°®Âþµº

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group that toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, said Monday that rebel factions in the war-torn country would be disbanded and their fighters would join regular army units.

"The factions will be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry, and all will be subject to the law," Jolani, who now uses his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said on Telegram.

American forces carried out an air strike on Monday against a Houthi command and control facility that was used by the Yemeni rebels to coordinate attacks, the US military said.

The Houthis began striking ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, in response to Israel's devastating war on Gaza.

"The targeted facility was a hub for coordinating Huthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden," the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.

"The strike reflects CENTCOM's ongoing commitment to protect US and coalition personnel, regional partners, and international shipping," it added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had spoken with US President-elect Donald Trump about developments in Syria and efforts to secure a captive release deal in Gaza.

"We discussed the need to complete Israel's victory and we spoke at length about the efforts we are making to free our hostages," he said.

Israeli officials arrived in Doha Monday for talks aimed at a Gaza ceasefire and a captive exchange between Israel and Hamas, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.

"An Israeli technical team is in Doha to discuss the ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza," the source said, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, adding meetings were "between Israeli and Qatari working-level teams".

Syrian U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian forces (SDF) said U.S-brokered mediation efforts failed to reach a permanent ceasefire with Syria's Turkey-backed rebels in the northern cities of Manbij and Kobani, according to the head of the SDF's media center Farhad Shami on Monday.

Shami blamed the collapse of the mediation to "Turkey's approach in dealing with the mediation efforts and its evasion to accept key points". 

Israeli negotiators have "not been this close to an agreement" for the release of hostages in Gaza since the November 2023 truce between Israel and Hamas, Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Monday.

"We have not been this close to an agreement on the hostages since the previous deal," Katz told members of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs committee, according to his spokesman.

Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed an attack against Israel on Monday after Israeli military earlier announced it had intercepted a missile fired from the Arabian Peninsula country.

In a statement, the Iran-backed Houthis said they "carried out a military operation targeting a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of Yaffa", a reference to the Tel Aviv area, adding the "operation had successfully achieved its objectives".

British officials will meet Syria's interim authorities for talks in Damascus this week, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday.

"I can confirm today that we have sent a delegation of senior UK officials to Damascus this week for meetings with the new interim Syrian authorities and members of civil society groups in Syria," Lammy told a press conference.

President-elect Donald Trump characterized the rebel ouster of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad by Ankara-backed rebels as an "unfriendly takeover" by US ally Turkey as he addressed the conflict at a news conference Monday.

"I think Turkey is very smart... Turkey did an unfriendly takeover, without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children," Trump told reporters at his residence in Florida.

Two Palestinian officials told AFP on Monday that Israel, via Russian mediators, was seeking to locate in Syria the remains of famous Israeli spy Eli Cohen and a missing soldier.

Israel for years has been trying to find and repatriate the body of Cohen, and in 2021 a war monitor said Russian forces had been searching the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus for his remains, along with those of two Israeli soldiers.

A Palestinian official in Damascus on Monday said "contact was established with us via mediators in order for us to help find the remains of an Israeli soldier who has been missing since 1982", without identifying the missing soldier.

"Contacts are also underway to determine the location where the remains of the Israeli agent known as Eli Cohen are buried," the source added, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive.

A Palestinian official outside Syria, also requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the mediation was being conducted by Russia with Palestinian officials based abroad.

Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government.

The information Cohen obtained was seen as having played a key role in Israel's conquest of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said Monday Russia and Iran, key backers of ousted Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad, "should not have a place" in the war-torn country now that he is gone.

Kallas said the bloc would "raise this issue" of Russia's military bases with the country's new leadership, after numerous EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels called for Syria's new rulers to kick Moscow out.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has ordered the reopening of Lebanon's embassy in Damascus, his office said in a post on X on Monday.

Mikati discussed the matter with his Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdallah Bou Habib, where they also talked about the situation in Syria as well as diplomatic efforts to help put a halt to Israel's attacks on the country.

Palestinians mourn 'iconic' Gaza grandfather Khalid Nabhan, after he was killed by an Israeli airstrike on the Nusseirat refuge camp on Monday.

Nabhan became known globally for how he mourned his three-year-old granddaughter Reem last year, after she was killed by an Israeli attack.

The grandfather called her "the soul of my soul".

Read more here.
 

Ìý

Ìý

A crew of Turkish rescuers began an in-depth search of Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison on Monday, a spokesperson for the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) told °®Âþµº's Arabic-language site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

AFAD said it had sent a team of nearly 80 people to conduct a search-and-rescue operation to "find people thought to be trapped in Saydnaya military prison".

The prison is among the many symbols of the Assad regime's torture over the years, particularly during the brutal civil war which broke out in 2011.

The AFAD said the team, which specializes in "heavy" urban search and rescue operations, would work with "advanced search and rescue devices" to uncover any potential cells or prisoners.

The Israeli military said sirens sounded across central Israel on Monday as it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.

"One missile launched from Yemen was intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory," the military said in a statement. An AFP journalist reported that sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, the main commercial hub.

Bashar al-Assad said on 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.

The head of Russia's Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, on Monday suggested removing Syria's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from Russia's list of "terrorist organisations."

Kadyrov made the suggestion on his official Telegram channel and said Russia and Syria should organise contact groups once the designation was removed to establish bilateral ties

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.

As Islamist-led rebel forces swept Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered troops to seize the demilitarised zone on the Golan Heights.

Israel has also launched hundreds of strikes on Syria targeting strategic military sites and weapons, including chemical weapons.

