DAMASCUS — In a stunning development Sunday, opposition forces in Syria took over state television channels to announce what they described as the fall of Damascus and the end of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
A man in military fatigues, flanked by armed fighters, read the statement on air, calling it “Statement No. 1.” He claimed that rebel units captured Damascus.
XINHUA
SEOUL — South Korean prosecutors Sunday opened a case on President Yoon Suk-yeol, citing numerous complaints, Yonhap news agency reported.
XINHUA
THE HAGUE — Dutch authorities have confirmed the recovery of five bodies from the rubble of an apartment building that partially collapsed following a powerful explosion on Saturday morning.
Search efforts for additional victims are ongoing, with emergency services warning earlier that the death toll could rise to around 20.
“The reality is that the chances of survival for them are slim. We are preparing for the worst-case scenario,” Mayor Jan van Zanen told a press conference.
Two individuals rescued earlier in the day are in critical condition, the mayor said.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on X that he was shocked by images of the damaged apartment building.
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima also expressed their sympathy on X, saying “We sympathize with all those who have been personally affected or who fear for the fate of their loved ones.”
The incident occurred on Tarwekamp Street in the northeastern Mariahoeve district of The Hague. Images from the scene show that the facades of several apartments have been swept away. The building includes shops on the ground floor and two residential floors above.
The cause of the explosion remains under investigation. Police said that a car was seen speeding away from the scene shortly after the explosion. Authorities are urging witnesses to come forward.
XINHUA
DAMASCUS — Opposition activists said the rebel fighters entered the Syrian capital of Damascus at dawn Sunday, according to the Britain-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The monitor said hundreds of government soldiers were ordered to withdraw from Damascus International Airport, and were seen removing their military uniforms and donning civilian clothing.
Multiple media outlets have reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad has left the country, citing rebel forces. The Syrian presidency said Saturday Assad was still performing his constitutional duties in the capital.
Xinhua reporters in Damascus witnessed intense gunshots reverberating through the streets with heavy traffic caused by cars departing the capital.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi Jalali said in a speech published on Facebook shortly after the rebels’ claim of entering Damascus that he was ready to “cooperate” with any leadership chosen by the people and urged citizens against vandalizing public facilities.
XINHUA
NEW DELHI — At least eight people, including one woman and seven men, died and 19 others were injured in a road accident between a private bus and a water tanker on an expressway in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Friday, confirmed a senior cop over the phone.
The mishap occurred in the Kannauj district on an expressway connecting Uttar Pradesh’s capital city Lucknow and Delhi.
The passenger bus was running from Lucknow towards the national capital, when it rammed into the water tanker from behind and toppled, resulting in human casualties. Some of the passengers were trapped under the bus, said the cop.
According to him, the injured were admitted to a local hospital. The cause of the accident couldn’t be known yet.
XINHUA
THE HAGUE — Strong gusts of wind caused widespread disruption across the Netherlands on Friday, with over 100 flights canceled at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and impacting railways, road traffic, and waterways.
The Dutch national weather institute KNMI issued a code yellow weather alert for nearly the entire country, covering 10 of the 12 provinces. Only the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg remain under code green.
Wind gusts of 75 to 90 kilometers per hour were reported, with coastal areas experiencing gusts of 90 to 100 kilometers per hour. On the northern Wadden Islands, wind speeds could reach as high as 100 to 120 kilometers per hour.
Travelers passing through Schiphol were warned to prepare for cancellations and delays. Over 100 flights had already been canceled as of Friday morning.
The storm also disrupted train services, with trees and branches blown onto tracks in several locations.
Road traffic faced significant challenges as well. The Markerwaard dike near the province of Flevoland was closed due to strong winds, and the A15 motorway toward Nijmegen was shut down after a truck jackknifed.
High water levels and strong winds forced the closure of the Ramspol storm surge barrier near Kampen in Overijssel province, halting shipping traffic temporarily. The closure was a precaution to prevent flooding in nearby areas, including the city of Zwolle.
XINHUA
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