Category: English

DAMASCUS — Bashar Assad said Monday his departure from Syria was not planned and that Moscow requested his evacuation from a military base that was under attack, in the former president’s first statement since his ouster.

“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles,” said a statement on the ousted presidency’s Telegram channel, adding “Moscow requested… an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday December 8” after he moved to Latakia early that day.

“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose,” the statement added.

AN-AFP

BERLIN — Germany on Monday urged Israel to “abandon” a plan to double the population living in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights at the southwestern edge of Syria.

A foreign ministry spokesman said “it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power.”

The spokesman, Christian Wagner, added that Berlin therefore called on its ally Israel “to abandon this plan” announced Sunday by the Israeli government.

AN-AFP

TEHRAN – American and British warplanes have once again bombed Yemen, this time the areas of northwestern province of Hajjah.

Yemeni media reported that the warplanes targeted the Bahis area in the Midi district of Hajjah in the early hours of Monday.

So far, there has been no report of damage or casualties from the airstrikes that followed hours after similar multiple attacks on Tuhayta district in Hudaydah Province.

In recent months, various areas of Yemen, especially Hudaydah, have experienced joint aerial attacks by the United States (US) and Britain, largely to pressure the Yemeni army to halt its anti-Israel operations.

Meanwhile, a senior member of the Yemeni Ansarullah movement emphasized in a message that the US is opening the gates of hell to itself by increasing tensions with Yemen.

The US embassy has lined up its mercenaries for war against the Yemeni people with the aim of stopping the operation to support the Gaza Strip, Abdul Rahman Al-Ahnumi wrote in a message on the X social network.

He warned that any escalation of tensions will open the gates of hell to the presence of the US, its interests, oil and mercenaries in the region.

The US and Britain first launched the attacks on Yemen’s Ansarullah positions in January citing a UN Security Council resolution that though it never called for violating Yemen’s sovereignty rather protecting the international maritime route.

IRNA

TAIPEI — Taiwan has received 38 advanced Abrams battle tanks from the United States, the defense ministry said Monday, as the island boosts its military capabilities against a potential Chinese attack.

Washington has long been Taipei’s most important ally and biggest arms supplier — angering Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its own territory.

The M1A2 tanks — the first batch of 108 ordered in 2019 — arrived in Taiwan late Sunday and were transferred to an army training base in Hsinchu, south of the capital Taipei, the defense ministry said.

Abrams tanks, which are among the heaviest in the world, are a mainstay of the US military.

The M1A2s are the first new tanks to be delivered to Taiwan in 30 years, the semi-official Central News Agency said.

Taiwan’s current tank force consists of around 1,000 Taiwan-made CM 11 Brave Tiger and US-made M60A3 tanks, technology that is increasingly obsolete.

The government previously allocated the equivalent of more than $1.2 billion for the 108 Abrams.

Taiwan faces the constant threat of an invasion by China, which has refused to rule out using force to bring the self-ruled island under its control.

While it has a home-grown defense industry and has been upgrading its equipment, Taiwan relies heavily on US arms sales to bolster its security capabilities.

Taiwan requested the state-of-the-art M1A2 tanks in 2019. The rest of the order is expected to be delivered in 2025 and 2026, an army official said.

While US arms supplies to Taiwan are enshrined into law, a massive backlog caused by Covid-19 supply chain disruptions and US weapons shipments to Ukraine and Israel have slowed deliveries to Taiwan.

The backlog now exceeds $21 billion, according to Washington think tank Cato Institute.

Taiwan would be massively outgunned in terms of troop numbers and firepower in any war with China and in recent years has increased spending on its military.

Taipei allocated a record $19 billion for 2024 and next year’s budget is set to hit a new high, as it seeks to bolster a more agile defense approach.

China has increased military pressure on Taiwan in recent years, regularly deploying fighter jets and warships around the island.

Taiwanese authorities said last week that China had held its biggest maritime drills in years, with around 90 ships deployed from near the southern islands of Japan to the South China Sea.

