LATAKIA: The military chief of Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham said on Tuesday it would be “the first” to dissolve its armed wing and integrate into the armed forces.
“In any state, all military units must be integrated into this institution,” Murhaf Abu Qasra, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hassan Al-Hamawi, said in an interview with AFP, adding that “we will be, God willing, among the first to take the initiative (to dissolve our armed wing).”
He added that Kurdish-held areas of Syria would be integrated under the country’s new leadership, adding that the group rejects federalism and that “Syria will not be divided.”
“The Kurdish people are one of the components of the Syrian people... Syria will not be divided and there will be no federal entities,” he said.
A US-backed, Kurdish-led administration controls swathes of north and northeastern Syria, and has recently been battling Turkish-backed groups which have captured several Kurdish towns.
Abu Qasra also called on the international community to “find a solution” to repeated Israeli strikes and an “incursion” into Syrian territory.
“We view the Israeli strikes on military sites and the incursion into southern Syria as injust... we call on the international community to find a solution to this matter,” he said.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian military assets in what it says is a bid to prevent them falling into hostile hands.
It has also sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
Abu Qasra also called on Western governments to lift the “terrorist” designation from HTS and its leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
“We call on the United States and all countries to lift this designation... on his person and the whole group,” he said, describing it as “unjust” and saying that the group “will ultimately be integrated into state institutions.”
The radical Sunni Islamist group has been proscribed as a terrorist organization by Western governments including the United States and Britain.
It has recently sought to moderate its rhetoric and assure the international community that religious and other minorities will be protected.
Syria ex-HTS military chief says to dissolve armed wing
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Syria ex-HTS military chief says to dissolve armed wing
- Abu Qasra called on the international community to “find a solution” to repeated Israeli strikes and an “incursion” into Syrian territory.
Landmine explosion in Sudan kills 9, including 3 children
- “Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said
KHARTOUM: A land mine explosion killed nine people in Sudan on Sunday, including three children, as they were riding in an auto-rickshaw along a road in the frontline region of Kordofan, a medical source told AFP.
The war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has left Sudan strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, though the explosive that caused Sunday’s deaths could also have dated back to previous rebellions that have shaken South Kordofan state since 2011.
“Nine people, three of them children, were killed by a mine explosion while they were in a tuk-tuk,” a medical source at Al-Abbasiya hospital said.
The vehicle was reduced to “a metal carcass,” witness Abdelbagi Issa told AFP by phone.
“We were walking behind the tuk-tuk along the road to the market when we heard the sound of an explosion,” he said. “People fell to the ground and the tuk-tuk was destroyed.”
Kordofan has become the center of fighting in the nearly three-year war ever since the RSF forced the army out of its last foothold in the neighboring Darfur region late last year.
Since it broke out, Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 11 million to flee their homes, triggering a dire humanitarian crisis.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
