WASHINGTON, ALGEIRS: Twenty-three US troops in Syria suffered traumatic brain injuries during two attacks in March by Iran-backed militants, the US Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, has said.
“We have identified 11 additional cases of mild Traumatic Brain Injury from the March 23rd and 24th attacks in eastern Syria,” it said in a statement. “Twenty-three of those wounded and assessed as mTBI cases. Our medical teams continue to assess and evaluate our troops for indications of mTBI.”
Twenty-five US troops were wounded as a result of the strikes and counter-strikes in Syria, which also killed an American contractor and injured another.
The Pentagon estimated eight militants were killed during retaliatory US air strikes against two Iran-linked facilities in Syria.
It is not the first time US troops in the region have been diagnosed with brain injuries from attacks.
In 2020, more than 100 US troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries stemming from a missile attack by Iran against a base in Iraq.
Separately, a US citizen who says he was tortured in Syrian custody has filed a lawsuit against President Bashar Assad’s government in Washington, seeking accountability at a time that Damascus is reconciling in the region.
Obada Mzaik, who was born in Ohio and also holds Syrian citizenship, said he was hoping to see family when he was detained on arrival at the Damascus airport in January 2012, nearly a year into the brutal civil war.
In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Washington, Mzaik said he was taken to a basement cell that held around 10 other people, including a 13-year-old boy who said he had been tortured for more than 80 days.
Mzaik, who had been a student in Syria when protests broke out against Assad, was “brutally and systematically beaten, whipped and threatened with electrocution,” the lawsuit said.
“He was held in inhumane detention conditions and forced to witness other detainees being tortured, including one of his relatives,” it said.
Mzaik alleged that interrogators from the Air Force Intelligence Directorate “inflicted severe physical and mental pain” as they sought information on his friends, contacts and interactions with the US government and to “punish him for perceived anti-regime activities.”
He was released within a month after his family paid bribes through an intermediary, the lawsuit said. He was then treated by doctors for more than a month before he headed to Jordan and then the United States, it said.
Mzaik is seeking unspecified payment as damages from the Syrian government under a US law that says that foreign governments designated as state sponsors of terrorism are exempt from immunity.
The lawsuit was filed in January but unsealed this week. The court documents showed that the Czech Embassy in Damascus, which represents US interests in the country, formally informed the government of the lawsuit.
While it remains highly unlikely that Assad would pay any damages awarded in a court case, the United States has previously seized and allocated Iranian funds as damages, drawing legal challenges from Tehran’s clerical state.
Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad will visit Algeria, Algerian state radio reported late on Friday.
The Algerian foreign minister, Ahmed Ataf, will receive the visiting minister, state radio said.
It is expected that Mekdad will also visit Tunis early next week.
Syria and Tunisia agreed on Wednesday to reopen their respective embassies.
Twenty-three US troops suffered traumatic brain injuries in Syria
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Twenty-three US troops suffered traumatic brain injuries in Syria
- Twenty-five US troops were wounded as a result of the strikes and counter-strikes in Syria, which also killed an American contractor and injured another
Israel carries out strikes on two Syrian cities, Syrian state news agency says
- Israel bombed Syria frequently when the country was governed by Assad, targeting a foothold established by his ally Iran during the civil war
CAIRO: Israeli strikes targeted the vicinity of Syria’s Damascus, Hama and Daraa countryside late on Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
The strikes on Damascus countryside killed one civilian and injured four others in Hama, SANA added.
Israel’s repeated strikes on Syria act as a warning to the new Islamist rulers in Damascus, which Israel views as a potential threat on its border.
The Israeli army confirmed the strikes on Syria on Friday, saying it targeted “a military site, anti-aircraft cannons, and surface-to-air missile infrastructure.”
The Israeli army has previously said it targeted Syria’s military infrastructure, including headquarters and sites containing weapons and equipment, since mainly Sunni Muslim Islamist fighters toppled President Bashar Assad in December.
Earlier on Friday, Israel bombed an area near the presidential palace in Damascus, in its clearest warning yet to Syria’s new Islamist-led authorities of its readiness to ramp up military action, which has included strikes it said were in support of the country’s Druze minority.
Israel bombed Syria frequently when the country was governed by Assad, targeting a foothold established by his ally Iran during the civil war.
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces claims to have seized strategic western town
- RSF paramilitaries say they took key town of Al Nahud in West Kordofan state
- Area is home to the headquarters of the 18th Infantry Brigade
CAIRO: Sudan’s notorious paramilitary group claimed a “sweeping victory” Friday saying it took control of the key town of Al Nahud in West Kordofan state in a fight that intensified a day earlier.
A victory there by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, would mark a strategic loss for Sudan’s military in its war with the paramilitary force as the territory is home to the headquarters of the 18th Infantry Brigade.
The Sudanese army didn’t immediately comment on its social media channels on whether it lost Al Nahud to its rival.
Sudan’s Culture and Information Minister Khalid Ali Aleisir said on his Facebook account on Friday the RSF committed crimes against defenseless citizens in the town, looting their properties and destroying public facilities.
The RSF said on its Telegram channel Friday that it destroyed vehicles belonging to the army and seized their weapons and ammunition during the battle for Al Nahud. The paramilitary group also claimed that it managed to secure the city’s facilities and markets after defeating the army.
The war erupted on April 15, 2023, with pitched battles between the military and the RSF in the streets of the capital Khartoum that quickly spread to other parts of the country.
RSF attacks in Al Nahud have killed more than 300 unarmed civilians, the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union said on Facebook on Friday. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify that figure.
