Center East disaster dwell: rebel-backed Syrian interim prime minister urges ‘stability and calm’

The UN workplace for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) has laid out a few of the healthcare challenges within the Gaza Strip attributable to Israeli navy motion in its newest replace. It wrote:

Ongoing hostilities and assaults in North Gaza, notably people who have instantly affected Kamal Adwan hospital, have severely jeopardidsed the entry of trauma sufferers to well being companies.

A scarcity of non-communicable illness (NCD) drugs and laboratory reagents threatens to additional disrupt healthcare provision for sufferers with NCDs.

There’s a important scarcity of spare elements and generator oil wanted for the upkeep of mills in any respect well being services throughout the Gaza Strip.

The restricted variety of useful crossing factors and entry impediments to gather provides from them proceed to trigger shortages in medicines and medical provides throughout the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian information company Wafa studies that not less than 22 individuals have been killed in a single day within the Gaza Strip by Israeli strikes.

The Related Press has filed a report on Suheil Hamwi, who spent 32 years in a Syrian jail, and the way, after the lightning offensive by insurgents that toppled the federal government of Bashar al-Assad, he has lastly returned to his residence in Lebanon.

In 1992, Hamwi labored as a service provider, promoting varied items within the city of Chekka in northern Lebanon. On the evening of Eid il-Burbara, or Saint Barbara’s Day – a vacation just like Halloween – a person got here to his door to purchase some whiskey. Hamwi stated he handed his 10-month-old son, George, to his spouse and went to his automotive to fetch the whiskey and make the sale.

As Hamwi approached his car, a automotive full of males pulled up, he stated, forcing him inside and taking him away.

It might be years earlier than his household heard from him once more.

Hamwi was one among a whole bunch of Lebanese residents detained throughout Syria’s occupation of Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 and believed to be held in Syrian prisons for many years. On Sunday, freedom got here to him and others unexpectedly – prisoners who’d heard rumors about Syria’s opposition forces and their sweeping marketing campaign discovered that guards had deserted their posts. Hamwi and different prisoners left, he stated, and he would quickly be among the many first from Lebanon to reenter the nation.

“I’m still scared this might not be real,” he advised The Related Press in an interview Tuesday from his residence – the identical one he left greater than three many years in the past.

This new actuality feels fragile, however, he stated, “I found my freedom.”

Syrians in Germany weigh up returning after fall of Assad regime

Kate Connolly

Kate Connolly studies from Berlin

Reem Alali remains to be reeling from the information that the brutal regime she fled eight years in the past has collapsed, leaving her and her household with emotions bordering pleasure and trepidation. Furthermore, there’s a sense that vital selections need to be made – however maybe not simply but, and solely with nice warning.

“We didn’t sleep for two nights,” she stated on Monday, a day after Bashar al-Assad, the previous dictator, fled Syria following rebels’ lightning-speed advance into the capital, Damascus. “We have been glued to our phones, speaking to Syrian friends and relatives, crying and drinking glühwein with our German friends.”

Alali and her husband, Amin, have been “constantly talking to each other about the one big question: do we go back or not?”, she stated.

The 38-year-old from Suwayda, south-western Syria, misplaced her father, uncle and two cousins within the battle after which sought refuge in Germany in 2016. After the astonishing occasions of the previous few days, she has come to a conclusion: “I will not take my children to Syria until I really know the situation is a lot better.”

That warning was echoed by the UN particular envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, who advised reporters on Tuesday that whereas many Syrians had been desperate to return, prudence was important: “There are livelihood challenges still. The humanitarian situation is disastrous. The economy has collapsed.”

Amin, 40, a journalist in Syria who now works as an organization technician, arrived in Germany in 2015, one of many giant variety of Syrians who got sanctuary below Angela Merkel’s resolution to maintain the nation’s borders open to them. His perilous journey was by automotive by way of Turkey, boat to Greece, and a month-long trek by foot from Greece to Germany.

He and Alali are among the many estimated 975,000 Syrian nationals dwelling in Germany, in accordance with the nation’s central register of foreigners. Within the first 11 months of this yr, greater than 72,000 individuals from Syria utilized for asylum. Most of the refugees who got here in 2015 now have German citizenship, whereas a whole bunch of hundreds have a short lived residence allow.

Humanitarian support to northern Gaza, the place Israel launched a floor offensive on 6 October, has largely been blocked for the previous 66 days, the UN has stated. That has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians with out entry to meals, water, electrical energy or well being care, in accordance with the world physique.

Within the north, Israel has continued its siege on Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya with Palestinians dwelling there largely denied support, the UN Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, often known as Ocha, stated. Lately, it stated, about 5,500 individuals had been forcibly displaced from three faculties in Beit Lahiya to Gaza Metropolis, the Related Press studies.

Including to the meals disaster, solely 4 UN-supported bakeries are actually working all through the Gaza Strip, all of them in Gaza Metropolis, Ocha stated.

Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, advised reporters after briefing the UN safety council behind closed doorways Tuesday afternoon that civilians attempting to outlive in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”

Kaag stated she and different UN officers maintain repeatedly asking Israel for entry for convoys to north Gaza and elsewhere, to permit in industrial items, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt within the south, and to approve dual-use objects.

Israel’s UN mission stated it had no touch upon Kaag’s remarks.

Jason Burke

Jason Burke studies from Deir Istiya

The olive bushes cowl the dry, rocky slopes round Deir Istiya, spreading deep into the valley to its west, lining the principle roads, filling the gardens, and shading its graveyards.

