CAIRO: Israel’s military said on Saturday its forces deployed in southern Syria were ready to protect the Druze minority, following recent sectarian clashes.
The Israeli army “is deployed in southern Syria and is prepared to prevent the entry of hostile forces into the area of Druze villages,” the military said in a statement, without specifying whether this was a new deployment or elaborating on the number of troops on the ground.
A Druze official in Sweida province, the heartland of Syria’s Druze community, said there had been “no deployment of Israeli soldiers there.”
Israel’s troop presence is “reportedly confined to Quneitra province” near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, where the army had “established positions” following the ousting of longtime president Bashar Assad in December, the official added.
After deadly sectarian clashes near Damascus earlier this week, Israel has conducted multiple strikes it says were meant to protect the Druze community and warned Syria’s Islamist rulers against harming the minority group.
On Saturday the Israeli military said that “five Syrian Druze citizens were evacuated to receive medical treatment in Israel overnight” after sustaining injuries on Syrian territory.
The Druze official in Sweida said they had been wounded “in clashes in Sahnaya,” the site of recent sectarian violence near Damascus.
They were “afraid of being sent to hospitals in Damascus, out of fear of being detained,” the official added.
According to army statements, a total of 15 Syrian Druze have been admitted to hospital in Israel since the beginning of the week.
Israel launched more than 20 air strikes inside Syria late Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, following an attack near the presidential palace in Damascus, which the authorities condemned as a “dangerous escalation.”
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Thursday that Israel will respond forcefully if Syria’s new government fails to protect the Druze minority.
The Israeli strikes came after Druze clerics and armed factions reaffirmed their loyalty to Damascus, following clashes also involving government-affiliated groups.
The Observatory monitor said more than 100 people were killed in the clashes in Sahnaya and Jaramana, both near Damascus, and in Sweida province.
Israel military says deployed in southern Syria in support of Druze
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Israel military says deployed in southern Syria in support of Druze
- Israel's military said on Saturday its forces deployed in southern Syria were ready to protect the Druze minority, following recent sectarian clashes.
Trial opens in Tunisia of NGO workers accused of aiding migrants
- Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society”
TUNIS: Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society” in the country.
Six staff members of the Tunisian branch of the France Terre d’Asile aid group, along with 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse, face charges of sheltering migrants and facilitating their “illegal entry and residence.”
If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
A former head of Terre d’Asile Tunisie, Sherifa Riahi, is among the accused and has been detained for more than 19 months, according to her lawyer Abdellah Ben Meftah.
He told AFP that the accused had carried out their work as part of a project approved by the state and in “direct coordination” with the government.
Amnesty denounced what it described as a “bogus criminal trial” and called on Tunisian authorities to drop the charges.
“They are being prosecuted simply for their legitimate work providing vital assistance and protection to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in precarious situations,” Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy MENA chief, said in the statement.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is set to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.
