10 December 2024
- Mohammed al-Bashir, appointed Syria’s new prime minister until March 1, 2025, has met with members of the country’s former government to facilitate political transition.
- Israeli forces have carried out large-scale attacks across Syria, targeting three major airports and other strategic military infrastructure, including in the capital, Damascus.
- Toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s prime minister says he has agreed to hand power to the opposition-led Salvation Government, headed by Mohammed al-Bashir.
- The family of renowned Syrian activist, Mazen al-Hamada, has confirmed his body has been found at the notorious Sednaya prison as rescue teams ended their search for missing people at the facility.
- Qatar, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have condemned Israel’s “dangerous” land grab in the Syrian Golan Heights, as UN peacekeepers accuse it of violating the 1974 ceasefire deal that ended the 1967 war.
Red Cross urges Syrians not to exhume their own dead
Syrian families whose loved ones disappeared under ousted president Bashar al-Assad should not try to exhume their bodies themselves, which could prevent forensics experts from identifying them, the Red Cross says.
More than 100,000 people have disappeared during Syria’s civil war, according to rights groups.
Families have an understandable urge to find and retrieve missing relatives’ bodies from formerly off-limits areas now that al-Assad has fled the country, but it is important to “follow all the steps correctly”, Christian Cardon, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the AFP news agency.
The issue of missing people is “central today, but also for the future”, with proper autopsies needed to “eventually pave the way for peace and reconciliation negotiations”, he said.
With families searching for their missing loved ones, alive or dead, Cardon appealed to them to “respect cemeteries and other places where people may be buried”.
“Key forensic processes” must be followed so victims’ bodies can be identified, he added.
The Red Cross is also urging Syrians to “protect the registry documents in which thousands of prisoners’ names were recorded”, along with “thousands of people believed to be dead”, Cardon said.
“There’s a real urgency today to ensure that in administrative offices as well as prisons and detention centres across the country, people preserve and maintain that vital information.”
US embassy in Syria urges US citizens to leave country
Warning of a “volatile and unpredictable” security situation throughout the country, the X account of the embassy, which suspended operations in 2012, urged US citizens to leave if they are able.
“The US government is unable to provide any routine or emergency consular services to US citizens in Syria”, its post read, urging those who plan to leave to contact the US embassy in the country they plan to enter.
The main option it gave to citizens was fleeing through the Turkish border, but added that the US embassy in Turkiye must facilitate this transfer.
“If you are in Syria, be prepared to shelter in place should the situation deteriorate,” the post says.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah hopes new Syria rejects ‘Israeli occupation’
Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group on Tuesday expressed hope that neighbouring Syria’s new rulers would reject the “Israeli occupation” of their land, days after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.
“We hope to see Syria stabilise … and take a firm stand against Israeli occupation, while preventing foreign interference in its affairs,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement.
Hezbollah fought in Syria’s war in support of al-Assad, who had played a key role in helping Iran supply the Lebanese group with weapons.
But Hezbollah has recently been battered by an intense war with Israel, and much of the group’s leadership has been killed in Israeli attacks.
Al-Assad must face trial for journalist killings, RSF says
Al-Assad must face justice for the killings of scores of journalists during the conflict in Syria, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says, while warning that currently detained journalists remained at risk.
“With more than 180 journalists killed and executed by the regime and its allies since 2011, and with the imprisonment and torture of reporters in his prisons, Bashar al-Assad made Syria one of the worst countries in the world for media professionals,” Jonathan Dagher, head of the watchdog’s Middle East desk, said in a statement.
“We demand that Bashar al-Assad be prosecuted for his crimes. Justice, long overdue, must finally be served for all victims of his abuses.”
The group said that since 2011, the start of mass antigovernment protests in Syria, 161 journalists have been killed by al-Assad’s forces and 17 in air attacks by his key ally, Russia.
The group warned the country remained highly dangerous for the media as leading rebel group HTS was accused of killing six journalists between 2012 and 2019, and its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as al-Julani, was responsible for the abduction of eight others, RSF said.
Since al-Assad’s ouster, two journalists have been freed as rebels open al-Assad’s prisons, RSF said: Hanin Gebran, a journalist from Syria Media Monitor detained since June 2024, and blogger Tal al-Mallouhi, detained since 2009.
As of Monday, 23 journalists remained in prison in Syria and 10 were missing, including seven kidnapped by al-Assad’s forces, it said.
US talking to Turkiye about return of Austin Tice
The Biden administration says it is in conversation with Turkiye and other countries to get more information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice, an American journalist kidnapped in Syria more than a decade ago.
White House spokesperson John Kirby said officials are pushing hard to learn as much as they can about Tice.
Kirby told reporters the situation in Syria could “present an opportunity for us to glean more information about him, his whereabouts, his condition,” adding that the US assumes Tice is alive and has no information to the contrary.
