HOMS, Syria: Once dubbed the capital of the revolution against Bashar Assad, Homs saw some of the fiercest fighting in Syria’s civil war. Now, displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods, only to find them in ruins.
It was in Homs that rebels first took up arms to fight Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011.
The military responded by besieging and bombarding rebel areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin and French journalist Remi Ochlik were killed in a bombing in 2012.
Since Assad’s ouster, people have started returning to neighborhoods they fled following successive evacuation agreements that saw Assad take back control.
“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.
“We removed the rubble, lay a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.
“Despite the destruction, we’re happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”
Her husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.
The siege of Homs lasted two years and killed around 2,200 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
During the siege, thousands of civilians and rebels were left with nothing to eat but dried foods and grass.
In May 2014, under an evacuation deal negotiated with the former government, most of those trapped in the siege were evacuated, and two years later, Assad seized the last rebel district of Waer.
“We were besieged... without food or water, under air raids, and barrel bombings,” before being evacuated to the rebel-held north, Turki said.
AFP journalists saw dozens of families returning to Homs from northern Syria, many of them tearful as they stepped out of the buses organized by local activists.
Among them was Adnan Abu Al-Ezz, 50, whose son was wounded by shelling during the siege and who later died because soldiers at a checkpoint barred him from taking him to hospital.
“They refused to let me pass, they were mocking me,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“I knew my house was nearly destroyed, but I came back to the precious soil of Homs,” he said.
While protests and fighting spread across Syria over the course of the 13-year war, Homs’s story of rebellion holds profound symbolism for the demonstrators.
It was there that Abdel Basset Al-Sarout, a football goalkeeper in the national youth team, joined the protests and eventually took up arms.
He became something of a folk hero to many before he joined an Islamist armed group and was eventually killed in fighting.
In 2013, his story became the focus of a documentary by Syrian filmmaker Talal Derki named “The Return to Homs,” which won international accolades.
Homs returnee Abu Al-Moatasim, who remembers Sarout, recounted being detained for joining a protest.
When he saw security personnel approaching in a car, he prayed for “God to drop rocket on us so I die” before reaching the detention center, one of a network dotted around the country that were known for torture.
His father bribed an officer in exchange for his release a few days later, he said.
In Baba Amr, for a time early in the war a bastion of the rebel Free Syrian Army, there was rubble everywhere.
The army recaptured the district in March 2012, following a siege and an intense bombardment campaign.
It was there that Colvin and Ochlik were killed in a bombing of an opposition press center.
In 2019, a US court found Assad’s government culpable in Colvin’s death, ordering a $302.5 million judgment for what it called an “unconscionable” attack that targeted journalists.
Touring the building that housed the press center, Abdel Qader Al-Anjari, 40, said he was an activist helping foreign journalists at that time.
“Here we installed the first Internet router to communicate with the outside world,” he said.
“Marie Colvin was martyred here, targeted by the regime because they did not want (anyone) to document what was happening,” he said.
He described her as a “friend” who defied the “regime blackout imposed on journalists” and others documenting the war.
After leaving Homs, Anjari himself became a rebel fighter, and years later took part in the offensive that ousted Assad on December 8, 2024.
“Words cannot describe what I felt when I reached the outskirts of Homs,” he said.
Now, he has decided to lay down his arms.
“This phase does not call for fighters, it calls for people to build a state,” he said.
Syrians return to Homs, ‘capital of the revolution’
https://arab.news/956fy
Syrians return to Homs, ‘capital of the revolution’
- It was in Homs that rebels first took up arms to fight Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011
- Since Assad’s ouster, people have started returning to neighborhoods they fled
Syria ‘will give UN inspectors immediate access to suspected former nuclear sites’
- Grossi describes new govt as ‘committed to opening up to international cooperation’
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new government has agreed to give inspectors from the UN’s nuclear watchdog access to suspected former nuclear sites immediately, the agency’s head said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, spoke in an interview in Damascus, where he met with President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and other officials.
He also said Al-Sharaa expressed an interest in pursuing nuclear energy for Syria in the future, adding, “Why not?”
The agency’s aim is “to bring total clarity over certain activities that took place in the past that were, in the judgment of the agency, probably related to nuclear weapons,” Grossi said.
He described the new government as “committed to opening up to the world, to international cooperation” and said he is hopeful of finishing the inspection process within months.
An IAEA team in 2024 visited some sites of interest while former President Bashar Assad was still in power.
Since the fall of Assad in December, the IAEA has been seeking to restore access to sites associated with Syria’s nuclear program.
Syria under Assad is believed to have operated an extensive clandestine nuclear program, which included an undeclared nuclear reactor built by North Korea in eastern Deir Ezzor province.
The IAEA described the reactor as being “not configured to produce electricity” — raising the concern that Damascus sought a nuclear weapon there by producing weapons-grade plutonium.
The reactor site only became public knowledge after Israel, the Middle East’s only nuclear power, launched airstrikes in 2007, destroying the facility. Syria later leveled the site and never responded fully to the IAEA’s questions.
Grossi said inspectors plan to return to the reactor in Deir Ezzor and three other related sites.
Other sites under IAEA safeguards include a miniature neutron source reactor in Damascus and a facility in Homs that can process yellow-cake uranium.
“We are trying to narrow down the focus to those or that one that could be of a real interest,” he said.
While there are no indications that there have been releases of radiation from the sites, he said, the watchdog is concerned that “enriched uranium can be lying somewhere and could be reused, could be smuggled, could be trafficked.”
He said Al-Sharaa had shown a “very positive disposition to talk to us and to allow us to carry out the activities we need to.”
Apart from resuming inspections, Grossi said the IAEA is prepared to transfer equipment for nuclear medicine and to help rebuild the radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, and oncology infrastructure in a health system severely weakened by nearly 14 years of civil war.
“And the president has expressed to me he’s interested in exploring, in the future, nuclear energy as well,” Grossi said.
Grossi said Syria would most likely be looking into small modular reactors, which are cheaper and easier to deploy than traditional large ones.
Regarding the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran for a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program, Grossi said he has been in “constant contact” with the parties.
“They are negotiating; it’s not us, but it is obvious that the IAEA will have to be the guarantor of whichever agreement they come to,” he said.
Jordanian king holds talks on Gaza with UK prime minister
- King Abdullah II emphasizes need for greater international effort to end war
- Keir Starmer reaffirms commitment to two-state solution
LONDON: King Abdullah II of Jordan and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met in London on Thursday to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank.
The king emphasized the need for greater international effort to end the war in Gaza and ensure the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave, the Petra news agency reported.
He also highlighted the importance of the UK’s efforts to achieve stability and peace in the region.
The king warned of the “dangers” posed by Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and attacks on Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and reaffirmed Jordan’s stance against the displacement of Palestinians.
Starmer said the only long-term solution to the conflict was the two-state solution and that London and Amman would continue to work together to achieve a ceasefire and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.
King Abdullah was accompanied on his visit by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Director of the King’s Office Alaa Batayneh and Jordan’s Ambassador to the UK Manar Dabbas.
Safadi also had a meeting with his UK counterpart, Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
EU official says $183m Syria recovery package ‘clear message’ of support
- Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani will attend a ministerial meeting involving almost a dozen Mediterranean countries in Brussels on June 23
DAMASCUS: Visiting EU Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica said on Thursday that a €175 million (nearly $183 million) package for Syria was a “clear message” of support for its reconstruction.
Suica announced the package in Damascus on Wednesday, saying it would focus on sectors including energy, education, health, and agriculture, helping rebuild Syria’s economy, support its institutions, and promote human rights.
“I came here ... with a clear message that we are here to assist and help Syria on its recovery,” Suica said in an interview on Thursday.
“We want that reconstruction and recovery will be Syria-owned and Syria-led,” she said, on the first visit by an EU commissioner since a transitional government was unveiled in late March.
“We want to see Syria be a regular, normal, democratic country in the future,” she added.
Syria has been navigating a delicate transition since Bashar Assad was ousted in December after nearly 14 years of civil war.
The EU announced last month it would lift economic sanctions on Syria in a bid to help its recovery.
“This is a pivotal moment — a new chapter in EU-Syria relations,” Suica said on X, calling her meeting with President Ahmad Al-Sharaa “constructive.”
Like Syria’s neighbors, Western governments are keen to steer it onto the road to stability after the war triggered an exodus of millions of refugees.
