Category Archives: Syria

More than 100 dead in attack on Syrian military academy

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Civilians and military killed by drone-delivered bombs in Homs, shortly after defence minister left graduation ceremony

More than 100 people have been killed in an attack on a military academy in Syria, a war monitor and an official said, with weaponised drones bombing the site minutes after Syria’s defence minister left a graduation ceremony there.

It was one of the bloodiest attacks ever against a Syrian army installation, and unprecedented in its use of weaponised drones in a country that has endured 12 years of civil war.

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Celebrated Syrian author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa dies aged 59

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Khalifa was one of Syria’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, though his six novels were banned in the country

Syrian author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa, whose novels set in Aleppo memorialised a city ruined by civil war, has died aged 59.

The writer died from cardiac arrest at his home in Damascus, a close friend told the French news agency AFP.

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Deputy premier puts hand up for Victoria’s top job – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

Canterbury Road fire: firetrucks wetting down area

Supt Adam Dewberry with Fire and Rescue NSW has just provided us with an update on the factory fire on Canterbury Road in Sydney’s south-west.

Vacancy rates under 1% in most of these suburbs show the immense strain on housing availability. When you’re allocating nearly half your income on rent … the financial stress becomes unbearable.

Our index is more than just numbers; it’s a call to action. Policymakers and stakeholders need to acknowledge this growing crisis.

The relentless climb in rent and plummeting vacancy rates are not just statistics but indicators of a quality of life that is rapidly deteriorating for Australian renters.

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‘No arrangement’ to repatriate Australian women and children in Syrian camps, court hears

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Government maintains it has no effective control of the Australians’ detention despite official correspondence citing plans to bring them home

Australia has “no arrangement” to bring Australian women and children home from Syrian detention camps, the government has told the federal court, despite official correspondence citing a “plan to repatriate further groups of women and children”.

Save the Children Australia is acting as guardian for 11 Australian women and their 20 children – currently held in detention camps in north-east Syria.

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Australian women and children in squalid Syrian camp are being detained unlawfully, federal court told

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Save the Children, representing 12 women and their 21 children, argues the government has the power, and an obligation, to bring them home

Thirty-three Australian women and children forcibly held for four years in a Syrian detention camp have told the federal government to prove it cannot bring them home, or “bring their bodies to the court” in Australia.

In filings before the federal court, Save the Children Australia – representing 12 Australian women and their 21 children – has argued the Australians are being unlawfully detained, and their government has the power, and an obligation, to remove them and repatriate them to Australia.

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Three injured in Syria as shots reportedly fired at anti-Assad protesters

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Activists accuse ruling Ba’ath party of firing at demonstrators in southern city of Suwayda

Three people have been wounded by bullets that were sprayed at anti-government protesters in the southern Syrian city of Suwayda, activists and local journalists have said, in the first reported use of violence in weeks-long demonstrations there.

Activists, who have been taking to the streets to call for President Bashar al-Assad to step down over worsening living conditions, accused members of the ruling Ba’ath party of firing. Reuters could not independently confirm this.

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Syrian protests enter second week with calls for Assad to go

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Demonstrations have grown steadily throughout the south, centring around the province of Suwayda

A spate of protests and strikes across government-held areas in southern Syria have continued into their second week, with demonstrators increasingly unafraid to call for the removal of the president, Bashar al-Assad.

Protesters gathered in the southern city of Suwayda on Monday, closing provincial roads. The province of Suwayda has remained under government control since Syria’s 2011 uprising and is home to much of the country’s Druze minority.

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Israeli airstrikes force closure of Aleppo airport, Syrian state media reports

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Latest attack damages only working runway, forcing flights to be diverted to Damascus and Latakia

Israeli airstrikes on Aleppo airport in northern Syria have caused the grounding of flights, the Syrian state news agency Sana has reported, citing a military source.

During more than 12 years of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, as well as Syrian army positions.

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Anti-government protests shake Syrian provinces amid anger over economy

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Demonstrations against the Assad regime have taken hold in two southern provinces after the government ended fuel subsidies

Rare protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government continued on Friday, with demonstrations reported in a string of towns in Daraa and Sweida provinces.

The protests began late last week after the government ended fuel subsidies, dealing a heavy blow to Syrians reeling from years of war and economic crisis.

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UN aid deliveries to rebel-held area of Syria poised to resume

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The Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey will reopen to the UN for six months after negotiations with Assad’s government

The United Nations is poised to resume aid deliveries into north-western Syria, an area controlled by rebels, via a crossing that has been a lifeline for the region, after aid workers said Damascus appeared to loosen terms that had led to a hiatus.

Deliveries from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossing stopped in July when western powers and Russia, the Syrian government’s main ally, failed to agree on extending a UN security council mandate for the operation. Syria then gave unilateral approval – but on terms that the UN rejected as unacceptable.

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UK must stop funding detention of children in Syria, says David Davis

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Ex-cabinet minister calls on foreign secretary to reveal how many British minors are being held in camps

The UK must urgently end its policy of funding the illegal detention of children in north-east Syria, and disclose how many British minors are being held in camps run by Syrian Kurds on behalf of the west, the former cabinet minister David Davis has said in a letter to the foreign secretary, James Cleverly.

