than tenfold in two months, severely “limiting who can flee.”
In besieged Kadugli, 56-year-old market trader Hamdan is desperate for a way out, “terrified” that the RSF will seize the city.
“I sent my family away a while ago with my eldest son,” he told AFP via satellite Internet connection, asking to be identified only by his first name. “Now I am looking for a way to leave.”
Every day brings “the sound of shelling and sometimes gunfire,” said Kassem Eissa, a civil servant and head of a family of eight.
“I have three daughters, the youngest is 14,” he told AFP, laying out an impossible choice: “Getting out is expensive and the road is unsafe” but “we’re struggling to get enough food and medicine.”
The UN has issued repeated warnings of the violence in Kordofan, raising fears of atrocities similar to those reported in the last captured city in Darfur, including summary executions, abductions and rape.
“If a ceasefire is not reached around Kadugli,” Refaat said, “the scale of violence we saw in El-Fasher could be repeated.”
“We left everything behind,” said the 47-year-old, who escaped with his family of seven from Keiklek, near the South Sudanese border.
“Our animals and our unharvested crops — all of it.”
Hussein spoke to AFP from Kosti, an army-controlled city in White Nile state, around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Khartoum.
The city has become a refuge for hundreds of families fleeing violence in oil-rich Kordofan, where the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — locked in a brutal war since April 2023 — are vying for control.
Emboldened by their October capture of the army’s last stronghold in Darfur, the RSF and their allies have in recent weeks descended in full force on Kordofan, forcing nearly 53,000 people to flee, according to the United Nations.
“For most of the war, we lived in peace and looked after our animals,” Hussein said.
“But when the RSF came close, we were afraid fighting would break out. So we left, most of the way on foot.”
He took his family through the rocky spine of the Nuba Mountains and the surrounding valley, passing through both paramilitary and army checkpoints.
This month, the RSF consolidated its grip on West Kordofan — one of three regional states — and seized Heglig, which lies on Sudan’s largest oil field.
With their local allies, they have also tightened their siege on the army-held cities of Kadugli and Dilling, where hundreds of thousands face mass starvation.
- Running for their lives -
In just two days this week, nearly 4,000 people arrived in Kosti, hungry and terrified, said Mohamed Refaat, Sudan chief of mission for the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
“Most of those arriving are women and children. Very few adult men are with them,” he told AFP, adding that many men stay behind “out of fear of being killed or abducted.”
The main roads are unsafe, so families are taking “long and uncertain journeys and sleeping wherever they can,” according to Mercy Corps, one of the few aid agencies operating in Kordofan.
“Journeys that once took four hours now force people to walk for 15 to 30 days through isolated areas and mine-littered terrain,” said Miji Park, interim country director for Sudan.
This month, drones hit a kindergarten and a hospital in Kalogi in South Kordofan, killing 114 people, including 63 children, according to the World Health Organization.
Adam Eissa, a 53-year-old farmer, knew it was time to run. He took his wife, four daughters and elderly mother — all crammed into a pickup truck with 30 others — and drove for three days through “backroads to avoid RSF checkpoints,” he told AFP from Kosti.
They are now sheltering in a school-turned-shelter housing around 500 displaced people.
“We receive some help, but it is not enough,” said Eissa, who is trying to find work in the market.
According to the IOM’s Refaat, Kosti — a relatively small city — is already under strain. It hosts thousands of South Sudanese refugees, themselves fleeing violence across the border.
It cost Eissa $400 to get his family to safety. Anyone who does not have that kind of money — most Sudanese, after close to three years of war — has to walk, or stay behind.
Those left behind
According to Refaat, transport prices from El-Obeid in North Kordofan have increased more than tenfold in two months, severely “limiting who can flee.”
In besieged Kadugli, 56-year-old market trader Hamdan is desperate for a way out, “terrified” that the RSF will seize the city.
“I sent my family away a while ago with my eldest son,” he told AFP via satellite Internet connection, asking to be identified only by his first name. “Now I am looking for a way to leave.”
Every day brings “the sound of shelling and sometimes gunfire,” said Kassem Eissa, a civil servant and head of a family of eight.
“I have three daughters, the youngest is 14,” he told AFP, laying out an impossible choice: “Getting out is expensive and the road is unsafe” but “we’re struggling to get enough food and medicine.”
The UN has issued repeated warnings of the violence in Kordofan, raising fears of atrocities similar to those reported in the last captured city in Darfur, including summary executions, abductions and rape.
“If a ceasefire is not reached around Kadugli,” Refaat said, “the scale of violence we saw in El-Fasher could be repeated.”
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