Category Archives: Syria

The Observer view on the smoking gun that should force Assad to face justice

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For the first time, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog has directly accused Syria’s leadership of ordering illegal attacks on its people

There is a temptation, to which some European governments and politicians are prey, to imagine that Syria’s civil war is over. It would, after all, be politically convenient if the millions of refugees languishing in Turkey and Jordan were to go home, rather than serve as a constant reminder of the EU’s chronic fear of migrants.

An end to the war would remove a prime cause of instability in the Levant and eastern Mediterranean region. Russia and Iran would have less excuse to play games of geopolitical chance with civilian lives. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s irascible president, would have less to complain about.

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‘After war we now have this’: Syrians grapple with poverty and coronavirus

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Collapse of economy leaves country unable to cope with prospect of a major outbreak

Kareem Zukari has endured a lot during the nine years of Syria’s war. There have been missiles and bullets, loved ones killed, and the fear of being conscripted into the army or tortured in Bashar al-Assad’s prisons. But no matter how bad things got, there was always food.

“Now there is so much poverty,” the 25-year-old from the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh said. “There are families living on $200 [£160] a month, but I don’t call that living. It’s barely managing to eat. And now with the coronavirus some businessmen are capitalising on the panic and raising prices.” He asked that his real name not be used for fear of repercussions.

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Syrian regime blamed for sarin gas attacks in landmark report

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Report by UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use is hailed by rights groups

The UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use has for the first time blamed the Syrian regime for using sarin gas on the battlefield in a report hailed by rights groups as a landmark moment with implications for war crimes investigations.

The report, released on Wednesday by the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), accuses the Syrian Air Force of twice using sarin to attack the town of Ltamenah in late March 2017. It also found that regime aircraft had bombed the same town with chlorine gas in the same week.

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UN inquiry stops short of directly blaming Russia over Idlib attacks

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Report says ‘government of Syria and/or its allies’ carried out strikes on hospitals and school

A UN investigation has stopped short of directly calling Russia a perpetrator in attacks on hospitals and other humanitarian infrastructure in rebel-held areas of Syria, a move greeted with disappointment from rights groups.

A summary of a 185-page internal report submitted to the UN security council on Monday said that in five of seven cases studied – among them four medical sites, a school and a children’s centre – “the government of Syria and/or its allies had carried out the airstrike”, but it did not explicitly name Russia, Bashar al-Assad’s most important military and political ally.

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OPCW report set to blame Syria chemical attacks on Bashar al-Assad

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Watchdog to release first report blaming president for attacks during the conflict

The UN’s chemical weapons watchdog is expected to release its first report explicitly blaming Bashar al-Assad for sarin and chlorine gas attacks on civilians in Syria as efforts to establish accountability for the use of chemical agents in the nine-year-old conflict gain momentum.

Observers anticipate that public and classified versions of a report by a new unit at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will be published on Wednesday, close to the anniversaries of a major chlorine attack on the then rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma that killed at least 85 people in 2018 as well as a deadly sarin attack on Khan Sheikhun in 2017 which killed at least 89. The report is believed to focus on 2017 attacks on the village of al-Lataminah.

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Australian children remain trapped in al-Hawl camp as region braces for coronavirus

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Fresh calls for Australia to repatriate its citizens amid fears the camp is vulnerable to a Covid-19 outbreak

Forty-seven Australian children remain trapped in the abject al-Hawl camp in north-east Syria, as the region braces for a potential Covid-19 outbreak.

Syria has reported only a handful of cases, and there are none confirmed in the camp housing 68,000 women and children, most of them family of Islamic State fighters, but there has been little Covid-19 testing across the war-torn country.

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EU court rules three member states broke law over refugee quotas

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Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland failed to comply with 2015 programme, ECJ says

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke European law when they failed to give refuge to asylum seekers arriving in southern Europe, often having fled war in Syria and Iraq, the EU’s top court has ruled.

The three central European countries now face possible fines for refusing to take a share of refugees, after EU leaders forced through mandatory quotas to relocate up to 160,000 asylum seekers at the height of the 2015 migration crisis.

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UK charity failed to safeguard aid worker killed in Syria – report

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Alan Henning, from Greater Manchester, was beheaded by Isis militant Jihadi John in 2014

A British charity that employed the murdered aid worker Alan Henning failed to properly safeguard him and other other volunteers on convoys to war-torn Syria, a government report has found.

Henning, 47, was beheaded by the Islamic State militant known as Jihadi John after being held captive for nine months in Syria along with other western hostages in 2014.

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Planting hope: the Syrian refugee who developed virus-resistant super-seeds

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Plant virologist Dr Safaa Kumari discovered seeds that could safeguard food security in the region – and risked her life to rescue them from Aleppo

The call came as she sat in her hotel room. “They gave us 10 minutes to pack up and leave,” Dr Safaa Kumari was told down a crackling phone line. Armed fighters had just seized her house in Aleppo and her family were on the run.

Kumari was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, preparing to present a conference. She immediately began organising a sprint back to Syria. Hidden in her sister’s house was a small but very valuable bundle that she was prepared to risk her life to recover.

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Islamic State prisoners escape from Syrian jail after militants riot

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Unconfirmed reports of deaths as inmates overwhelm SDF guards in city of Hasakah

Several members of Islamic State have escaped from prison after militants sparked a riot and seized control of part of a large jail in north-east Syria, Kurdish and US military sources have said.

Prisoners broke down walls and tore off internal doors during the unrest on Sunday night at Ghouiran prison in the city of Hasakah, overwhelming guards from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s Kurdish-led ground partner in the fight against Isis.

