A Turkish drone strike in northwestern Iraq on Thursday killed two members of an affiliate of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish government said.
The fighters were members of the Sinjar Resistance Units, an organization founded within the district’s Yazidi network as a reaction to a brutal profession through the ISIS organization about a decade ago.
There is no immediate news from the Turkish military, which has carried out fatal moves opposed to PKK goals in Iraq and neighboring Syria, but rarely comments on individual moves, AFP reported.
“A Turkish army drone attacked a vehicle of the Sinjar resistance units in the Wardiya region, south of Sinjar, killing a leader and a fighter escorting him,” the anti-terrorism agency of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq said in a statement.
Another fighter wounded.
Sinjar and its mountains are one of the nuclei of the Iraqi Yazidi community.
The Sinjar Resistance Units were created in 2014 with the help of fellow Kurds from the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies consider a “terrorist” organization.
Turkey is carrying out ground and air offensives against the positions of the PKK – which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state – in northern Iraq.
Over the past 25 years, the country has also operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq since its war against the PKK.
The Sudanese army announced on Tuesday that it had wrested control of the headquarters of the national radio and television station from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The head is in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum and part of the Sudanese capital.
RSF did not comment.
The war between the Sudanese and the RSF erupted in mid-April 2023 amid tensions over a plan to transition to civilian rule.
Both factions staged a coup in 2021 that derailed a transition following the ouster of former President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
Swiss federal prosecutors said they had referred former Syrian Vice President Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of the country’s current president, to trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly ordering killings and torture more than four decades ago.
The attorney general’s office said Tuesday that Assad, 86, is accused of ordering crimes committed in Syria in February 1982 while he was commander of defense brigades that carried out an attack on the city of Hama in a clash between the army and the opposition. The following year, security forces killed thousands of people to quell an uprising in the city.
Even if convicted, Assad is unlikely to serve his sentence in Switzerland. After being convicted in France of the illegal Syrian state budget and sentenced to 4 years in prison, his nephew, Syrian President Bashar Assad, allowed him to return to Syria, ending more than 30 years of exile in France.
The case was brought before the advocacy organization Trial International under the precept of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows atrocity crimes to be prosecuted in a country that may not be the one where they took place.
The Swiss government decided that Rifaat was in Switzerland when the official investigation was launched through Swiss investigators.
Prosecutors will present their case to the Federal Criminal Court in the southern city of Bellinzona, the Attorney General’s Office said, indicating a date.
Talks between the U. S. and Iraq to end the U. S. -led military coalition in the country may not conclude before the U. S. presidential election in November, a senior Iraqi government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Washington and Baghdad began talks in January to rethink the U. S. -led coalition in Iraq, formed in 2014 to help fight IS after the extremist organization overran large swaths of the country.
The move came after U. S. forces and Shiite armed groups carried out impromptu strikes in a regional standoff related to Israel’s war in Gaza.
These attacks ceased more than a month ago to give the negotiations a breathing space.
Backed by Shiite parties and armed groups, the Baghdad government, rarely a best friend of Tehran and Washington, seeks to prevent the country from becoming a battleground for foreign powers.
Politicians see technical discussions through a joint military commission as a way to buy time amid differing perspectives on how military relations between countries are evolving.
Iraq’s radical Shiite armed teams have called for the early withdrawal of U. S. forces, while more moderate Shiite factions and Sunni and Kurdish parties fear that their departure could simply lead to a power vacuum.
Washington says the coalition project needs to be reevaluated in light of ISIS’s defeat in Iraq in 2017, but the talks do not necessarily imply a withdrawal of U. S. military advisers from the country.
The U. S. invaded Iraq in 2003, toppling President Saddam Hussein and leaving the country in 2011.
The U. S. returned in 2014 to lead a coalition to fight ISIS and lately there are about 2,500 U. S. troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria on an advisory and assistance mission.
“I don’t think the Americans need a general withdrawal. It’s clear,” former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a moderate member of Iraq’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework, told reporters last week.
“Also, I don’t think there is a preference within Iraqi political forces to dispense with the Americans entirely, although there is now a sense that lately their presence is more problematic than resolved. “
Israeli military jets attacked Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on Tuesday for a straight day, hitting a facility belonging to Hezbollah and killing at least one member of the Iranian-backed group, resources in Lebanon said.
Hezbollah said on Tuesday it had fired more than 100 rockets at Israeli targets, one of its heaviest bombardments in more than five months of hostilities during the Gaza war.
The Hezbollah member was killed and several others wounded in an airstrike on the village of Nabi Chit, said one of the sources, who knew the details. The target domain is a Shiite Hezbollah stronghold near the Lebanon-Syria border.
The war in Gaza has sparked the worst hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel since the 2006 offensive, fueling fears of a full-blown confrontation between the heavily armed adversaries.
The violence has been largely contained in spaces near the Israeli-Lebanese border, with a few notable exceptions, such as the first Israeli airstrike in the Bekaa Valley on February 26 and an Israeli drone strike on January 2 in Beirut that killed a senior official. Leader of Hamas.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it had fired more than 100 Katyusha rockets at 07:00 (05:00 GMT) at several Israeli army posts, in reaction to the Israeli bombardment of the Bekaa region the night before.
At least one civilian was killed and several others wounded in Monday’s Israeli strikes, one of which hit the southern front of the town of Baalbek, about 2 kilometers from its ancient Roman ruins, two security personnel and Baalbek Governor Bashir said.
Turkey has introduced a new phase of its military operations in northern Iraq, targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and with the aim of identifying an area up to 40 kilometers deep in Iraqi territory during the summer.
As Ankara intensifies its diplomatic efforts with Baghdad and Erbil, it demonstrated that its current military campaign, Operation Claw-Lock, has intensified since April 2022.
Coordination with Baghdad will be intensified and there are plans for a new security assembly in the coming days.
Defense Minister Yasar Guler echoed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments, telling reporters in remarks published Monday that terrorism “will no longer be a problem for our country. “
“We will resolve the disorders on our border with Iraq during the summer,” Erdogan said earlier this month, adding that the country had effective plans against the PKK.
The president pledged to identify “a 30- to 40-kilometer security corridor along the country’s border with Iraq and Syria. “
“Our fight has been fought according to a five-year plan. Terrorism has been a major impediment for Turkey for four decades, and Turkey will now have to take its counterterrorism efforts to another level. That’s what the president ordered,” Güler said. Reporters.
“Our task will be accomplished if we close this security hole and rid northern Iraq of terrorists,” the minister said.
Guler added that a security corridor of 30 to 40 kilometers is an express figure because it is the distance from the Turkish borders where PKK elements are located and that they can pose a risk with their resources to Turkish territories.
“If we can get them away from that distance, our country and our borders will be safe,” he said.
Guler noted that the PKK had a strong presence in northern Iraq, where it conducted military operations, noting that almost all of the hills in the rural domain were home to “multi-story caves filled with food and ammunition for six months. “
“We eliminated them all. Our troops have reduced the movements of terrorists (referring to PKK fighters) thanks to the operations they have carried out despite the difficult terrain and weather conditions. We will conduct a new raid on the existing operating domain and possibly expand it according to (security) needs,” the minister said.
“Qandil is no longer what it was 10 or 15 years ago, thanks to our effective operations,” he said, referring to the mountainous territory in northern Iraq where PKK leaders have historically been based.
It was the first deadly attack in a crusade of militia attacks following Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
A humanitarian shipment laden with some 200 tons of food set sail for Gaza on Tuesday as part of a pilot program to open a maritime hall in the territory, where the five-month war between Israel and Hamas has forced thousands of Palestinians to displace. Huir. Al verge of starvation.
The food is being transported through the Spanish humanitarian organization Open Arms, and is being transported through the Spanish humanitarian organization Open Arms. The shipment has left Cyprus, an island country in the eastern Mediterranean, and is expected to arrive in Gaza in two to three days.
The U. S. has announced plans to build a sea bridge near Gaza to deliver aid, but it will most likely be several weeks before it becomes operational. President Joe Biden’s leadership has provided very significant military aid to Israel, while urging it to facilitate greater humanitarian access. .
The war, sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel, has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and driven as many as 2. 3 million Gazans from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the United Nations, because they can’t, can’t find enough food, or can’t get it at wildly inflated prices.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been seeking to negotiate a ceasefire and the release of hostages ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Monday. But talks stalled last week, and Hamas is not finding it easy to temporarily pause the fighting. accompanied by promises to end the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to expand the offensive to the southern city of Rafah, where part of Gaza’s population has taken refuge, and to continue fighting until Hamas is dismantled and all prisoners in its custody are returned.
The war threatens to spread across the Middle East as Iranian-backed and Hamas-allied teams exchange fire with U. S. and Israeli forces. The Israeli military said about 100 projectiles were fired into Israel from Lebanon on Monday, one of the largest bombardments since Israel’s arrival. start of the Gaza war.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or injuries from the attack, which appeared to be a reaction to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon last day. Israel and Lebanon’s militant organization Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost since the beginning of the war.
‘OUR CHILDREN CAN’T FIND ANYTHING TO EAT’ Aid teams say it is on the verge of bringing aid to much of Gaza due to Israeli restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of law and order after the disappearance of much of the Hamas-led police force. . Streets.
