I guess scared (mildly worried) that they would lose their impunity to bomb Syria, hence Israel stepped it up...


What ???

Trump lauds ouster of Syria’s al-Assad as ‘unfriendly takeover’ by Turkiye

United States President-elect Donald Trump has described the toppling of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkiye, which had aligned itself with several of the opposition groups that led the lightning offensive on Damascus.

Trump made the remarks – in apparent praise of Ankara – during a wide-ranging news conference on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His comments offered a window into his foreign and domestic policy weeks before he is to re-enter the White House on January 20.

“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 said, referring to the December 8 ousting of the longtime Syrian leader.

Al-Assad’s forced departure followed a surprise offensive across the country by rebel groups, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had long opposed al-Assad’s rule and supported the Syrian National Army (SNA) opposition group, based in northwestern Syria.

I think Trump is very dumb.

Trump has been in constant contact with Netanyahu

A strong statement from the US president-elect has implied that he will be taking action from the time he takes office on January 20th.

Donald Trump spoke as early as yesterday on the telephone with the Israeli prime minister. He has also appointed Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been travelling in the region. He’s been to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

So the president-elect is keeping up to date with what is happening, staying in direct contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and also making very clear that he is going to take action in terms of those captives should they not be released by January 20th.

There’s been speculation that Netanyahu is waiting until Trump takes office before acting or agreeing to any form of move to get the captives out of Gaza. Trump himself denies it, as do the Israeli prime minister and his assistant, saying they want the captives out as soon as possible.

Netanyahu with Trump in his pocket? This nightmare is not going to end any time soon.

US has conducted airstrike against Houthis: CENTCOM

The US military says it has “conducted a precision airstrike against a key command and control facility operated by Iran-backed Houthis within Houthi-controlled territory in Sanaa, Yemen” in a post on X.

“The targeted facility was a hub for coordinating Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden” it said.

CENTCOM Conducts Precision Airstrike Against Iran-Backed Houthi Facility in Yemen

On Dec. 16 Yemen time, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted a precision airstrike against a key command and control facility operated by Iran-backed Houthis within Houthi-controlled… pic.twitter.com/DlZ9SQcAqX

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) December 16, 2024

Israel is preparing military action against Yemen’s Houthis: Report

The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (Kan) reports that Israel is preparing for a military offensive due to the group’s continued missile and drone attacks.

The announcement came after Israel intercepted a ballistic missile and a drone launched by the Houthis earlier in the day.

The Houthis said the attack was in response to Israel’s “massacres” against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, where Israel has been waging a war for more than a year, killing more than 45,000 people.

“The Houthis have assumed the mantle of attacking Israel on behalf of the entire Iranian axis,” Kan said, citing the weakened positions of Syria’s ousted al-Assad regime and Hezbollah in Lebanon as contributing factors.

Kan also reported a consensus within Israel’s security establishment to strike back at Houthi targets.

UN rights office sounds alarm over ‘continued pattern of Israeli strikes’ on Gaza schools

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has decried Israeli strikes targeting schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, including a shelter for displaced Palestinians in an area designated as a “safe zone” by the Israeli military.

“At least 69 Palestinians were killed in these attacks including children and women. A mother and her two-day-old newborn daughter are reportedly among the fatalities,” OHCHR said in a statement.

“Almost every Palestinian in the strip has been displaced multiple times in search of safety. But there is no safety and nowhere left to go.” These attacks have repeatedly resulted in a “distressingly high number of fatalities”, it said.

Targeting shelters housing displaced families in the besieged enclave raises concerns about Israel’s “systematic violation of international humanitarian law”, the statement said.

Israeli army says moving troops form Lebanon to Gaza

In a statement on X, Israel’s army says that its 98th division “completed” its mission in southern Lebanon last week after about three months of fighting. The troops will now prepare for their “next mission” in the Gaza Strip, the statement says.

As part of a ceasefire agreement between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, Israeli forces will slowly withdraw from southern Lebanon and hand over control to the Lebanese army. The army, per the agreement, is the only party legitimately allowed to carry arms in south Lebanon.

Doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital under direct attack: Director

A video posted on social media and verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking unit shows Dr Hossam Abu Safia, the director of the hospital in North Gaza, speaking about the ongoing Israeli army siege.

He said Israeli snipers, positioned around the hospital, have fired directly at staff in the intensive care unit of the hospital.

Abu Safia added that the army targeted the hospital’s power generators a short while ago, causing a power outage.

He appealed for international protection for his staff and demanded that they be spared from direct and indirect attacks by the Israeli army.

Kamal Adwan Hospital has been under a state of siege by the Israeli army for weeks as it carries out what experts have told Al Jazeera is an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Strip.

Israeli forces deploy explosive-laden robots around Kamal Adwan hospital

We’ve been covering Israel’s weeks-long assault on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Beit Lahiya, where staff have reported sniper attacks on the facility’s intensive care unit.

An Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Gaza is now reporting that Israeli forces have sent in three explosive-laden robots to the area around the hospital.

The Gaza-based Al-Aqsa TV also said Israeli quadcopter drones have dropped more than 10 bombs on the hospital in recent hours, causing a fire to break out on the facility’s third floor.

‘Soul of my soul’: Israeli shelling kills Gaza grandfather who moved world

Khaled Nabhan, a Palestinian man known as “Abu Diaa”, was killed early on Monday in an Israeli bombardment targeting the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

He had become widely known after a video showed him kissing the eyes of his slain granddaughter and calling her “soul of my soul” last year. Israeli air strikes had killed his granddaughter, Reem, and grandson, Tarek, in November 2023.

Palestinian rights advocates paid tribute to Nabhan on Monday, with many recalling his bond with Reem as well as his charitable acts in the months after she was killed.

At least 8 killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City

The Israeli military has shelled a house in the Daraj neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, killing at least eight people and wounding several more, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent reports.

Earlier, we reported that at least four people were killed after Israeli forces carried out a drone and missile attack in the Shati refugee camp, northwest of Gaza City.

Israel’s missile attack on Shati leaves ‘piles of flesh’

We’ve just seen the footage from the Shati refugee camp, in the northwest of Gaza City, where a group of people were targeted in an Israeli drone and missile attack. Four people were killed right on the spot.

We are not able to show this footage on screen, but it shows bodies torn apart by the missiles. The missiles used by the Israeli military are packed with nails and little pieces of metal, and when they explode, they fly at high speed, cut through the flesh and cause severe bleeding.

So, what we saw were piles of flesh on the ground as the bodies had been torn apart. Multiple people were also injured. They were all transferred to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

And in Beit Lahiya, two people were killed near the Kamal Adwan Hospital as they were trying to move from the house they were sheltering in to another one, seeking safety and protection. The vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital has become a notorious site, with ongoing, repeated attacks by Israeli tank shells, quadcopters and drone missiles.

There have also been attacks by quadcopters on the emergency department of the hospital throughout the day. Many of the medical staff there are at risk of losing their lives simply because they are inside the hospital and doing their job – treating people as much as they can.

Palestinian security forces suppress protest in occupied West Bank’s Jenin

Palestinian Authority (PA) forces have fired what appears to be tear gas towards protesting crowds in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

Demonstrators took to the streets to decry an ongoing siege on the nearby Jenin refugee camp, days after PA forces raided the camp and battled with Jenin Brigades fighters.

PA forces killed a commander named Yazid Ja’ayseh and injured several people.

Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp are a stronghold for armed factions, including the Jenin Brigades, who are seen as a more effective resistance to the Israeli occupation, in contrast with the PA, which coordinates security matters with Israel.

The camp has also seen increasing crackdowns by Israeli forces, which have intensified in scale since October last year.


_{A member of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces fires tear gas towards a protest against the PA security operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on December 16, 2024. For more than a week, the northern West Bank city of Jenin has seen intense violence after the PA, which coordinates security matters with Israel, arrested several Palestinian fighters}


Palestinian teenager killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank: Report

The Palestinian news agency Wafa, citing local sources, reports that an 18-year-old Palestinian from Nablus’s Askar refugee camp has died of critical wounds he sustained earlier tonight after being shot by Israeli soldiers during an Israeli military incursion.

The news agency said that several Israeli military vehicles stormed two areas east of Nablus, firing live rounds, sound bombs and toxic tear gas canisters.

Family of American-Turkish killed by Israeli forces express frustration after meeting Blinken

The family of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist shot and killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli military forces in September, has expressed frustration after meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The US diplomat “was attentive in listening to us and, unfortunately, repeated a lot of the same things that we’ve been hearing for the past 20 years, particularly since Rachel Corrie’s killing, who is also a Washington State resident, like my wife” Eygi’s husband Hamid Ali told reporters after the meeting at the State Department.

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American woman, was killed in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip.

“It’s frustrating to hear the same things again,” Ali said.

The meeting comes as the family continues to urge the Biden administration to launch an independent investigation into her killing, saying that she was killed in a deliberate attack during a peaceful protest.

Ozden Bennet, Eygi’s sister, said the US is still awaiting an Israeli investigation, which she said the family does not find “credible”.

Mass grave found near Syria’s capital could contain thousands of bodies

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/17/mass-grave-found-near-syrias-capital-could-contain-100000-bodies

A mass grave that could contain the remains of thousands of people has been found outside Syria’s capital Damascus, as the new interim government promises to hold accountable those responsible for atrocities under the ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

The site at al-Qutayfah, located 40km (25 miles) north of the capital, was one of several mass graves identified across the country after the collapse of the decades-long rule of the al-Assad family.

Twelve mass graves were also discovered in southern Syria. At one site, 22 bodies, including those of women and children, exhibited signs of execution and torture.

Al-Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused of killing hundreds of thousands through extrajudicial killings, including in the country’s notorious prison system.

