Category Archives: Syria

Nagorno-Karabakh: at least three Syrian fighters killed

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Syrians on the ground are believed to be contractors working for Turkish security companies

At least three Syrian opposition fighters have been killed in skirmishes in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Guardian has learned, confirming earlier reports of foreign involvement in the battle between Armenian and Azerbaijan over the territory and increasing fears it may spiral into a wider regional conflict.

As fierce combat between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces stretched into a fourth day, the presence of Syrians on the ground – believed to be contractors working for Turkish security companies – signalled a new frontier for Ankara’s increasingly assertive foreign policy.

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Global coronavirus deaths pass 1m with no sign rate is slowing

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Johns Hopkins University data points to rises in countries that seemed to have slowed spread

The number of people who have died from Covid-19 has exceeded 1 million, according to a tally of cases maintained by Johns Hopkins University, with no sign the global death rate is slowing and infections on the rise again in countries that were thought to be controlling their outbreaks months ago.

The milestone was reached early on Tuesday morning UK time, nine months since authorities in China first announced the detection of a cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. The first recorded death, that of a 61-year-old man in a hospital in the city, came 12 days later.

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US military increasingly using drone missile with flying blades in Syria

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‘Ninja bomb’, which uses 100lb of dense material and six attached blades, has been deployed in targeted assassinations

The US military is making increasing use in Syria of a gruesome and secretive non-explosive drone missile that deploys flying blades to kill its targets.

Described as less likely to kill non-combatants, the so-called ninja bomb – whose development was first disclosed last year – has been used a number of times in the last year to kill militants in Syria, including those linked to aal-Qaida, most recently earlier this month.

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Turkey issues arrest warrants for 82 over pro-Kurdish protests

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Mayor among those wanted for unspecified offences during 2014 protests sparked by Isis seizure of Kobane

Turkish authorities have issued arrest warrants for 82 people, including a mayor, over pro-Kurdish protests six years ago, officials and local media have said.

The warrants relate to October 2014 protests in Turkey sparked by the seizure of the mainly Kurdish-Syrian town of Kobane by Islamic State fighters.

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Internal displacements reach 15m in 2020 with worst ‘still to come’ – report

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Extreme weather, locust invasions and violence have forced people to flee their homes

Millions of people were uprooted from their homes by conflict, violence and natural disasters in the first six months of this year, research has found.

Nearly 15m new internal displacements were recorded in more than 120 countries between January and June by the Swiss-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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US deploys additional troops and armoured vehicles to eastern Syria

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The move follows a number of clashes with Russian forces now stationed along the Turkish border

The US military has stepped up its deployment of troops and equipment in north-eastern Syria after a rise in tensions with Russia in the region.

US central command “has deployed Sentinel radar, increased the frequency of US fighter patrols over US forces, and deployed bradley fighting vehicles to augment US forces” in the area, which is controlled by the US and its Kurdish allies, spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement.

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UK judge halts Home Office flight to remove asylum seekers

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Lawyers argue group of up to 20 people will be left destitute in Spain if deported

A senior high court judge has halted a charter flight hours before up to 20 asylum seekers who crossed the Channel to the UK in small boats were due to be forcibly removed to Spain, a country they had previously passed through.

The judge, Sir Duncan Ouseley, ordered the flight to be grounded because of concerns that the asylum seekers due to fly might be left destitute in the streets of Madrid, as happened to another group earlier this month.

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UK repatriates child orphaned in Syria after Isis collapse

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Child is thought to be first to have returned from the country since November

A British child left orphaned by the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate has been repatriated from Syria, the Foreign Office has said.

The child is understood to be the first to have returned to the UK from Syria since November, when a small number of other unaccompanied British children were repatriated.

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Conflicts since start of US ‘war on terror’ have displaced 37m people – report

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Study focuses on post-9/11 wars in which US initiated combat or took part in military operations

Conflicts with US military involvement have displaced at least 37 million people since the beginning of the “war on terror” nearly two decades ago, a report has estimated.

The invasion of Iraq and the decades of instability that have followed in the country have uprooted at least 9.2 million so far, the costliest of the eight US military operations that were included in the report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

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Woman who helped deported Syrians ‘ashamed of UK government’

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Barbara Pomfret came to aid of group left homeless in Madrid after forced removal from UK

A British woman living in Spain who helped 11 Syrian asylum seekers who were left homeless and hungry on the streets of Madrid after being forcibly removed from the UK has said she is ashamed of the UK government’s behaviour.