Wagner said that "it is absolutely crucial now, in this phase of political upheaval in Syria, that all actors in the region take into account the territorial integrity of Syria and do not call it into question".

Speaking at a regular press conference, he added that the situation is "complex" and that Israel had an interest to ensure that the Assad regime's weapons "do not fall into the wrong hands".

But he stressed that Germany was "now calling on all actors in the region to exercise restraint" and that war-ravaged "Syria has been a plaything of foreign powers for far too long".

Foreign ministers from the United States, UK, France, Germany and Italy will hold talks Tuesday on developments in Syria, Italy's Antonio Tajani said on Monday.

"We hope that the first positive signals will transform into concrete positive signals," Foreign Minister Tajani said at a conference of diplomats at the Italian foreign ministry.

The virtual meeting of the diplomatic Quint comes amid Western moves towards the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group that is in charge following the ousting of president Bashar al-Assad.

The EU's envoy to Syria headed to Damascus Monday for talks, after the United States and Britain said they had made contact with the new authorities in the Syrian capital.

Italy, which holds the presidency of the G7 group of rich nations in 2024, earlier this year named an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in over a decade.

Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said he is ready to step in if necessary and ensure that Syria gets the wheat it needs in what he said was the unlikely event that Russian wheat supplies to the country were disrupted.

Russian and Syrian sources told Reuters on Friday that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended due to uncertainty about the new government there after two vessels carrying Russian wheat for Syria failed to reach their destinations.

In a message posted on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Kadyrov said that the two rerouted vessels had been carrying "commercial" wheat and that Russian state-backed supplies to Syria had not been affected.

"Even if for some impossible and incredible reasons this does happen, I, as the head of the Chechen Republic, am ready to take responsibility and ensure the necessary amount of wheat for Syria," Kadyrov wrote.

The fate of Russian military bases in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad was still unclear on Monday, the Kremlin admitted.

The Tartus naval base and Hmeimim air base are Russia's only military outposts outside the former Soviet Union and have been key to the Kremlin's activities in Africa and the Middle East.

The ousting of Moscow's long-time ally Assad in a shock rebel offensive has brought their future into question.

"There are no final decisions on this," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

"We are in contact with representatives of the forces that now control the situation in the country," he added.

Russia said Sunday it had evacuated some of its diplomatic staff from the country.

Syria's Kurds, who run a semi-autonomous administration in the northeast, called Monday for an end to all fighting in the country and extended a hand to the new authorities in Damascus.

Hussein Othman, the head of the administration's executive council, called for "a stop to military operations over the entire Syrian territory in order to begin a constructive, comprehensive national dialogue".

The call, made at a press conference in Raqa, comes more than a week after Islamist-led rebels toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad after a lightning offensive in which they seized swathes of territory.

In parallel, pro-Ankara groups launched an offensive against Kurdish forces near the Turkish border, announcing they had seized Manbij and Tal Rifaat, two key Kurdish-held areas in the country's north.

The Kurds faced discrimination during more than 50 years of Assad family rule, and the long-oppressed community fears it could lose hard-won gains it made during the war, including limited self-rule.

Othman said in the statement that "the political exclusion and marginalisation that has destroyed Syria must end and all political forces must rebuild a new Syria".

The statement called for "an emergency meeting in Damascus of Syrian political forces to unify viewpoints on the transitional period".

Syria's main port of Latakia was functioning normally on Monday and cargo ships that had been waiting for several days were unloading their cargo, port official Hasan Jablawi told Reuters.

The health ministry in Gaza said on Monday that at least 45,028 people have been killed during more than 14 months of war waged by Israel.

The toll includes 52 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 106,962 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7, 2023.

Turkey on Monday denounced an Israeli plan to double the population living in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights as a bid to "expand its borders".

"This decision is a new stage in Israel's goal of expanding its borders through occupation," the foreign ministry said in a statement, warning the plan would "seriously undermine" efforts to bring stability to neighbouring Syria after Bashar al-Assad's ouster.

The Iranian foreign ministry has condemned the ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip, in light of the recent death toll from the Nuseirat camp and other areas sheltering displaced Palestinians.

Spokesman Esmail Baghaei stressed in a statement that continued inaction from international institutions and the UN Security Council against the "ongoing genocide" of Palestinians in Gaza due to the US backing of Israel is "shameless".

He called for urgent action to put a halt to the genocide and holding Israeli leaders accountable for the atrocities in the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli bulldozers demolished six houses in the town of Anata, northeast of Jerusalem on Monday, as violence in the occupied territory continues.

Four homes owned by Al-Dhifain family were destroyed, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said, as well as two other houses belonging to Abu Ghalia family.

The six houses were reportedly located in a Bedouin community that includes eight houses for a number of families who have lived there for over a decade, Wafa said.

An earthquake monitor recorded a tremor off the coast of Tatous, Syria, after heavy Israeli strikes targeted the city overnight on Sunday.

The Geographic Survey of Israel’s seismology department recorded a 3.1 magnitude tremor at around 11:49pm on Sunday, the Times of Israel said.

Israeli planes launched intense strikes on the Syrian coastal region with the aim of targeting air defence units, "surface-to-surface missile depot" and other sites, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The United Nations intends to offer all kinds of help to the Syrian people, UN Syria envoy Geir Pedersen told Syrian rebel leader Ahmed Al-Shara'a and caretaker prime minister Mohammad al-Bashir during a meeting in Damascus, according to a statement released by the UN envoy's office on Monday.

This comes as EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday the bloc's envoy to Syria was going to Damascus to talk to the new Islamist-led leadership, as Western powers stepped up engagement after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad.