Jordan condemns Israel’s approval of new settler homes in West Bank
Jordan condemns Israel’s approval of new settler homes in West Bank/node/1794546/middle-east
Jordan condemns Israel’s approval of new settler homes in West Bank
Laborers work on the roof of a building under construction in the Israeli settlement of Karmel in the southern area of Hebron city in the occupied West Bank, on Jan. 12, 2021. (AFP)
Jordan condemns Israel’s approval of new settler homes in West Bank
Israel’s policies of settlement expansion, expropriation of lands and displacing Palestinians are illegal and condemned
Updated 18 January 2021
Arab News
DUBAI: Jordan has denounced Israel’s decision to construct more than 780 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank and to recognize two additional outposts.
Daifallah Fayez, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, said that the Israeli decision constituted a flagrant and serious violation of international law and the pertinent resolutions, foremost of which was the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2334, state news agency Petra reported.
Israel’s policies of settlement expansion, expropriation of lands and displacing Palestinians are illegal and condemned, Fayez said, adding its settlement policies were unilateral, as they undermined peace efforts and prospects of a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week directed authorities to approve construction of the units in occupied Palestinian territories, a move seen aimed to boost his reelection ahead of the March 23 poll.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day War.
Fayez has urged the international community to shoulder its responsibilities and put pressure on Israel to end its “unilateral” decisions.
Sudanese police accuse RSF paramilitaries after 11 bodies found at bottom of a well in Khartoum
The bodies of 11 people were recovered Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa neighborhood of the city
Police say the victims were killed by paramilitary by the paramilitary RSF when itwas controlling the area
Updated 6 sec ago
AP
CAIRO: Sudanese authorities said Sunday many bodies have been found at the bottom of a well in the capital, Khartoum, a few days after the military cleared the area from a notorious paramilitary group.
The bodies of 11 people, including women and children, were recovered Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa neighborhood of the city, according to police.
Col. Abdul-Rahanan Mohamed Hassan, head of the civil defense’s field team in Khartoum, said a search of the the area was mounted after residents reported that they found a dead body in the well.
“We found inside this well different characters (bodies), males and females, adults and children,” Hassan said, adding that authorities were still searching the well.
Police say the victims were killed by the Rapid Support Forces before being thrown into the well when the paramilitary force was controlling the area. The military retook the area earlier this month as part of its sweeping advances in Khartoum and its sister city of Omdurman.
There was no immediate comment from the RSF.
Afraa Al-Hajj Omar, a resident of the nearby Hajj Youssef neighborhood, said that the RSF killed many people in the area and their bodies were left for days in the streets. She said many bodies were thrown in the well. “They robbed us, beat us, and tortured us,” she said.
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open warfare across the country.
At least 20,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.
The fighting, which wrecked Khartoum and other urban areas has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
The war has intensified in recent months, with the military making steady advances against the RSF in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.
Syria’s new rulers seek aid boost at EU conference
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani is expected to take part in the event, along with dozens of European and Arab ministers and representatives of international organizations
Updated 7 min 21 sec ago
Reuters
BRUSSELS: The interim government in Damascus will take part on Monday in an annual international conference to gather aid pledges for Syria, facing dire humanitarian problems and an uncertain political transition after the fall of Bashar Assad.
The conference has been hosted by the European Union in Brussels since 2017 — but took place without the government of Assad, who was shunned for his brutal actions in a civil war that began in 2011.
After Assad’s overthrow in December, EU officials hope to use the conference as a fresh start, despite concerns about deadly violence this month that pitted the new, Islamist rulers against Assad loyalists.
“This is a time of dire needs and challenges for Syria, as tragically evidenced by the recent wave of violence in coastal areas,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
But she said it was also “a time of hope,” citing an agreement struck on March 10 to integrate the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which control much of Syria’s northeast, into new state institutions.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the group that toppled Assad, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations. But EU officials want to engage with the new rulers as long as they stick to pledges to make the transition inclusive and peaceful.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani is expected to take part in the event, along with dozens of European and Arab ministers and representatives of international organizations.