The Resistance Committees of Al Nahud condemned the RSF attacks, which it said began Thursday morning.
“They invaded the city, stormed residential neighborhoods, terrorized unarmed civilians, and committed cold-blooded murders against innocent civilians whose only crime was to cling to their dignity and refuse to leave their homes to the machine of killing and terror,” the Resistance Committees said Thursday on Facebook.
An army loss of Al Nahud would impact its operational capabilities in Northern Kordofan state, according to the Sudan War Monitor, an open source collaborative project that has been documenting the two-year-war. Al Nahud is a strategic town because it’s located along a main road that the army could use to advance into the Darfur region, which the RSF mostly controls.
Al Nahud also shelters displaced people fleeing from Al-Obeid, Umm Kadada, Khartoum and El-Fasher — the provincial capital of North Darfur province, according to the Darfur Victims Support Organization.
Meanwhile, in North Darfur, the fighting has killed at least 542 people in the last three weeks, though the actual death toll is likely higher, according to UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk. This figure includes the recent RSF attacks on El Fasher and Abu Shouk displacement camp, which killed at least 40 civilians.
“The horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” said Türk i n a statement on Thursday.
Türk also mentioned “extremely disturbing” reports of extrajudicial killings committed by RSF, with at least 30 men in civilian clothing executed by the paramilitary fighters in Al Salha in southern Omdurman.
“I have personally alerted both leaders of the RSF and SAF to the catastrophic human rights consequences of this war. These harrowing consequences are a daily, lived reality for millions of Sudanese. It is well past time for this conflict to stop,” said Türk.
The war in Sudan has killed at least 20,000 people, but the real toll is probably far higher. Nearly 13 million people have fled their homes, 4 million of them streaming into neighboring countries.
Half the population of 50 million faces hunger. The World Food Program has confirmed famine in 10 locations and warns it could spread further, putting millions at risk of starvation.
Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh
- The sentences are for 18 to 36 years, and apply to eight people
TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Friday handed down lengthy prison sentences against former officials, including former Prime Minister Ali Larayedh, a senior figure in the opposition Ennahda party, on charges of facilitating the departure of militants to Syria over the past decade.
TAP state news agency quoted a judicial official as saying that the sentences are for 18 to 36 years, and apply to eight people.
West Bank residents losing hope 100 days into military assault
- Israel’s military in late February deployed tanks in Jenin for the first time in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada
JENIN: On a torn-up road near the refugee camp where she once lived, Saja Bawaqneh said she struggled to find hope 100 days after an Israeli offensive in the occupied West Bank forced her to flee.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in the north of the territory since Israel began a major “anti-terrorist operation” dubbed “Iron Wall” on Jan. 21.
Bawaqneh said life was challenging and uncertain since she was forced to leave Jenin refugee camp — one of three targeted by the offensive, along with Tulkarm and Nur Shams.
“We try to hold on to hope, but unfortunately, reality offers none,” she said.
“Nothing is clear in Jenin camp even after 100 days — we still don’t know whether we will return to our homes, or whether those homes have been damaged or destroyed.”
Bawaqneh said residents were banned from entering the camp and that “no one knows ... what happened inside.”
Israel’s military in late February deployed tanks in Jenin for the first time in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada.
In early March, it said it had expanded its offensive to more city areas.
AFP footage this week showed power lines dangling above Jenin’s streets blocked with barriers made of churned-up earth.
Wastewater pooled in the road outside the Jenin Governmental Hospital.
Farha Abu Al-Hija, a member of the Popular Committee for Services in Jenin camp, said families living in the vicinity of the camp were being removed by Israeli forces daily.
“A hundred days have passed like a hundred years for the displaced people of Jenin camp,” she said.
“Their situation is dire, the conditions are harsh, and they are enduring pain unlike anything they have ever known.”
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders in March denounced the “extremely precarious” situation of Palestinians displaced by the military assault, saying they were going “without proper shelter, essential services, and access to health care.”
It said the scale of forced displacement and destruction of camps “has not been seen in decades” in the West Bank.
The UN says about 40,000 residents have been displaced since Jan. 21.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said the offensive would last several months and ordered troops to stop residents from returning.
Israeli forces put up barriers at several entrances of the Jenin camp in late April, AFP footage showed.
The Israeli offensive began two days after a truce came into effect in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli military and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Two months later, that truce collapsed and Israel resumed its offensive in Gaza, a Palestinian territory separate from the West Bank.
Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, violence has soared in the West Bank.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 925 Palestinians in the territory since then, according to the Ramallah-based Health Ministry.
Gaza rescuers say 42 killed in Israeli strikes
- Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza
- In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more
GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people Friday in the Palestinian territory, devastated by war and under a total Israeli aid blockade for two months.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18 after the collapse of a ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP.
AFP footage in the aftermath of a strike on Bureij camp showed Palestinians searching for casualties in the rubble of a flattened building.
“They gave us no warning, no phone call — we woke up at midnight to smoke, rubble, stones, and shrapnel raining down on us,” said Mohammed Al-Sheikh, standing among collapsed concrete slabs.
“We pulled out martyrs — bodies and limbs from under the rubble.”
Another six people were killed in a strike targeting the Al-Masri family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia, civil defense official Mughayyir added.
In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more, the civil defense agency reported.
Across the Gaza Strip, at least 21 other deaths were reported in similar attacks, the agency said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.
The war erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The Israeli government says its renewed campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge it puts them in mortal danger.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of the ceasefire which had come into effect on January 19.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the “verge of total collapse.”
“This situation must not — and cannot — be allowed to escalate further,” its deputy director of operations, Pascal Hundt, said in a statement.