The vessels simulated attacks on foreign ships and practiced blockading sea routes, a Taiwan security official said previously.

AN-AFP

CANBERRA — The Australian government has updated its travel advice for Fiji after several tourists were hospitalized with suspected alcohol poisoning.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) on Sunday night advised travelers to Fiji to be wary of potential methanol poisoning through alcohol.

It comes after seven tourists, including four Australians, were hospitalized after consuming alcohol at a resort bar in Fiji on Saturday night local time.

DFAT’s warning, issued through its Smartraveller service, advised Australians to “be alert to the potential risks around drink spiking and methanol poisoning through consuming alcoholic drinks.”

It urged anyone who suspects drink spiking to seek urgent medical help.

Jason Clare, Australia’s education minister, on Monday described the incident in Fiji as horrific.

“I guess my message for Australians travelling overseas is just be really, really careful with whatever you consume,” he told ABC television.

Incidents in Fiji came after six tourists, including two Australian teenagers, died from suspected methanol poisoning in Laos in November.

XINHUA

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A Syria war monitor said early Monday that Israeli strikes had targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region, calling them “the heaviest strikes” in the area in more than a decade.

“Israeli warplanes launched strikes” targeting a series of sites including air defense units and “surface-to-surface missile depots,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in what it said were “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012.”

AN-AFP

PRAGUE — An explosion in a residential building in the southern Czech town of Znojmo on Sunday afternoon left eight people injured, local rescuers reported.

“We rescued a total of eight people from the building… They were treated and transported to hospitals by emergency services,” the Fire Rescue Service of the South Moravian Region stated on the social media platform X.

Among the injured, one person sustained serious injuries and was airlifted to a hospital by helicopter for urgent medical attention.

The explosion occurred in a building containing nine residential units, causing extensive damage. According to the Czech News Agency, the blast led to the collapse of the front wall from the first floor down to the sidewalk, while the roof and attic were also severely damaged.

Authorities anticipate that the building will require at least partial demolition. In response, the town hall has stepped in to provide emergency accommodation for displaced residents.

Preliminary investigations suggest that a gas leak is the likely cause of the explosion.

XINHUA

JERUSALEM, Dec 15 – Israel agreed on Sunday to double its population on the occupied Golan Heights while saying threats from Syria remained despite the moderate tone of rebel leaders who ousted President Bashar al-Assad a week ago.

“Strengthening the Golan is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold onto it, cause it to blossom, and settle in it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Israel captured most of the strategic plateau from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing it in 1981.

In 2019 then-President Donald Trump declared U.S. support for Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, but the annexation has not been recognised by most countries.

Syria demands Israel withdraw but Israel refuses, citing security concerns. Various peace efforts have failed.

Netanyahu said he spoke with Trump on Saturday about security developments in Syria.

“We have no interest in a conflict with Syria,” Netanyahu said in a statement. Israeli actions in Syria were intended to “thwart the potential threats from Syria and to prevent the takeover of terrorist elements near our border,” he added.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the latest developments in Syria increased the threat to Israel, “despite the moderate image that the rebel leaders claim to present”.

Netanyahu’s office said the government unanimously approved a more than 40-million-shekel ($11 million) plan to encourage demographic growth in the Golan.

It said Netanyahu submitted the plan to the government “in light of the war and the new front facing Syria, and out of a desire to double the population of the Golan”.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates condemned Israel’s decision, with the UAE – which normalised relations with Israel in 2020 – describing it as a “deliberate effort to expand the occupation”.

Some 31,000 Israelis have settled there, said analyst Avraham Levine of the Alma Research and Education Center specialising in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. Many work in farming, including vineyards, and tourism. The Golan is home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam, Levine said. Most identify as Syrian.

AVOIDING ‘NEW CONFRONTATIONS’

Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said on Saturday that Israel was using false pretexts to justify its attacks on Syria, but he was not interested in engaging in new conflicts as his country focuses on rebuilding.