Refugee returns should be “safe, voluntary and dignified,” Suica said.
The EU has not designated Syria as a safe country for returns “because we don’t want to push people to come here and then they don’t have a home,” she said.
The EU last month sanctioned three Syrian groups and two of their leaders for human rights abuses over their alleged involvement in sectarian massacres in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority, to which Assad belongs, in March.
“We cannot pronounce one part of Syria safe and another not,” Suica said, noting that designating Syria a safe country needs “unanimity among 27 European member states.”
She said Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani would attend a ministerial meeting involving almost a dozen Mediterranean countries in Brussels on June 23.
A statement released on Wednesday said that the European Commission was “actively pursuing the integration of Syria into several key initiatives with its Mediterranean partner countries.”
“We want to see Syria united and inclusive, Suica said.
“This is a process. It will happen step by step.”
UN Security Council condemns ongoing Houthi detentions of aid workers and diplomats
- On anniversary of the first detentions, council members call for immediate and unconditional release of all those being held
- They express deep concern about additional recent arrests and condemn death of a World Food Program employee in Houthi custody on Feb. 10
NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Wednesday condemned the continued detention by the Houthis in Yemen of UN staff, aid workers and representatives of civil society, and called for their immediate and unconditional release.
In a statement marking the first anniversary of a wave of detentions that began in June 2024, council members expressed deep concern over additional recent arrests and the prolonged captivity of workers from the UN, international and national nongovernmental organizations, and diplomatic missions.
They also condemned the death of a World Food Program employee in Houthi custody on Feb. 10.
The Eid Al-Adha holiday, which began on Thursday evening, will be especially painful for those who are detained and their families, council members said, and they warned that the continuing abductions create fear among humanitarian workers.
Threats to those helping to deliver aid are “unacceptable” and make an already dire humanitarian crisis in Yemen even worse, they added.
The 15-member council called on the Houthis to respect the principles of international humanitarian law, including the provision of “safe, rapid and unimpeded” access to allow humanitarian assistance to reach civilians in need.
Members welcomed ongoing efforts by the UN to secure the safe release of all detainees and reaffirmed their support for the UN’s special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg.
They reiterated their commitment to the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yemen, and backed a “negotiated, inclusive, Yemeni-led and Yemeni-owned” political process in the country under the auspices of the UN.
The conflict in Yemen has raged since 2014, when the Houthis seized control of the capital, Sanaa, triggering a civil war that has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Israel’s aid restrictions deny Palestinian children ‘chance in life,’ WFP chief says
- Cindy McCain urges Israel to allow aid into the territory ‘at scale’
LONDON: Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza means a generation of Palestinian children are being denied a chance in life, the head of the UN’s World Food Program said on Thursday.
Israel imposed a full blockade on food and relief supplies from entering the territory on March 2, before breaking a ceasefire and resuming its devastating military operation a few weeks later.
Limited supplies were allowed back in late last month but nowhere near to the scale required, WFP Director Cindy McCain told Sky News.
“It’s very, very important that people realize that the only way to stave off malnutrition, catastrophic food insecurity and, of course, famine would be by complete and total access for organizations like mine,” she said.
“We’re looking at a generation of children that won’t have a chance in life because they haven’t had the proper nutrients. Right now, we’re looking at over 500,000 people within Gaza that are catastrophically food insecure.”
The resumption of limited aid supplies came after Israel built new distribution hubs in the territory run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a newly formed US organization.
Previously, the UN’s Palestinian refugees agency UNRWA and the WFP were in charge of distributing aid in the territory. But Israel has banned UNWRA from working in Gaza and has taken control of the aid system.
Scores of Palestinians have been shot dead this week as they attempted to access one of the new aid hubs in the south of the territory.
McCain said the new system was not allowing enough aid to get into Gaza to feed its malnourished population.
Speaking to “The World with Yalda Hakim,” she urged Israel to allow international aid to “get in at scale.”
“We need safe, unfettered, clear access all the way in and we're not getting that right now,” she said.
Her comments came as the GHF resumed its operations on Thursday after shutting down on Wednesday in response to the number of deaths near its hub.
McCain is the latest aid agency chief to deliver strongly worded condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where its military operation has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
On Wednesday, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric said Gaza had become “worse than hell on earth.”