Israel says it imposes no limits on humanitarian access through the two land crossings operating in the south. But U. N. agencies and aid teams say they can’t distribute aid once it arrives because of logistical and security concerns. to open more crossings.
Conditions are especially dire in northern Gaza, which has been badly damaged and largely cut off by Israeli forces since October. An estimated 300,000 Palestinians have remained there despite Israeli evacuation orders, and many of them have been forced to feed the animals in recent weeks. .
On Monday, the first day of the Ramadan holiday month, young people with pots and pans queued outside a charity kitchen in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya. Each was given a small portion of cooked carrots and sweet potatoes to break up the quick dawn until dusk.
“Our young people can’t find anything to eat,” said Bassam al-Haw, a volunteer. “There’s no food, no water, no flour. “
THE SEA ROUTE BRINGS PROMISE AND POTENTIAL DANGERS The proposed maritime direction is supported by the European Union, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other countries. The U. S. and other countries have also introduced airdrops of aid in recent days, but those efforts are costly. and to meet developing needs.
The Open Arms shipment tows a barge loaded with food. Once near Gaza, two smaller vessels will tow the barge to a dock structure via World Central Kitchen, which operates 65 kitchens across the territory. It plans to distribute food in the north.
Organizers said the pier would be open-air in northern Gaza, but declined to provide further details. Andres told The Associated Press in a brief interview Saturday night that they wanted to keep the site a secret to prevent large crowds from disrupting the delivery.
“Security is having enough food in Gaza,” he said. We need to make sure nothing happens to anyone. “
Dozens of Palestinians were killed last month in a chaotic delivery of aid in the north by Israeli troops, who fired into the crowd. Israel said most of the dead had been trampled to death, while Palestinian officials said most had been shot.
Israel, which controls Gaza’s sea coast and all of its land crossings, says it supports efforts to deliver aid by sea and will hand over all goods before setting sail for Gaza.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was the first time a shipment had been allowed to deliver aid directly to Gaza since 2005 and that the European Union would work with “smaller ships” until the United States finished work on its floating port.
The war began when Hamas-led fighters stormed Israel in a stunning attack on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still be holding about 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others, after releasing most of the others last year in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned through Israel.
Gaza’s Ministry of Public Health says the Israeli offensive introduced in reaction to the attack has killed at least 31,112 Palestinians. The ministry differentiates between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and young people account for about two-thirds of the dead.
Israel blames Hamas for the civilian deaths because militants are fighting in dense residential spaces and positioning their fighters, tunnels and rocket launchers near homes, schools and mosques. The army said it had killed 13,000 Hamas fighters, offering no evidence.
Israeli airstrikes near the eastern Lebanese town of Baalbek killed one user on Monday, a security source said, in the second attack in the area since cross-border hostilities began after the Gaza war.
Since October 8, the day after the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas-allied Hezbollah and its arch-enemy, Israel, have all but exchanged fire.
The movements have been largely confined to border regions, but in recent weeks several have reached Hezbollah positions further north, raising fears of a full-scale conflict.
“Israeli jets attacked an old Hezbollah construction site near the Dar Al Amal hospital,” a security source told AFP, adding that Israel “carried out a raid on a warehouse west of Baalbek. “
The movements killed one person and wounded six others, he added.
The governor of the Baalbek-Hermel region, Bashir Khodr, also claimed in a post on the social network X that a man had been killed in the movements near Baalbek.
A security official showed the impacts, but reported casualties.
The Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli airstrikes on two sites, an attack on the warehouse.
ANI also reported Israeli raids “on a residential building in the town of Ansar. . . south of Baalbek. “
“It is possible that fires and plumes of smoke will be observed emerging from the target site,” ANI added.
The Israeli army later proved that its aircraft had struck two sites belonging to the “Hezbollah Air Force”.
“These measures were in retaliation for Hezbollah’s air movements introduced a few days ago towards the Golan Heights,” he added.
The town of Baalbek, in the Bekaa Valley, is a Hezbollah stronghold on the border with Syria.
On February 26, Israeli actions targeted Baalbek, about 100 kilometers from the border, killing two Hezbollah operatives in the most internal incursion into Lebanese territory since the start of hostilities.
Hezbollah has said it will end its attacks on Israel only with a ceasefire in Gaza.
But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recently said that any truce in Gaza would replace Israel’s purpose of expelling Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, either by force or diplomacy.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October, at least 316 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also 53 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.
In Israel, at least 10 and 7 civilians were killed in cross-border hostilities.
The chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Council, Dr. Rashad al-Alimi, accused the Iranian-backed Houthi militias of shirking their commitments in service of Iran’s timetable in the region.
In a speech marking the arrival of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, he said the Houthis were conducting their “maritime terrorist operations” to break their foreign isolation.