_{Body bags lie on a field after a mass grave was discovered on agricultural land in Izra, in Syria's southern Deraa province}

Corpses, men who don’t know their names: Scenes from a Damascus hospital

In the furthest room of the Mujtahid Hospital basement in Damascus, a frail young man with jet-black hair crouches on the floor. He holds his face in his trembling hands as people walk in and out.

People come in to look at him, hoping he might be their lost relative. When they manage to convince the man to look up, his face stares not at them, but through them, his eyes calm but distant.

A young doctor, who asked to remain anonymous, at the reception desk says: “They don’t recognise anyone. “He only remembers his name, and sometimes it’s the wrong name. It may be the name of one of his cellmates.”

The staff here say the man was tortured at the Red Prison at Sednaya, the most brutal and notorious of prisons the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad operated.

He is one of many who have been tortured to the point of forgetting their own identities, according to the doctor.

_{Crouching on the floor of a hospital room, this man does not know who he is any more after the torture he lived through}

Hospital staff said sometimes families will come and claim a former detainee as a family member. “Sometimes 10 different people believe the same patient is their relative or their son,” he said. “A person’s features change after he stays in prison for a long time.”

What happens far too often, though, is that the family will later discover that the person they brought home is not their relative and they return them to the hospital so their actual families can find them. It’s hard to say if any of this has an effect on the detainees, however.

The Assad regime detained or forcibly disappeared at least 136,000 people since March 2011, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. About 31,000 of those people have been released from prisons, meaning 105,000 people are still missing.

As mass graves are being uncovered and investigated around the country, including in Damascus’s outskirts, a ghoulish task rears its head: figuring out who is in there.

“I can state with confidence that the majority of these individuals have tragically perished under torture,” Fadel Abdulghany, executive director of the SNHR, told Al Jazeera on December 14, nearly a week after al-Assad’s prisons had been liberated.

These atrocities have been documented and known about for years, yet several states had been making moves to normalise relations with the Assad regime.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/12/17/syrians-damascus-hospital-disappeared

Western media at it again

CNN faces backlash over ‘staged’ Syrian prisoner rescue report

A Syrian thought to be a prisoner rescued by United States media outlet CNN has turned out to be a former intelligence officer in the Bashar al-Assad government.

After a lightning offensive that overthrew the 24-year-long regime this month, opposition fighters freed thousands of people from a network of prisons run by the former government.

The report produced by CNN documenting what it claimed was the rescue of the prisoner has garnered widespread criticism, forcing the media outlet to re-examine the claims.

The video, aired on Thursday, shows CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her team, accompanied by an opposition fighter, reporting from a secret prison in the capital, Damascus, and stumbling upon a “hidden prisoner”.

“I’m a civilian. I’m a civilian,” the prisoner said as he cowered under a blanket with hands raised.

Does no one see how problematic—and staged—this is? Shame on you, @clarissaward @CNN, for exploiting Syrian survivors and profiting off the pain of suffering communities. This isn’t journalism; it’s ego-driven sensationalism. cc @NatEnquirer @TheSun #Syria https://t.co/oeayi3OPHn

— Raja Althaibani (allegedly) (@RajaAlthaibani) December 12, 2024

Many of us correctly suspected that CNN staged the prisoner story.

CNN is now backtracking, shifting blame onto the man while absolving itself of any wrongdoing.@clarissaward own up and apologise for misleading your viewers. https://t.co/CkoqXb7GZx

— Ismailoğlu Pasha (@IsmailogluF) December 16, 2024

Do the US attacks against the Houthis actually comprise a strategy?

Harlan Ullman, a military analyst and senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, says the US does not have a “good strategy” for addressing attacks by the Houthi rebels on shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

“When we… shoot down a Houthi drone or a Houthi missile with a multimillion-dollar missile, the cost exchange ratio of the amount of money we are spending is far greater than the Houthis are. And so, we are in a very difficult situation,” Ullman told Al Jazeera.

“If we really want to stop the attacks, there are one or two ways to do it. One, we launch a ground attack. And obviously, no president wants to have ground forces in that part of the world. Or because the suppliers of most of their equipment is Iran, you see if you can cut off the lines of supply from Iran, put enough pressure on Iran to get them to cease and desist.”

But Iran may be unwilling to do so, given its waning influence in the region following Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in Syria and the Israelis “defeat” of Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said.

“It may well be that the only lifeline that Iran has against the outside world, the United States and the West is through the Houthis, who continue to block the sea lanes in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal,” he added.

As we’ve been reporting, the US has claimed conducting an air strike on a command and control facility in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, that it said was used by the Houthis to coordinate attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Israeli media are also reporting that Israel’s military is preparing for an offensive against the Houthis after the Yemeni rebel group claimed to have fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at the country. The Houthis say its attacks in the Red Sea and on Israel are in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli attack in Gaza.

_{Destroyed buildings in the village of Kfar Kila in southern Lebanon are seen from northern Israel on December 3}