BEIRUT: Thousands of refugees are fleeing border towns in central Syria where a high-stakes battle is raging, crossing desolate hills to reach safety in neighboring Lebanon, witnesses and the UN said on Sunday.
They packed into wedding halls and drifted into makeshift shacks after escaping the steadily intensifying fighting that began on Friday, said Bassel Hojeiri, former mayor of the Lebanese town of Arsal where most of the refugees have headed.
A Syrian government offensive in the rugged Qalamoun hills, which stretch from Damascus to Lebanon, seeks to cut rebel supply lines to opposition-held enclaves around the capital.
Activists and analysts say the battle may be the final blow that dislodges rebels from the Damascus periphery, where food is running short and opposition fighters have lost a series of strongholds in recent weeks to forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Former mayor Hojeiri estimated some 10,000 people had fled to Arsal, saying an influx of Syrians during the past three years of conflict had caused the population to nearly double.
Dana Sleiman of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees put the total number of refugee arrivals over the weekend at around 1,000 families. She said many had not registered yet with the UN and so they could not provide more definite numbers.
The UNHCR’s Sleiman said refugees weren’t able to reach an official border crossing because of the fighting, which began on Friday. Some families were in such a hurry that they could not collect any belongings before they fled, arriving “without anything except the clothes on their backs,” she said.
The UN was distributing blankets, mattresses, food, diapers and hygiene kits to the refugees. She said some were settling into tin shack slums that dot eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, and they were being offered thick plastic to reinforce their feeble homes against the cold.
Syrian refugees have overwhelmed Lebanon since the uprising began three years ago. Lebanese officials estimate there are 1.4 million Syrians in the country, including 800,000 registered refugees.
The battle for Qalamoun has been expected for weeks, with both government and opposition reinforcing their positions in the sector ahead of winter when much of the area is covered with snow.
Activists say one of the main sites of the battle is around the town of Qara, which lies near a main highway leading from Damascus to the central city of Homs. Controlling the region thus makes it easier to assert control over movement down the length of Syria.
On Sunday, two pro-rebel activist groups and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported two airstrikes hitting the town. They said highway was severed and regime forces had gathered on nearby hills, trying to cut supplies to rebels inside the city.
Syria’s pro-government media vowed the battle would be decisive.
“The army is shaking Qalamoun Mountains and has tightened its siege around terrorists in Qara,” read a front-page article in the Al-Watan newspaper.
Meanwhile, a series of mortar rounds hitting the center of Damascus killed four people, the Syrian official news agency SANA said. While mortar fire into the capital is becoming a regular occurrence, residents said the shelling from nearby rebel-held areas into the center was particularly heavy this week.
Fleeing raging war, thousands of Syria refugees flood into Lebanon
Fleeing raging war, thousands of Syria refugees flood into Lebanon
Israel says it launched pre-emptive attacks against Iran
- An Israeli defense official said the operation had been planned for months in coordination with Washington
Israel said it launched a pre-emptive attack against Iran on Saturday, pushing the Middle East into a renewed military confrontation and further dimming hopes for a diplomatic solution to Tehran’s long-running nuclear dispute with the West.
The New York Times, citing a US official, reported that US strikes on Iran were underway. A source said that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not in Tehran and had been transferred to a secure location.
An apparent strike in Iran’s capital Saturday happened near the offices of Khamenei. State television acknowledged an explosion in the area of the offices.
Israeli media reported attempts to assassinate Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during the attacks, and have not ruled out Khamenei being targeted.
Several missiles have struck University Street and the Jomhouri area in Tehran, while explosion likely occurred in the northern Seyyed Khandan area of Tehran, state media reported. Thick smoke was also rising from the vicinity of Pasteur Street in downtown Tehran, ISNA said.
The attack, coming after Israel and Iran engaged in a 12-day air war in June, follows repeated US-Israeli warnings that they would strike again if Iran pressed ahead with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“The State of Israel launched a pre-emptive attack against Iran to remove threats to the State of Israel,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
An Israeli defense official said the operation had been planned for months in coordination with Washington, and that the launch date was decided weeks ago.
The US military declined to immediately comment on the attack.
Explosions were heard in Tehran on Saturday, Iranian media reported, and sirens sounded across Israel around 08:15 local time in what the military said was a proactive alert to prepare the public for the possibility of an incoming missile strike.
The Israeli military announced the closure of schools and workplaces, with exceptions for essential sectors, and a ban on public airspace. Israel closed its airspace to civilian flights, and the airports authority asked the public not to go to any of the country’s airports.
The country’s airspace will reopen and flights to and from Israel to resume ‘as soon as the security situation allows,’ the airport authority said.
Iran’s airspace has been closed, Tasnim news agency reported.
The US and Iran renewed negotiations in February in a bid to resolve the decades-long dispute through diplomacy and avert the threat of a military confrontation that could destabilize the region.
Israel, however, insisted that any US deal with Iran must include the dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, not just stopping the enrichment process, and lobbied Washington to include restrictions on Iran’s missile program in the talks.
Iran said it was prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions but ruled out linking the issue to missiles.
Tehran also said it would defend itself against any attack.
It warned neighboring countries hosting US troops that it would retaliate against American bases if Washington struck Iran.
In June, the US joined an Israeli military campaign against Iranian nuclear installations, in the most direct American military action ever against the Islamic Republic.
Tehran retaliated then by launching missiles toward the US Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the largest in the Middle East.
Western powers have warned that Iran’s ballistic missile project threatens regional stability and could deliver nuclear weapons if developed. Tehran denies seeking atomic bombs.