Sharaa – better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani – leads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that swept Assad from power last Sunday, ending the family’s five-decade iron-fisted rule.

Since then Israel has moved into a demilitarised zone inside Syria that was created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus, where its forces took over an abandoned Syrian military post.

Israel, which has said that it does not intend to stay there and calls the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure border security, has also carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.

It has said it is destroying weapons and military infrastructure to prevent them from being used by rebel groups that drove Assad from power, some of which grew from movements linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, have condemned what they called Israel’s seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations.

The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction,” Sharaa said in an interview published on the website of Syria TV, a channel that sides with the rebels.

He also said diplomatic solutions were the only way to ensure security and stability and that “uncalculated military adventures” were not wanted.

REUTERS

CAIRO — Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 28 Palestinians, including a journalist and rescue workers, medics said, and the Israeli military said troops carried out air and ground attacks in the northern Gaza Strip, killing dozens of militants while capturing others.

An Israeli airstrike hit the civil emergency center in the Nuseirat market area in the central Gaza Strip, killing Ahmed Al-Louh, a video journalist for Al Jazeera TV, and five other people, medics and fellow journalists said.

The TV network said he was working when he was killed. The Israeli military said they were looking into the report. Hamas media said the head of the civil emergency service in Nuseirat, Nedal Abu Hjayyer, was also killed.

“The civil emergency headquarters in Nuseirat camp was hit during the crews’ presence, they work around the clock to serve the people,” said Zaki Emadeldeen from the civil emergency service to reporters at the hospital.

“The civil emergency service is a humanitarian service and not political, they work in war and peace times for the service of the people,” he said, adding that the place was hit directly by Israeli airstrike.

Another airstrike hit a group of Hamas-linked men tasked with protecting aid trucks west of Gaza City, and medics said several were killed or wounded but exact figures were unavailable as yet.

Residents said at least 11 people were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp when clusters of houses were bombed or set ablaze, and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.

The Israeli military said the three Gaza City houses belonged to militants planning imminent attacks. It said steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians beforehand, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance.

The military issued a photo showing the weapons it said were seized in Beit Lahiya that included explosives and dozens of grenades.

In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.

Medics said several people were killed and wounded during the raid on the school while the army detained many men. The number killed was not immediately clear.

The military said it struck down dozens of militants from the air and on the ground and captured others in Beit Hanoun.

Reuters was unable to confirm whether any of the people killed were fighters. Hamas does not disclose its casualties, and the Palestinian health ministry does not distinguish in its daily death toll between combatants and non-combatants

Separately, Israel said its air force struck a command and control center in a compound in the Abu Shabak clinic in northern Gaza used by Hamas to store weapons and plan attacks.

The Gaza health ministry said the medical center, which also included a mental health clinic, was destroyed.

Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing to depopulate the areas at the northern edge to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it and says the campaign targets Hamas militants and aims to prevent them from regrouping.

The military says it has instructed civilians to evacuate battle zones for their own safety.

The war began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel then launched an air, sea and land offensive that has killed almost 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

A bid by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce has gained momentum in recent weeks, yet there has been no news of a breakthrough.

REUTERS

Israel will close its Dublin embassy due to the “extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government”, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Sunday, citing its recognition of a Palestinian state and support for legal action against Israel.

Israel’s ambassador to Dublin was recalled following Ireland’s decision on a Palestinian state in May, Saar’s statement added.
Last week, Dublin announced its support for South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of genocide.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said the decision was deeply regrettable. “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-International law,” he said in a post on X.

“Ireland wants a two state solution and for Israel and Palestine to live in peace and security. Ireland will always speak up for human rights and international law.”

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said in March that while it was for the World Court to decide whether genocide is being committed, he wanted to be clear that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and what is happening in Gaza now “represents the blatant violation of international humanitarian law on a mass scale.”

A statement from Israel’s foreign ministry also announced the establishment of an Israeli embassy in Moldova.

REUTERS