He warned that the Houthis will cut Yemen off from their Arab and Gulf network.
Moreover, it is under pressure that the struggle to regain Yemen’s state institutions and authority be an integral component of national sovereignty.
This struggle has been ongoing since “the Houthi militias rebelled against the will of the rest of the people and forcibly took valuable spaces for the country as part of Iran’s plan to occupy Yemen and violate its sovereignty and independence,” al-Alimi said.
The Houthis attacked the Red Sea to “impose a new prestige quo and speak on behalf of other Yemeni peoples who have bravely resisted their discriminatory timetable for a whole decade and will continue to do so until the end,” he said. . experienced.
Al-Alimi said the Houthis’ “hostile movements have had disastrous results” in Yemen and on the lines of origin of important goods, given the emerging prices of shipping and insurance.
The PLC and the government are aware of the suffering of the Yemeni people “which has been going on for a long time,” he stressed.
The government continues its strenuous efforts to limit the effect of Houthi attacks on oil facilities and increase the price of the local currency. The state is committed to comprehensive reforms and the expansion of non-oil revenues, he added.
He promised that he would continue reforms and take all measures to deter the plans of the Houthis and Iran.
He noted that it is “strange that the Houthis are making wonderful efforts to protect the Palestinians, while continuing to commit the utmost and heinous violations against our people. “
He cited Houthi policies that have impoverished the population, usurped their homes and prevented the delivery of aid to spaces under their control.
In addition, he is under pressure for the government to continue proposing “an initiative later to check the intentions of the Houthis on humanitarian issues. “
Syria is experiencing a wave of violence observed since 2020, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria warned in a report. He said that on several fronts, parties to the conflict have targeted civilians and infrastructure in a way that most likely amounts to war crimes. .
“Since October, Syria has experienced the largest escalation of fighting in four years. As the region is engulfed in turmoil, a determined foreign effort to engage the fighting on Syrian soil is imperative. Syria also desperately wants a ceasefire,” said Commission President Paulo Pinheiro.
“Other Syrians cannot tolerate further escalation of this devastating and protracted war,” Pinheiro said. “More than 90% of them are now living in poverty, the economy is in free fall due to the tightening of sanctions and the development of anarchy. “is fueling predatory practices and extortion” through the parties to the conflict.
The upsurge in fighting in Syria began on Oct. 5 when back-to-back explosions during a graduation ceremony at a military academy in the government-controlled city of Homs killed at least 63 people, adding 37 civilians, and wounded dozens.
The Syrian government and Russian forces responded by shelling at least 2,300 sites in opposition-held spaces in just three weeks, killing and injuring numerous civilians. ” Their indiscriminate attacks, which would possibly amount to war crimes, hit well-known and visual hospitals, schools, markets and IDP camps, and have continued ever since,” the report says.
Since the assault on Gaza began, tensions have risen between some of the six foreign armies active in Syria, as well as Israel, Iran and the United States, raising fears of a wider conflict. Israel has reportedly attacked suspected Iranian-linked sites and forces in Syria at least 35 times and attacked airports in Aleppo and Damascus, temporarily disrupting an important humanitarian air for the UN. Pro-Iranian militias have reportedly attacked U. S. bases in northeastern Syria more than a hundred times, and the U. S. has responded with airstrikes opposed to pro-Iranian bases. militias in eastern Syria.
Meanwhile, in northeastern Syria, the Turkish military has stepped up operations against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in retaliation for an attack claimed through the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Ankara in October. The plants have left nearly a million people without water or electricity for weeks, in violation of foreign humanitarian law. Civilians have also been killed in targeted airstrikes, inspired by Turkish drone strikes. “Such attacks may simply amount to war crimes. “
Five years after the fall of Baghuz, when ISIS lost territory in Syria, “nearly 30,000 young people are still being held in internment camps, prisons or rehabilitation centers in northeastern Syria,” said Commissioner Lynn Welchman. “These young people have already been victims of the ISIS regime, only to be subjected to years of continuous human rights violations and abuses. “
The Commission concluded that the living conditions in the Al-Hol and Al-Rawj camps amount to cruel and inhuman treatment and an affront to personal dignity.
“No child will ever be punished for the moves or ideals of their parents,” Welchman said. “We urge all states to immediately allow all children, including Syrians, to return home from the camps and to take steps to ensure their reintegration into society and accountability for the crimes they have suffered. “
The Commission concluded that 16. 7 million people in Syria are now in need of humanitarian assistance, the number of people in need since the start of the crisis.
A severe shortfall in donor investment has forced the UN to suspend normal food aid to Syria, plunging millions of people into the grip of starvation. However, aid deliveries are hostage to arbitrary decisions by the Syrian government and hampered by sanctions.