Tice, a former US Marine and freelance journalist, was 31 when he was abducted in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Syria had denied he was being held.
Iraqi FM discusses Syria developments with UN special envoy
Fuad Hussein held a phone call with the UN special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry says in a statement.
“During the call, the current developments in Syria were reviewed and their dimensions were analyzed, in addition to discussing the potential repercussions if the international community does not make serious efforts that contribute to achieving stability and serve the interests of the Syrian people”, the statement reads.
It adds that both sides agreed on the importance of the UN’s role in whatever comes next for Syria.
Israel defence minister confirms overnight strikes on Syria navy
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has confirmed that the military had hit several Syrian naval vessels in overnight strikes.
“The IDF (military) has been operating in Syria in recent days to strike and destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel.
The navy operated last night to destroy the Syrian fleet with great success,” Katz said during a visit to a naval base in the northern city of Haifa.
He also warned Syria’s new rulers not to follow al-Assad’s path.
What Syrians to come back
We have a report from Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the Damascus-based representative for the UN refugee agency in Syria, to ask him about the humanitarian situation in the country.
Here’s what he said (his comments below have been slightly edited for brevity):
“I have just come back from the border with Lebanon. I met hundreds of Syrians who are coming back home. It was more than a return; it was a celebration, and it was wonderful to see.
“I spoke to one family – a husband, wife and four children – who are going back to Idlib. The four children were all born in Lebanon because this family has been away for 12 years, and the mother said to me, ‘Finally my four children are going to see their country.’“
So there was jubilation. And it was the same with all the other families who I saw at the border. This is something that is very positive, a moment of great happiness.
But there are also hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Syrians, who are waiting, who haven’t taken the decision that those hundreds that I saw at the border have taken.
“Many of them may actually want to come back but they are waiting. We need to respect the fact that they are waiting, they are considering, they want to know what is going to happen and how the is situation going to evolve.
“I think people expect basically three things in this current context; one, at the political level, they want a transition that is going to keep the peace for a long time; second, at the community level, they want to be sure that when they will go back to their communities, they will be well received, shown tolerance, and there will be co-existence and reconciliation; and third, what they need and expect is to be able to come back and make a decent living – and there we have a huge problem because the humanitarian situation in the country is a catastrophe.“
The responsibility of ensuring a peaceful transition is, of course, with those who are in charge of the country. But the international community also has also a huge responsibility which is to carry out a major injection of humanitarian and economic support.
“What is clear is for people to come back in big numbers and stay, they need shelter, education, health and to be able to have jobs. That is what they are telling us consistently. And that needs to happen very quickly, otherwise, we may lose an opportunity that we and the Syrians haven’t had for 13 years.”
Up to one million people displaced inside Syria since November 27
The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) says between 800,000 and one million people have been displaced inside Syria since the opposition forces launched their offensive to topple al-Assad.
This number includes 150,000 “experiencing secondary displacement”, it said.
Women and girls comprise nearly half of the figure, it reported.
“The security situation in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs and Damascus remains dynamic.
There are multiple overlapping population movements, including major internal displacement within Syria, some IDPs returning home, movements out of Syria, and relatively small numbers of refugee returns,” it said.
The agency noted that more than 13 million Syrians have fled their homes over the country’s 14-year war, while 90 percent of the people there require some form of humanitarian assistance.
Cautious optimism amid ‘chaotic, dangerous’ developments after al-Assad’s fall
Dave Harden, former senior adviser to US President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace said that he was cautiously optimistic about the developments in Syria.
“It’s chaotic, dangerous, but there is some hope as well,” Harden, who now heads the Georgetown Strategy Group, a consultancy, in Washington DC, said. “It’s hard to be confidently optimistic about the future of Syria, we must not shut it here at the fall of the al-Assad family, which has been tyrannical ruling Syria for 53 years.”
Harden said Syrians needed respite from war and “hope”, but that it was not clear what the rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) would mean for the country. Global powers were attempting to shape the country’s future in ways that cannot be anticipated.
“Syria is an example of the end of the post World War II era and what we’re seeing is ancient empires and global powers fighting for that road to Damascus,” Harden said. “Israel is one of the players in this mix – along with Iranians, Turks, all battling with Russia and the United States as global powers trying to shape the future of Syria.”
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s intel pick, faces questions on Syria
The US president-elect’s pick for director of national intelligence issued a brief statement reaffirming Trump’s position on recent developments in Syria after reporters asked for her thoughts on the ouster of al-Assad, whom she met in 2017.
“I want to address the issue that’s in the headlines right now: I stand in full support and wholeheartedly agree with the statements that President Trump has made over these last few days with regards to the developments in Syria,” Gabbard said as she left a Senate meeting in the US Capitol.
In the past, Gabbard has opposed US intervention in the Syrian war and criticised former President Barack Obama’s administration for supporting the Syrian opposition movement against al-Assad.