Category: English

LONDON — Some services across the UK’s National Rail network were disrupted on Friday morning due to “a nationwide fault with the communication system used between train drivers and signalers.”

Routes to London’s Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport were among those affected, along with services operated by Northern, South Western Railway, and Transport for Wales.

Travelers across the country faced short-notice cancellations and alterations due to the knock-on effect on the timetables.

According to a statement by the National Rail, the issue mainly affected trains registering to enter their route for the start of service and deregistering to end their service.

XINHUA

BEIRUT — Thousands of people fled the central Syrian city of Homs overnight and into Friday morning, a war monitoring group and residents said, as militant forces sought to push their lightning offensive against government forces further south.

They have already captured the key cities of Aleppo in the north and Hama in the center, dealing successive blows to President Bashar Assad, nearly 14 years after protests against him erupted across Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said thousands of people had begun fleeing on Thursday night toward western coastal regions, a stronghold of the government.

A resident of the coastal area said thousands of people had begun arriving there from Homs, fearing the militants’ rapid advance.

On Friday morning, Israeli air strikes hit two border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh said.

The Syrian state news agency (SANA) said the Arida border crossing with Lebanon was out of service due to the attack.

The Israeli military said it had attacked weapons transfer hubs and infrastructure overnight on the Syrian side of the Lebanese border, saying these routes had been used by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah to smuggle weapons.

Russian bombing overnight also destroyed the Rustan bridge along the key M5 highway, the main route to Homs, to prevent militants using it, a Syrian army officer told Reuters.

“There were at least eight strikes on the bridge,” he added. Government forces were bringing reinforcements to positions around the city, he said.

Militants led by the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham have pledged to press on southward to Homs, a crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and Assad’s heartland along the coast.

A militant operations room urged Homs residents in an online post to rise up, saying: “Your time has come.”

AN-REUTERS

BEIRUT — Israeli strikes early on Friday hit two border crossings linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh said.

The strikes hit just across the border on the Syrian side of both the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon, Hamieh said.

Both crossings are important access points to Syria’s Homs province, where anti-government rebels are seeking to advance against government forces after sweeping through northern Syria.

AN-REUTERS

BEIRUT — Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday, as government forces scramble to secure Homs after Islamist-led militants captured Hama and commercial hub Aleppo.

“Fighter jets executed several airstrikes, targeting Al-Rastan bridge on (the) Homs-Hama highway… as well as attacking positions around the bridge, attempting to cut off the road between Hama and Homs and secure Homs,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched their offensive a little more than a week ago, just as a ceasefire in neighboring Lebanon took hold between Israel and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ally Hezbollah.

To slow the militants advance, the Observatory said Assad’s forces erected soil barriers on the highway north of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city which lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.

Tens of thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Homs on Thursday, for fear that the militants would keep up their advance, the Observatory said earlier.

The militants captured Hama on Thursday following street battles with government forces, announcing “the complete liberation of the city” in a message on their Telegram channel.

Militant fighters kissed the ground and let off volleys of celebratory gunfire as they entered Syria’s fourth-largest city.

Many residents turned out to welcome the militants.

An AFP photographer saw some residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of city hall.

The army admitted losing control of the city, strategically located between Aleppo and Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.

Defense Minister Ali Abbas insisted that the army’s withdrawal was a “temporary tactical measure.”

“Our forces are still in the vicinity,” he said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International think tank, called the loss of Hama “a massive, massive blow to the Syrian government” because the army should have had an advantage there to reverse militants gains “and they couldn’t do it.”

He said HTS would now try to push on toward Homs, where many residents were already leaving on Thursday.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman reported a mass exodus from the city of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community.

He said tens of thousands were heading toward areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, where the Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, form the majority.

“We are afraid and worried that what happened in Hama will be repeated in Homs,” said a civil servant, who gave his name only as Abbas.

“We fear they (the militants) will take revenge on us,” the 33-year-old said.

Until last week, the war in Syria had been mostly dormant for years, but analysts have said it was bound to resume as it was never truly resolved.

In a video posted online, HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani said his fighters had entered Hama to “cleanse the wound that has endured in Syria for 40 years,” referring to a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, which led to thousands of deaths.

In a later message on Telegram congratulating “the people of Hama on their victory,” he used his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, instead of his nom de guerre for the first time.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed in the country since the violence erupted last week.

It marks the most intense fighting since 2020 in the civil war sparked by the repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011.

Key to the militants’ successes since the start of the offensive last week was the takeover of Aleppo, which in more than a decade of war had never entirely fallen out of government hands.

While the advancing militants met little resistance earlier in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.

Assad ordered a 50-percent raise in career soldiers’ pay, state news agency SANA reported Wednesday, as he seeks to bolster his forces for a counteroffensive.

Militants drove back the Syrian armed forces despite the fact that the government sent in “large military convoys,” the Observatory said.

The militants launched their offensive in northern Syria on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.

Both Hezbollah and Russia have been crucial backers of Assad’s government, but have been mired in their own conflicts in recent years.

HTS is rooted in Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch.
The group has sought to moderate its image in recent years, but experts say it faces a challenge convincing Western governments it has fully renounced hard-line jihadism.

The United States maintains hundreds of troops in eastern Syria as part of a coalition formed against Daesh group jihadists.

AN-AFP

SEOUL — South Korea’s defense ministry said on Friday that it suspended the duty of three military commanders involved in the martial law declaration, made by President Yoon Suk-yeol earlier this week.

Chiefs of the capital defense command, the army special warfare command, and the counterintelligence command were suspended and transferred to other units.

It came amid the lingering worry about another martial law declaration in the opposition bloc.

Yoon declared an emergency martial law Tuesday night before repealing it early Wednesday as the parliament voted against it. The revocation was approved at a cabinet meeting.

XINHUA

ISLAMABAD — Eight terrorists were killed in two military operations in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Army, said on Thursday night in a statement that personnel of security forces engaged with the terrorists in two separate locations in the province.

In the first engagement, the ISPR said that the security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in the South Waziristan district on the reported presence of terrorists, resulting in the killing of two terrorists, including a ring leader.

Two terrorists were also arrested during the operation in South Waziristan, the ISPR added.

In another operation, six terrorists were killed in the Lakki Marwat district of the province.

The ISPR said that the killed terrorists remained actively involved in terrorist activities against security forces as well as extortion and target killing of civilians in the area.

Clearance of the surrounding areas is being conducted to eliminate any other terrorists found in the area, it added.

XINHUA

QUITO — At least nine have been killed in two armed attacks in west Ecuador, local media reported Thursday.

Early Thursday morning, police confirmed the discovery of six male bodies aged 17-25, all piled together.

Local media reports indicated that some of the bodies were bound and showed gunshot wounds. Police have transported the bodies to a forensic center in the port city of Manta, Manabi.

On Wednesday night, three members of the same family were murdered in the city of Bahia de Caraquez, Sucre canton, Manabi.

Manabi, a key region for drug trafficking on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, has seen rising violence in 2024, with numerous crimes linked to organized crime, police said.

In response, the government deployed police and military forces to target criminal groups in conflict zones. President Daniel Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” in January against 22 criminal gangs labeled as “terrorist.”

XINHUA

SAO PAULO — Two trucks and a car on Thursday crashed on a main highway in Sao Paulo, Brazil, killing four people and leaving several others injured, the local fire department reported.

The accident occurred on the Bandeirantes highway when two trucks collided and hit another vehicle stopped at the side of the road.

According to the Sao Paulo Fire Department report, one of the trucks entered a restricted area of the highway, causing multiple crashes.

The accident occurred early Thursday morning and caused a major traffic jam. A section of the highway was closed to attend to the victims and move the accident vehicles.

XINHUA

BEIRUT — Tens of thousands of members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Syria’s third city Homs Thursday, for fear that Islamist-led rebels would keep up their advance, a war monitor said.

Homs lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama, which the rebels captured on Thursday.

Analysts said they expected the fighters led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) to push on toward the city, a key link between Damascus and the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast.

Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported “the mass exodus of Alawites from Homs neighborhoods, with tens of thousands heading toward the Syrian coast, fearing the rebel advance.”

Khaled, who lives on the city’s outskirts told AFP that “the road leading to (coastal) Tartus province was glowing… due to the lights of hundreds of cars on their way out.”

In April 2014, at least 100 people, mostly civilians, were killed in twin attacks in Homs that targeted a majority Alawite neighborhood.

The attacks were claimed by the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda which now HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani previously led.

Jolani announced his group had cut ties with the jihadists in 2016, and Al-Nusra was dissolved the following year, to be replaced by the key component of HTS.

Haidar, 37, who lives in an Alawite-majority neighborhood, told AFP by telephone that “fear is the umbrella that covers Homs now.”

“I’ve never seen this scene in my life. We are extremely afraid, we don’t know what is happening from one hour to the next,” he said.

He has managed to send his parents to Tartus, but has not found a car to take him and his wife “due to the high demand.”

“When we find a car, we’ll leave as fast as possible for Tartus.”

The province, which hosts a naval base operated by Assad ally Russia, has remained safe though 13 years of war.

AN-AFP

JENIN — Gunfights erupted in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank on Thursday between militants and Palestinian security forces following the theft of vehicles belonging to the Palestinian Authority, according to AFP journalists in the city.

The intense exchanges of fire began around 9:30 PM (1930 GMT) and followed the deployment of members of the security forces around the Jenin refugee camp, which is adjacent to the city and a stronghold for armed groups in the territory, according to the journalist.

Witnesses reported that the Palestinian security forces set up roadblocks on routes leaving the camp.

Tensions were running high in Jenin earlier in the day after a group of armed men seized two vehicles belonging to the PA and paraded through the streets waving Islamic Jihad flags.

In a statement, General Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the security forces, said “a group of outlaws opened fire on the headquarters of the security services” and stole two vehicles.

He said the security forces would “recover the vehicles and hold accountable anyone who committed this act.”

Tensions between the PA and armed groups appear to have been exacerbated by recent arrests by the security forces.

At a press conference inside Jenin camp, Mahmud Abu Talal, spokesman for a collective of local armed groups, said the PA had “abandoned its people in the most difficult circumstances.”

He rejected the label of outlaws and accused the PA of “carrying out a continuous operation to undermine those who protect their people.”

Jenin has long been a bastion of Palestinian armed groups and was the focus of a major Israeli raid launched at the end of August.

Violence in the West Bank, already increasing, surged after the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has occupied the territory since 1967.

AN-AFP