The all-male group were left destitute after being put on a flight to Madrid by the Home Office last week. They had arrived in the UK in small boats from Calais and are part of a Home Office plan to remove almost 1,000 such arrivals.

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Arab gas pipeline explosion leads to total blackout in Syria – state media

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State news agency reports oil minister as saying the blast could be a terrorist act

An explosion on the Arab gas pipeline has caused a total blackout in Syria, the state news agency SANA reported on Monday, quoting the nation’s electricity minister.

The minister said the explosion occurred between the Ad Dumayr and Adra areas in Syria.

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US to drop death penalty for British Isis members accused of beheadings

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Assurances on Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh dependent on UK handing over evidence

The US has promised not to pursue the death penalty against two British Isis members accused of taking part in the beheadings of western hostages, in return for UK cooperation with the prosecution.

The pledge was given in a letter from the US attorney general, William Barr, in the case of Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, members of the “Beatles” group of British Isis members, who were captured by Syrian Kurds and then handed over to US custody last October.

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Syria deadliest place to be an aid worker, amid global 30% rise in attacks – report

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Ability to carry out humanitarian work in most dangerous conflict-hit regions threatened by local NGO staff being caught in crossfire

There has been a sharp rise in the number of aid staff killed in the first six months of this year with Syria at the top of the list of the deadliest places to be a humanitarian worker.

A total of 74 fatalities have been recorded globally since January, a 30% rise on the same period last year. Syria accounted for more than a quarter of the deaths.

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Hidden survivors of sexual violence during Syria’s war must not be left behind

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Support for abused men, trans women and non-binary people is urgently needed

Yousef, a 28-year-old gay man, was raped by Syrian intelligence agents who had detained him for participating in protests during the conflict in Syria. He fled to Lebanon, but found only limited services to help him deal with the traumatic aftermath. By the time I interviewed him, he was resettled in the Netherlands. Geographically speaking, he was away from all the violence, but it still haunted him. “I look behind me when I am walking,” he told me. “I still wake up at night. It [the trauma] is not over.”

Yousef is one of dozens of sexual violence survivors from Syria whom I interviewed for Human Rights Watch. I found that since the beginning of the Syrian conflict men and boys – in addition to women and girls – have been subjected to sexual violence, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, by both government agents and non-government actors.

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Iranian passenger plane forced to change course as US fighter jets approached – report

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Iran promises political response after several passengers were reportedly injured when Mahan Air plane quickly changed altitude

Two US fighter jets came close to an Iranian passenger plane over Syrian airspace, causing the pilot to change altitude quickly to avoid collision and injuring several passengers, Iran’s official IRIB news agency reported.

The agency initially said a single Israeli jet had come near the plane but later quoted the pilot as saying there were two jets that identified themselves as American.

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Ministers ignore pleas to honour vow and bring ‘innocents’ back from Syria

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After last week’s Shamima Begum ruling, Home Office stays silent on rescue of minors from camps in the north-west of the country

The Home Office has been accused of “alarming inaction” after making no apparent attempt to bring back any British children from Syria for the past eight months despite pledges of help from ministers.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced last October that “unaccompanied minors or orphans” in Syria could be returned to Britain. After three orphans returned in November, he hailed the move as “the right thing to do”. He added: “These innocent, orphaned children should never have been subjected to the horrors of war.”

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Shamima Begum: how the case developed

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Twenty-year-old has won right to return to UK from Syria to challenge citizenship decision

The case of Shamima Begum, the now 20-year-old woman who fled to Syria to join Islamic State as a child, has sparked fierce debate over how the UK should deal with “foreign fighters”.

Opponents of her return say she is a threat to the country’s security and must live with the consequences of her actions, while critics of her exile say greater human rights principles are at play, and the UK must not shirk its responsibility to administer justice for any alleged crimes she may have committed.

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Shamima Begum wins right to return to UK to challenge citizenship decision

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Appeal court partially overturns earlier ruling that backed Home Office

Shamima Begum, the 20-year-old woman who left east London as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the Home Office’s decision to revoke her British citizenship in person.

The court of appeal partially overturned an earlier ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year, which held that she had not been illegally rendered stateless while she was in Syria because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

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Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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British student who fled to join Isis dies while in jail in Syria

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Ishak Mostefaoui, formerly at the University of Westminster, died either trying to escape custody or amid disorder in the prison

A British student who ran away to join the Islamic State group in Syria has died while being held in prison in the country, according to reports.

Ishak Mostefaoui, 27, who travelled to Syria in 2014 and had his British citizenship revoked, is said to have died either trying to escape custody or amid serious disorder in a jail in Hassakeh, which holds Isis prisoners from across the world.

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