Friends of Italian priest long missing in Syria hope for news

Father Jihad Youssef carries a portrait of Italian Jesuit priest Paolo Dall'Oglio at Deir Mar Musa, also known as the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, in al-Nabk north of Damascus on February 8, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 12 February 2025
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Friends of Italian priest long missing in Syria hope for news

  • Tens of thousands of people have been detained or gone missing in Syria during more than a decade of conflict, many disappearing into Assad’s jails

NABEK, Syria: In a centuries-old monastery on a rocky hill north of Damascus, friends of missing Italian priest Paolo Dall’Oglio carry on his legacy, hopeful Bashar Assad’s ouster might help reveal the Jesuit’s fate.
“We want to know if Father Paolo is alive or dead, who imprisoned him, and what was his fate,” said Father Jihad Youssef who heads Deir Mar Musa Al-Habashi, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Damascus.
For years, Dall’Oglio lived in Deir Mar Musa — the monastery of St. Moses the Ethiopian — which dates to around the 6th century. He is credited with helping restore the place of worship.
A fierce critic of Assad, whose 2011 repression of anti-government protests sparked war, he was exiled the following year for meeting with opposition members, returning secretly to opposition-controlled areas in 2013.
He disappeared that summer while heading to the Raqqa headquarters of a group that would later become known as the Daesh, to plead for the release of kidnapped activists.
Conflicting reports emerged on Dall’Oglio’s whereabouts, including that he was kidnapped by the extremists, killed or handed to the Syrian government.
Daesh’s territorial defeat in Syria in 2019 brought no new information.
Tens of thousands of people have been detained or gone missing in Syria during more than a decade of conflict, many disappearing into Assad’s jails.
His December overthrow has enabled his friends at the monastery to openly discuss suspicions Dall’Oglio might have been “imprisoned by the regime,” Youssef said.
“We waited to see a sign of him... in Saydnaya prison or Palestine Branch,” Youssef said, referring to notorious detention facilities from which detainees were released after Assad’s toppling.
“We were told a lot of things, including that he was seen in the Adra prison in 2019,” Youssef said, referring to another facility outside Damascus, “but nothing reliable.”

Dall’Oglio, born in 1954, hosted interfaith seminars at Deir Mar Musa where Syria’s Christian minority and Muslims used to pray side by side, turning the monastery into a symbol of coexistence.
Youssef said it became a bridge for dialogue between Syrians in a country that “the former regime divided into sects who feared each other.”
Some 30,000 people visited in 2010, but the war and Dall’Oglio’s disappearance scared them away for more than a decade.
The monastery reopened for visitors in 2022.
“I didn’t know Father Paolo,” said Shatha Al-Barrah, 28, who came to Deir Mar Musa seeking solace and reflection.
But “I know he reflects this monastery, which opens its heart to all people from all faiths,” said the interpreter as she climbed the 300 steps leading to the building, built on the ruins of a Roman tower and partly carved into the rock.
Julian Zakka said Dall’Oglio was one of the reasons he joined the Jesuit order.
“Father Paolo used to work against associating Islam with extremists,” said the 28-year-old, “and to emphasize that coexistence is possible.”

After Islamist-led rebels ended half a century of one-family rule, the new authorities have sought to reassure minorities that they will be protected.
Assad had presented himself as a protector of minorities in multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Syria, but largely concentrated power in the hands of the Alawite community to whom his family belonged.
This month, Jesuits in Syria emphasized the need for healing, noting in a statement that fear had “shackled” the community for years.
Youssef said that while “the regime presented itself as protecting us, in fact it was using us as protection.”
He expressed optimism that “at last, the load has been lifted from our chests and we can breathe” after decades of “political death,” adding that he hoped the new authorities would be inclusive.
For now, Youssef is intent on spreading Dall’Oglio’s message.
“We will return to organizing activities like he loved to do,” Youssef said, including a march in Homs province, home to Alawites, Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
“The regime caused deep wounds between the Islamic sects” in Homs, he said.
“Father Paolo wanted to organize a large procession there — to pray at the mass graves, to be a bridge between people — to let them listen to each other’s pain, grieve and cry together, and stand hand in hand.”
 

 


US strike on Yemen fuel port kills at least 58, Houthi media say

Updated 6 sec ago
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US strike on Yemen fuel port kills at least 58, Houthi media say

  • The US has vowed not to halt the large-scale strikes begun last month, unless the Houthis cease attacks on Red Sea shipping

WASHINGTON: US strikes on a fuel port in Yemen killed at least 58 people, Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said, one of the deadliest since the United States began its attacks on the Iran-backed militants.

The United States has vowed not to halt the large-scale strikes begun last month in its biggest military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January, unless the Houthis cease attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Al Masirah TV said 126 people were also wounded in Thursday’s strikes on the western fuel port of Ras Isa, which the US military said aimed to cut off a source of fuel for the Houthi militant group.

Responding to a Reuters query for comment on the Houthis’ casualty figure and its own estimate, the US Central Command said it had none beyond the initial announcement of the attacks.

“The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis, who continue to exploit and bring great pain upon their fellow countrymen,” it had said in a post on X.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have launched dozens of drone and missile attacks on vessels transiting the waterway, saying they were targeting ships linked to Israel in protest over the war in Gaza.

They halted attacks on shipping lanes during a two-month ceasefire in Gaza. Although they vowed to resume strikes after Israel renewed its assault on Gaza last month, they have not claimed any since.