EU officials say the conference is particularly important as the United States under President Donald Trump is making huge cutbacks to humanitarian and development aid programs.
Last year’s conference yielded pledges of 7.5 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in grants and loans, with the EU pledging 2.12 billion for 2024 and 2025.
About 16.5 million people in Syria require humanitarian assistance, with 12.9 million people needing food aid, according to the EU.
The destruction from the war has been compounded by an economic crisis that has sent the Syrian pound tumbling and pushed almost the entire population below the poverty line. ($1 = 0.9192 euros)
Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on
A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared
Updated 37 min 23 sec ago
AP
DARAA, Syria: Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the country’s 14-year civil war gathered in the city of Daraa on Sunday to urge the newly installed interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.
The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared during the war, many of them detained by former President Bashar Assad’s network of intelligence agencies as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist Daesh group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing.
When rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham overthrew Assad in December, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government’s dungeons. Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
On Sunday, the 14th anniversary of the countrywide uprisings that spiraled into civil war, Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government’s security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn’t heard from him since.
Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad’s ouster, trying to figure out her father’s whereabouts.
“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she said. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”
A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared. The commission also urged the new government to pursue perpetrators.
Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with Al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.
Syria’s civil war began after Assad crushed largely peaceful protests in 2011, one of the popular uprisings against Arab rulers known as the Arab Spring. Half a million people were killed during the conflict, and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.
Yemen rebel leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes
The Houthis have repeatedly targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels, in what they call acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hamas, another Iranian ally
US officials on Sunday vowed further strikes until the Houthis stop attacking Red Sea shipping
Updated 54 min 31 sec ago
AFP
SANAA: The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday called for a “million-strong” march of defiance after deadly US strikes hit the capital, Sanaa, and other areas.
“I call on our dear people to go out tomorrow on the anniversary of the Battle of Badr in a million-strong march in Sanaa and the rest of the governorates,” Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said in a televised address, referring to a celebrated military victory by the Prophet Muhammad.
At least 16 people killed after ordnance from Syrian civil war explodes in port city of Latakia
The group and residents said the explosion occurred in a metal scrap storage space on the ground floor of the four-story building
Updated 17 March 2025
AP
DAMASCUS, Syria: Ordnance from Syria’s 13-year conflict exploded in the coastal city of Latakia, collapsing a building and killing more than a dozen people, the Syrian Civil Defense said Sunday.
The paramedic group known as the White Helmets said it worked overnight, searching through debris and recovered 16 bodies, including five women and five children, and that 18 others were injured. The group and residents said the explosion occurred in a metal scrap storage space on the ground floor of the four-story building.
Elsewhere, the Syrian Defense Ministry late Sunday accused the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group of crossing the Lebanon-Syria border and killing three Syrian soldiers. Hezbollah denied any involvement in the killing that took place near northeastern Lebanon, where clashes between Syrian forces and Lebanese clans happened last month.
Local Lebanese media have reported Syrian shelling on the northeastern Lebanese border town of Al-Qasr.
“The Defense Ministry will take all the necessary measures after this dangerous escalation from the Hezbollah militia,” a statement from the ministry read.
The United Nations said in February that about a hundred have been killed from exploding ordnance during the last 13 years, adding that since the ouster of Bashar Assad in December, over 1,400 unexploded devices across Syria have been safely disposed of and 138 minefields and contaminated areas identified in Idleb, Aleppo, Hama, Deir-ez-Zor and Lattakia.
Latakia, a key port city, and Syria’s coastal province recently witnessed a surge in violence, after gunmen loyal to Assad ambushed a security patrol. While the government’s counter-offensive, alongside allied factions, crushed the insurgency, it led to widespread destruction and numerous cases of retaliatory attacks against members of the Alawite community, which the Assad family is part of.
The clashes and revenge killings led to the deaths of more than 1,000 people.