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Why the ‘ignored war’ in Libya will come to haunt a blinkered west

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Europe seems unconcerned by the chaos smouldering on its doorstep, as the five-year-old conflict becomes world’s main theatre of drone combat

The most recent ally of Khalifa Haftar, the general who has been attacking the Libyan capital Tripoli since April last year, is Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

This union was formalised last week with the opening of a “Libyan embassy” in Damascus. The alarming partnership has been forged almost completely without comment. What happens with Libya no longer seems to concern anyone. It’s as though the whole conflict has ceased to exist.

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UK’s air war against Isis ends after five years

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RAF has launched no attacks in Syria or Iraq since September, but controversy continues over civilian casuality numbers

Britain’s five-year air war against Isis has quietly come to an end, with official figures revealing no bombs have been dropped since September – yet the MoD still acknowledges only one civilian casualty in the entire conflict.

The data shows that over a period longer than the first world war, 4,215 bombs and missiles were launched from Reaper drones or RAF jets in Syria and Iraq, and a wide discrepancy has emerged between UK and US estimates of the number of civilians killed.

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Hounded by war, can Idlib’s desperate civilians outrun final assault?

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Accustomed to being exiles in their own land, many Syrians are resigned to the next cruel twist fate may deliver them

In the midst of a winter storm last month, Mahdi al-Beij pitched his tent on the edge of a graveyard, hoping to have finally outrun a war that had hounded him and his clan throughout the province of Idlib for six insufferable years.

Floodwaters pooled nearby and a biting cold swept across the plains as the family settled in; accustomed to being exiles in their own land, but exhausted by their fifth move under fire and resigned to the next cruel twist fate may deliver them. Even if that meant being buried where they sheltered.

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Refugees told ‘Europe is closed’ as tensions rise at Greece-Turkey border

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Teargas fired by both sides amid political standoff over people displaced by war in Syria

The EU has told migrants in Turkey that Europe’s doors are closedas Greek and Turkish police fired teargas at their shared border amid growing tensions over the plight of Syria’s refugees.

In a blunt message, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: “Don’t go to the border. The border is not open. If someone tells you that you can go because the border is open … that is not true.

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Turkey claims killing 21 Syrian troops in retaliation for death of two soldiers

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As Turkey-Russia ceasefire is agreed, Ankara says it acted after two of its troops were killed by Syrian government forces in Idlib

The Turkish military has killed 21 Syrian troops after two Turkish soldiers were killed in Idlib earlier, the state news agency reported on Friday, citing the Turkish defence ministry.

On Thursday, two soldiers were killed and three others were wounded after Syrian government forces opened fire in the north-western Syrian town of Idlib, the Turkish defence ministry said.

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Brawl erupts in Turkish parliament over military involvement in Syria – video

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A fight broke out in Turkey's parliament on Wednesday during tense discussions over the country's military involvement in north-west Syria. The clash started when Engin Özkoç of the opposition Republican People's party took the rostrum. During a news conference shortly before, Özkoç had called President Erdoğan 'dishonourable, ignoble, low and treacherous' and accused him of irresponsibility for sending troops into a conflict without air cover

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The humanitarian crisis in Turkey shines a light on Europe’s failures | Elif Shafak

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Turkey was once on course to join the EU. The desperate refugees trapped on its border reflect a broken relationship

To understand Europe, we need to look more carefully at its borders. Too often, the debates on the future of Europe focus on a few leading nations and overlook the periphery. Yet the fate of the continent is deeply and inevitably connected with what’s happening along its fringes. And there is no bordering country that has as complex and confusing a relationship with Europe as Turkey – it was, after all, the Ottoman empire that was first referred to as “the sick man of Europe”.

Related: Migration: EU praises Greece as 'shield' after Turkey opens border

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Putin and Erdoğan in last-ditch talks to secure Syria ceasefire

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Russian and Turkish leaders will try to hammer out yet another deal to stabilise Idlib

A summit between the leaders of Turkey and Russia on Thursday may be the last chance to work out a deal that avoids further calamity in north-west Syria.

Faced with increasing military losses in Idlib province and a potential wave of people fleeing the fighting, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is eager for a ceasefire – and Vladimir Putin is ready to bargain.

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Germany tweets to deter Syrian refugees, fearing ‘repeat of 2015’

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Government says it will support Greece as thousands of people arrive at Turkish border

The German government – anxious about the political consequences of a “repeat of 2015” – is tolerating Greece’s decision to suspend asylum claims at its borders and has launched a social media campaign to deter Syrian refugees from embarking on a journey to central Europe.

About 12,500 people are estimated to be waiting on the Turkish side of the Greek border after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said on Saturday that he would open his country’s borders for refugees fleeing the nine-year war in Syria to cross over into Europe.

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‘Now we don’t have to be afraid’: Syrian family who made it to safety in Turkey

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Turkish border with Syria remains closed to most but some have escaped horrors of Idlib

In a video shot by her father, three-year-old Salwa listens intently to the rumble of military hardware in the distance. “Is it a plane or a shell?” he asks as they sit together on the sofa. “Shell!” she shouts, giggling hysterically when it explodes.

Turning the sounds of airstrikes and shelling into a game is how Abdullah Mohammed, 32, protected his daughter from the trauma of Syria’s war. Last week the family made it to the safety of Antakya, just over the Turkish border. Dancing around her new home in a pink princess dress, for the first time in her life Salwa doesn’t have to listen to the sounds of the conflict.

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