The letter comes after it was revealed that Yusuf Zahab, a 19-year-old Australian citizen locked up in Syria since he was 14 and presumed killed in a July 2022 Islamic State (IS) attack on a prison in the city of Hasakah, may be alive after all. A year-old video of him speaking and dated after the IS attack was released on Tuesday.

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Syrian man accused over 2013 massacre arrested in Germany

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Prosecutors say suspect led pro-regime paramilitaries who detained and tortured political opponents

A Syrian man accused of leading a pro-government militia in Tadamon, a Damascus neighbourhood that was the site of a massacre of civilians in 2013 filmed by its perpetrators and revealed by the Guardian last year, has been arrested in northern Germany.

The suspect, identified as Ahmad H in line with German privacy rules, is the first person to be detained in connection with crimes in Tadamon, where militia and soldiers loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, brutalised the local population – recording some of their acts – in the early years of the country’s civil war.

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Women’s health at risk from UK aid cuts, Foreign Office warned

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Thousands more women will be forced into unsafe abortions and die in pregnancy and childbirth, ministers told

Hundreds of thousands more women will face unsafe abortions and thousands will die in pregnancy and childbirth as a result of UK aid cuts in 2023-24, Foreign Office ministers were warned in an internal assessment.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) published its programme allocations for the next two years last month, showing that official development assistance (ODA) spend is due to rise marginally in 2023-24 and then increase by 12% in 2024-25 to £8.3bn.

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Australian teenager Yusuf Zahab ‘alive’ in Syrian prison months after reports he was killed in IS strike

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Family ‘overwhelmed with joy’ after video emerges of teenager, believed to be Zahab, looking healthy and speaking into a camera

An Australian teenager believed killed in an Islamic State airstrike in Syria more than a year ago is believed to have been found alive. His family say they are “overwhelmed with joy”.

Yusuf Zahab was just 11 when he was taken into Syria by his family nearly a decade ago: his older brothers were IS fighters and recruiters.

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‘Like a blowtorch’: Mediterranean gripped by wildfires as blazes spread in Croatia and Portugal

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‘There is no magical defence mechanism,’ says Greek prime minister as fires burn in northern Africa and southern Europe

Wildfires were burning in at least nine countries across the Mediterranean as blazes spread in Croatia and Portugal, with thousands of firefighters in Europe and north Africa working in extreme heat to contain flames stoked by high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds.

High temperatures and parched ground sparked wildfires in countries on both sides of the Mediterranean, with at least 34 people killed in Algeria, where 8,000 firefighters on Tuesday battled blazes across the tinder-dry north. Fires burned in a total of 15 provinces, leading to the evacuation of more than 1,500 people.

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Russian fighter jet fires flares at US drone in Syria

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Latest aggressive intercept by Russia in region sees drone damaged, a week after jet flew dangerously close to US aircraft

A Russian fighter jet flew within a few meters of a US drone over Syria and fired flares at it, striking the American aircraft and damaging it, the latest in a string of aggressive intercepts by Russia in the region.

A senior air force commander said the Russians attempted on Sunday to knock the MQ-9 Reaper drone out of the sky. It came just a week after a Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US surveillance aircraft carrying a crew in the region, jeopardizing the lives of the four Americans on board.

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UK must repatriate more nationals in Syria, says terrorism policy adviser

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Britain has been urged by UN to help young children in Syrian detention camps

The UK government must allow greater repatriation of British nationals held in Syria, recognising that circumstances have changed since 2017, according to Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.

He also predicted little security risk in allowing the return of Shamima Begum, who fled her east London home when she was 15 years old to join the Islamic State in Syria, because her notoriety is such that she is likely to apply for a lifelong anonymity order requiring daily contact with authorities. Begum was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019, a decision upheld by the supreme court.

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Russian veto on aid lifeline to Syria could bring ‘catastrophe’ for millions

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Fears rise that UN could be forced into compromise with Damascus to keep vital corridor open from Turkey to rebel-held Idlib

Aid groups and their backers at the United Nations are pushing to revive an aid corridor into rebel-held Syria after Russia vetoed the renewal of the cross-border lifeline that has been getting food and medicines into Syria for almost a decade.

Moscow has repeatedly attempted to stymie deliveries through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey into Idlib, a strip of land controlled by the de facto opposition known as the National Salvation government, which is linked to the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militant group. At least nine people were killed in a Russian airstrike on a vegetable market in rural Idlib last month.

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Syria reopens key aid corridor after Russian veto of UN deal

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British UN security council chair fears lack of monitoring will ‘hand control’ of aid to Assad

Syria will let humanitarian aid flow through its main border crossing into rebel-held areas, reopening a conduit that had closed after a stalemate on the United Nations security council, the country’s UN ambassador has said.

Damascus had made a “sovereign decision” to let aid move overland from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing in north-west Syria for six months starting on Thursday, ambassador Bassam Sabbagh told reporters.

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Cross-border aid to Syria blocked in ‘act of utter cruelty’ by Russia at UN vote

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Use of veto threatens operations on route from Turkey that supports millions of people in north-west

Russia has been accused of “an act of utter cruelty” after it used its veto at the UN security council to block a nine-month renewal of cross-border aid designed to help 4 million people living in rebel-held north-west Syria.

The vote throws into doubt the continued existence of the key aid route into Syria from Turkey, and represents another hammer blow to a population still reeling from the devastating earthquake that struck the region in February.

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