In March, two days of US attacks killed more than 50 people, Houthi officials said.


Lebanon says one killed in a renewed Israeli strike near Sidon

Updated 2 min 17 sec ago
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Lebanon says one killed in a renewed Israeli strike near Sidon

  • Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon

Beirut: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike on Friday hit a vehicle near the southern coastal city of Sidon, killing one person.
Despite a November 27 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of conflict — including two months of all-out war — between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon.
“The attack carried out by the Israeli enemy against a car on the Sidon-Ghaziyeh road resulted in one dead,” said a health ministry statement on the fourth consecutive day of Israeli attacks on the south where Israel says it has targeted Hezbollah militants.
An AFP journalist said the Israeli attack hit a four-wheel-drive vehicle, sending a pillar of black smoke into the sky.
The Lebanese army sealed off the area as firemen fought the blaze.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike, but the Israeli military has said it was behind previous attacks this week that it said killed members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
Hezbollah, significantly weakened by the war, insists it is adhering to the November ceasefire, even as Israeli attacks persist.

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50 years on, Lebanon remains hostage to sectarian rivalries
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Gaza rescuers say 15 killed in Israeli strikes

Updated 7 min 55 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say 15 killed in Israeli strikes

  • On Thursday the civil defense agency reported the deaths of at least 40 residents in Israeli strikes

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Friday that 15 people, including 10 from the same family, had been killed in two overnight Israeli strikes.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said on Telegram that “our crews recovered the bodies of 10 martyrs and a large number of wounded from the house of the Baraka family and the neighboring houses targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Bani Suhaila area east of Khan Yunis,” in the southern Gaza Strip.
Bassal later announced that a separate strike hit two houses in northern Gaza’s Tal Al-Zaatar, where crews had “recovered the bodies of five people.”
The Israeli military, which did not immediately comment, has intensified its aerial bombardments and expanded its ground operations in the Gaza Strip since it resumed its offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory on March 18.
On Thursday, the civil defense agency reported the deaths of at least 40 residents in Israeli strikes, most of them in camps for displaced civilians, as Israel pressed its offensive.


Israeli military intercepts missile launched from Yemen

Updated 18 April 2025
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Israeli military intercepts missile launched from Yemen

  • Iran-backed Houthi militia have regularly fired missiles and drones targeting Israel

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Friday it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, from where the Iran-backed Houthi militia have regularly fired missiles and drones targeting Israel.
“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted,” Israel’s army said on Telegram, adding that aerial defense systems had been deployed “to intercept the threat.”


Cash crunch leaves Syrians queueing for hours to collect salaries

Updated 18 April 2025
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Cash crunch leaves Syrians queueing for hours to collect salaries

  • Syria has been struggling to emerge from the wake of nearly 14 years of civil war, and its banking sector is no exception
  • The liquidity crisis has forced authorities to drastically limit cash withdrawals, leaving much of the population struggling to make ends meet

DAMASCUS: Seated on the pavement outside a bank in central Damascus, Abu Fares’s face is worn with exhaustion as he waits to collect a small portion of his pension.
“I’ve been here for four hours and I haven’t so much as touched my pension,” said the 77-year-old, who did not wish to give his full name.
“The cash dispensers are under-stocked and the queues are long,” he continued.
Since the overthrow of president Bashar Assad last December, Syria has been struggling to emerge from the wake of nearly 14 years of civil war, and its banking sector is no exception.
Decades of punishing sanctions imposed on the Assad dynasty – which the new authorities are seeking to have lifted – have left about 90 percent of Syrians under the poverty line, according to the United Nations.
The liquidity crisis has forced authorities to drastically limit cash withdrawals, leaving much of the population struggling to make ends meet.
Prior to his ousting, Assad’s key ally Russia held a monopoly on printing banknotes. The new authorities have only announced once that they have received a shipment of banknotes from Moscow since Assad’s overthrow.
In a country with about 1.25 million public sector employees, civil servants must queue at one of two state banks or affiliated ATMs to make withdrawals, capped at about 200,000 Syrian pounds, the equivalent on the black market of $20 per day.
In some cases, they have to take a day off just to wait for the cash.
“There are sick people, elderly... we can’t continue like this,” said Abu Fares.
“There is a clear lack of cash, and for that reason we deactivate the ATMs at the end of the workday,” an employee at a private bank said, preferring not to give her name.
A haphazard queue of about 300 people stretches outside the Commercial Bank of Syria. Some are sitting on the ground.
Afraa Jumaa, a civil servant, said she spends most of the money she withdraws on the travel fare to get to and from the bank.
“The conditions are difficult and we need to withdraw our salaries as quickly as possible,” said the 43-year-old.
“It’s not acceptable that we have to spend days to withdraw meagre sums.”
The local currency has plunged in value since the civil war erupted in 2011, prior to which the dollar was valued at 50 pounds.
Economist Georges Khouzam explained that foreign exchange vendors – whose work was outlawed under Assad – “deliberately reduced cash flows in Syrian pounds to provoke rapid fluctuations in the market and turn a profit.”
Muntaha Abbas, a 37-year-old civil servant, had to return three times to withdraw her entire salary of 500,000 pounds.
“There are a lot of ATMs in Damascus, but very few of them work,” she said.
After a five-hour wait, she was finally able to withdraw 200,000 pounds.
“Queues and more queues... our lives have become a series of queues,” she lamented.