Category Archives: Syria

US forces targeted in broadest Iraq attacks since start of Israel-Hamas war

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Armed drones attack two airbases and explosive device targets patrol in most widespread strikes in a single day

US forces were targeted in three attacks in Iraq on Thursday but suffered no casualties, security sources have said, in the most geographically widespread series of strikes on US assets in a single day since the Israel-Hamas conflict started.

Spokespeople for the US embassy in Baghdad and US-led international forces stationed in Iraq did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Australia has no legal obligation to repatriate 31 women and children held in Syrian camp, court rules

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Most of the Australians have been held in the Roj detention camp in north-east Syria for four years

The federal government does not have a legal obligation to repatriate 31 Australian women and children who have been forcibly held in a Syrian detention camp for four years, a court has ruled.

The Australians are the wives, widows and children of slain or jailed Islamic State fighters. Most have been held in the squalid Roj detention camp in north-east Syria for four years. None have been charged with a crime or currently face a warrant for arrest.

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Israel-Hamas war live: women and children make up nearly 70% of people reported killed in Gaza, says UN

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UNRWA chief says ‘human tragedy unfolding under our watch is unbearable’; Netanyahu says ‘this is a time for war’ as he says no to ceasefire

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has urged Israel to “listen” when its friends ask it to protect innocent lives in Gaza and warned that the world “will not accept continuing civilian deaths”.

Wong’s comments reflect a strengthening of the Labor government’s calls for Israel to minimise civilian deaths in Gaza. The foreign minister said civilians on both sides had been “murdered” in the “dreadful, tragic conflict”.

“It is a dreadful, tragic conflict. We are seeing loss of life. We are seeing civilians on both sides [who] have been murdered,” Wong told Radio National.

“We have seen civilians up on both sides in a lot of pain, and obviously, we still have Israeli hostages who have been taken, that Hamas is still holding.”

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Why did the US launch airstrikes on Syria and what happens next?

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The war in Gaza risks developing into a wider conflict, but for now, the actions seem to be more about messaging between Washington and Tehran

Over the last 10 days, US military bases in eastern Syria and western Iraq have been hit by rockets and drones. There have been 22 such attacks, although details are sketchy and some may not have been counted. More than 20 US service personnel have been injured, though not seriously, and a civilian contractor died of cardiac arrest.

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Cold war satellite images reveal hundreds of unknown Roman forts

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Declassified spy images point to 396 undiscovered forts in Syria and Iraq, shifting understanding of Roman frontier

Declassified cold-war spy satellite images have thrown new light on the workings of the Roman empire by revealing hundreds of previously undiscovered forts, with dramatic implications for our understanding, experts have said.

Archeologists examining aerial photographs taken in the 1960s and 70s said they reveal 396 sites of unknown Roman forts in Syria and Iraq across the Syrian steppe.

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Shamima Begum a victim of trafficking when she left Britain for Syria, court told

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Lawyers argue Home Office failed to properly consider whether Begum had been groomed before stripping her of UK citizenship

Shamima Begum’s lawyers argued before the court of appeal on Tuesday that it was unlawful to deprive her of British citizenship because she was a victim of trafficking when she left the UK for Islamic State territory in Syria at 15.

Samantha Knights KC, her barrister, told the start of a three-day hearing that the Home Office and a lower court had failed to properly consider whether she was groomed – and called for the decision to be overturned.

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US shoots down Turkish drone flying near its troops in Syria

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Turkey’s defence ministry says the device did not belong to the country’s armed forces

The US has shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of its Nato ally.

A Turkish defence ministry official said the drone did not belong to the Turkish armed forces, but did not say whose property it was.

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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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