However many farmers within the historic Palestinian city, deep within the occupied West Financial institution, say that this yr they’ve been unable to reap a lot of the very important olive crop, blaming an intensifying marketing campaign of intimidation and violence by individuals from the half-dozen Israeli settlements and outposts close by.

Ibrahim Abu Hijleh, 30, a farmer whose small olive grove is 200 metres from Revava, a settlement constructed within the Nineties, stated he was capable of attain his olive grove just for a couple of hours in November when accompanied by Israeli activists and a Palestinian Israeli member of parliament.

“I got about 10% of the harvest and now we need to trim and tend the trees,” he stated. “I keep trying to go back but people come from the settlement and tell us to leave and threaten us.”

Final month the UN stated Israeli settler assaults in opposition to Palestinians within the West Financial institution that resulted in casualties or property injury had not less than tripled in the course of the 2024 olive harvest season in contrast with every of the previous three years.

Between 1 October and 25 November, the UN documented 250 settler-related incidents throughout 88 West Financial institution communities, with 57 Palestinians injured by settlers and 11 by Israeli forces. Greater than 2,800 bushes –largely slow-growing olive bushes – had been burned, sawed-off, or vandalised, and there was vital theft of crops and harvesting instruments, it stated.

In October, in probably the most high-profile assault, a 59-year-old lady was killed whereas harvesting olives in Faqqua, close to Jenin, by a soldier who fired about 10 photographs at her. The Israel Protection Forces (IDF) have stated they’re investigating.

Olives are the biggest single agricultural product within the West Financial institution, and as much as a 3rd of the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Financial institution is estimated to work with the bushes or their produce, corresponding to oil and cleaning soap.

Syria’s new interim chief stated it was time for “stability and calm” within the nation as he introduced he was taking cost of the nation as caretaker prime minister with the backing of the previous rebels who toppled President Bashar al-Assad three days in the past.

In a short tackle on state tv on Tuesday, Mohammed al-Bashir, a determine little-known throughout most of Syria who beforehand ran an administration in a pocket of the north-west managed by rebels earlier than the lightning offensive that swept into Damascus, stated he would lead the interim authority till 1 March.

“Today we held a cabinet meeting that included a team from the salvation government that was working in Idlib and its vicinity, and the government of the ousted regime,” he stated.

Behind him had been two flags – the inexperienced, black and white flag flown by opponents of Assad all through the civil battle, and a white flag with the Islamic oath of religion in black writing, sometimes flown in Syria by Sunni Islamist fighters.

Within the Syrian capital, banks reopened for the primary time since Assad’s overthrow, Reuters reported. Retailers additionally opened once more, site visitors returned to the roads, cleaners had been out sweeping the streets and there have been fewer armed males about.

“Now it is time for this people to enjoy stability and calm,” Bashir advised Al Jazeera.

In different developments:

• Israel says it has carried out greater than 480 airstrikes concentrating on weapons stockpiles and strategic infrastructure in Syria over the previous 48 hours. The IDF stated the air drive carried out the crewed plane missile strikes on Syrian navy targets together with weapons manufacturing websites within the cities of Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia and Palmyra. It stated 130 strikes had been “during ground operations” and geared toward weapons depots, navy constructions, launchers and firing positions.

• The world “has nothing to fear” from the brand new Syrian regime, the chief of insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) has advised Sky Information in what the community says are his first feedback to a western media outlet since his group toppled Bashar al-Assad on Sunday. Ahmed al-Sharaa, often known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, tried to reassure overseas nations in his remarks and promised Syria “will be rebuilt”.

• Russian deputy overseas minister Sergei Ryabkov stated Moscow is “providing sanctuary” for deposed Syrian chief Bashar al-Assad, having transported him to Moscow on Sunday “in the most secure way possible”. “He is secured, and it shows that Russia acts as required in such an extraordinary situation,” he advised NBC Information.

• The rebel group that overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s authorities in Syria claims to have wrested management of the japanese metropolis of Deir el-Zour after intense battles with the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), AP reported. A member of the Islamic group Hayat al-Tahrir Sham (HTS) stated in a recorded video that the group would sweep neighbourhoods to safe the town. The close by metropolis of Boukamal had additionally fallen to HTS, the individual stated, including that Raqqa and Hasakah had been subsequent targets.

• The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated not less than 218 individuals had been killed in three days of preventing between Turkish-backed forces and the SDF in Manbij, north-east of Damascus. Early on Wednesday, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi stated the SDF and the Turkey-backed rebels had reached a ceasefire settlement in Manbij by way of US mediation.

• Outgoing US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has referred to as for an “inclusive” political course of in Syria, saying the US would ultimately recognise a brand new authorities if it renounces terrorism, destroys chemical weapons shares and protects the rights of minorities and girls. “The Syrian people will decide the future of Syria. All nations should pledge to support an inclusive and transparent process and refrain from external interference,” Blinken stated in an announcement.

• The UN would take into account taking the Syrian insurgent group that toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad off its designated terrorist checklist if it passes the important thing take a look at of forming a very inclusive transitional authorities, in accordance with a senior official on the world physique. Geir Pedersen, UN particular envoy for Syria, held out the prospect of eradicating Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the organisation’s checklist of proscribed terrorist teams. However he stated the group couldn’t search to control Syria in the way in which that it had ruled Idlib, the northern province the place it was based mostly and from the place it led the navy breakout that resulted within the sudden collapse of the Assad regime.