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KABUL — Afghanistan’s Acting Minister for Refugees and Repatriation Khalil Rahman Haqqani was killed in a blast inside the ministry’s headquarter, an official at the Ministry of Interior confirmed to Xinhua on Wednesday.

XINHUA

DAMASCUS — Fighters have gained full control of the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour following the reported withdrawal of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to areas east of the Euphrates River, according to statements from a local commander and a war monitor.

Hassan Abdel Ghani, a commander of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), said that their fighters now hold all of Deir al-Zour city and continue to advance in rural areas.

“Our combatants are pressing forward in the suburbs, having secured the city center along with both western and eastern countrysides,” the commander said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday the SDF had pulled out of Deir al-Zour and the nearby city of Al-Bukamal, returning to areas east of the Euphrates River.

The SDF had taken control of Deir al-Zour earlier following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The Kurdish forces, previously seen as a dominant force in parts of northeastern Syria, appear to have ceded ground as militant groups, led by the HTS, stake their claims on strategic territories and key population centers.

XINHUA

CAIRO — Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 26 people overnight and into Wednesday, including one that hit a home where displaced people were sheltering in the isolated north, killing 19, according to Palestinian medical officials.

That strike occurred in the northern town of Beit Lahiya near the border with Israel, according to the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the bodies. Hospital records show that a family of eight were among those killed, including four children, their parents and two grandparents.

Another strike in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people, according to the Awda Hospital. Records show the dead included two children, their parents and three relatives.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has been waging a renewed offensive against Hamas militants in northern Gaza since early October. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses militants of hiding among them, putting their lives in danger.

The army said militants in central Gaza fired four projectiles into Israel on Wednesday, two of which were intercepted. The other two fell in open areas, and there were no reports of casualties.

AN-AP

The death toll from a Russian missile strike that destroyed a clinic in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday has risen to six, while four more people remain under the rubble, the regional governor and emergency services said on Wednesday.

An additional 22 people were injured, governor Ivan Fedorov said on his Telegram messaging channel.

“All emergency services of the city are working at the scene,” he said.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service of Ukraine said its rescuers were able to pull out two women overnight from underneath the ruins of the building.

Photos posted on the emergency’s Telegram messaging channel showed rescuers and machinery working in piles of rubble from a collapsed building at night.

Russia regularly carries out airstrikes on Zaporizhzhia and the surrounding region. Last Friday, an attack on the city killed 10 people and wounded more than 20.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks, saying the aim of the strikes is to undermine infrastructure key to each other’s war efforts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukraine’s allies on Tuesday to provide 10-12 more Patriot air defense systems that he said would fully protect the country’s skies.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has consistently asked its allies to supply more advanced air-defense systems.

AN-REUTERS

SEOUL — South Korean police officers had confronted security service agents for over three hours to raid the office of President Yoon Suk-yeol, multiple media outlets said Wednesday citing the police.

A group of police investigators attempted to raid the presidential office in central Seoul from 11:50 a.m. local time (0250 GMT), but security service agents blocked them from getting in for security reasons.

Earlier in the day, the police launched a raid on the National Police Agency, the Seoul Metropolitan Police and the National Assembly Police Guards, as well as the presidential office.

The police investigated insurrection and other charges over Yoon’s martial law declaration on the night of Dec. 3, rescinded by the National Assembly hours later.

President Yoon reportedly was not staying at the presidential office building.

XINHUA

KHARTOUM — At least 65 civilians were killed on Tuesday in an artillery attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Omdurman city, north of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, according to Khartoum State government.

XINHUA

GAZA – An Israeli airstrike Tuesday evening killed seven Palestinians and injured others in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, according to local sources.

They said that Israeli fighter jets targeted a house belonging to the Khalifa family in the refugee camp, claiming the lives of seven people and injuring others.

They added that Israeli fighter jets bombed a six-storey building belonging to the Kasba family in Gaza city neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan.

WAFA, Dec 10, 2024

Mohammed al-Bashir announced Tuesday that he has been tasked with heading a transitional government in Syria until early March 2025 following the collapse of the government of Bashar al-Assad.

In a brief televised statement, al-Bashir said he would lead the transitional authority until March 1.

Al-Bashir, born in 1983, was an electrical engineer and head of the “Syrian Salvation Government” (SSG) in Idlib formed in 2017 by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other Syrian militant groups during the Syrian civil war. The SSG wielded administrative and service-related authority in areas under the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) control in northern Syria.

XINHUA

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that its navy carried out a large-scale operation to destroy the former Bashar al-Assad regime’s fleet.

The strikes destroyed “numerous” vessels armed with sea-to-sea missiles in Mina al-Bayda Bay and the port of Latakia on the Syrian coast in an overnight attack between Monday and Tuesday, it said.

The operation aimed to prevent the fleet’s weaponry from falling into hostile hands, it added.

Separately, the Israeli Air Force has conducted about 250 airstrikes in Syria since the collapse of Assad’s government, Israel’s state-owned Kan TV reported.

Israeli officials said the strikes were intended to destroy advanced weapons that could threaten Israel.

XINHUA

MANILA — About 87,000 people were being evacuated in a central Philippine region Tuesday a day after a volcano briefly erupted with a towering ash plume and superhot streams of gas and debris hurtling down its western slopes.

The latest eruption of Mount Kanlaon on central Negros island did not cause any immediate casualties, but the alert level was raised one level, indicating further and more explosive eruptions may occur.

Volcanic ash fell on a wide area, including Antique province, more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) across seawaters west of the volcano, obscuring visibility and posing health risks, Philippine chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol and other officials said by telephone.

At least six domestic flights and a flight bound for Singapore were canceled and two local flights were diverted in the region Monday and Tuesday due to Kanlaon’s eruption, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.

The mass evacuations were being carried out urgently in towns and villages nearest the western and southern slopes of Kanlaon which were blanketed by its ash, including in La Castellana town in Negros Occidental where nearly 47,000 people have to be evacuated out of a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) danger zone, the Office of Civil Defense said.

More than 6,000 have moved to evacuation centers aside from those who have temporarily transferred to the homes of relatives in La Castellana by Tuesday morning, the town’s mayor, Rhumyla Mangilimutan, told The Associated Press by telephone.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said authorities were ready to provide support to large numbers of displaced villagers and that his social welfare secretary flew early Tuesday to the affected region.

“We are ready to support the families who have been evacuated outside the 6-kilometer danger zone,” Marcos told reporters.

Government scientists were monitoring the air quality due to the risk of contamination from toxic volcanic gases that may require more people to be evacuated from areas affected by Monday’s eruption.

Disaster-response contingents were rapidly establishing evacuation centers and seeking supplies of face masks, food and hygiene packs ahead of the Christmas season, traditionally a peak time for holiday travel and family celebrations in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

Authorities also shut schools and imposed a nighttime curfew in the most vulnerable areas.

The Philippines’ Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the nearly four-minute eruption of Kanlaon volcano on Monday afternoon had caused a pyroclastic density current — a superhot stream of gas, ash, debris and rocks that can incinerate anything in its path.

“It’s a one-time but major eruption,” Bacolcol told the AP, adding that volcanologists were assessing if Monday’s eruption spewed old volcanic debris and rocks clogged in and near the summit crater or was caused by rising magma from underneath.

Few volcanic earthquakes were detected ahead of Monday’s explosion, Bacolcol said.

The alert level around Kanlaon was placed on Monday to the third-highest of a five-step warning system, indicating “magmatic eruption” may have begun and may progress to further explosive eruptions.

The 2,435-meter (7,988-foot) volcano, one of the country’s 24 most-active volcanoes, last erupted in June sending hundreds of villagers to emergency shelters.

In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said.

Located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year and is among the countries most prone to natural disasters.

AN-AP