Deadly fire in Iraq and Lebanon pursues Syria extradition deal
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The National
10 hours ago
- The National
Syria's top Christian leader calls for protection after meeting Al Shara
Syria's main Christian religious figure has appealed to President Ahmad Al Shara to take practical measures to protect the sect after violence against the Druze eroded minority support for the new regime, sources said on Sunday. Mr Al Shara met Yohanna Al Yazigi, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Syria, and "discussed the Church's role in consolidating and boosting the bonds of citizenship and national unity", official news agency Sana reported. Mr Yazigi has been critical of Mr Al Shara, a former member of Al Qaeda, whose Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) ousted former president Bashar Al Assad in December. It was the first meeting between the two since a suicide bombing killed 23 people at a church in a low-income area of Damascus in June. Mr Al Yazigi said the authorities bore responsibility for not protecting minorities and condolences sent by Mr Al Shara were not enough to assure the sect. Government forces have since launched an offensive to capture the mostly Druze governorate of Sweida from a defiant cleric, killing hundreds of people and drawing Israeli intervention. Maintaining Syria's hundreds of thousands of Christians is key to maintaining diplomatic ties with Washington, a process started when US President Donald Trump met Mr Al Shara in Riyadh in May. The Patriarch told the President that promises he has made to Western powers to protect Christians "need to be translated on the ground", according to a clergyman briefed on the meeting. "The message from the Patriarch was that the rhetoric must be matched by tactics and mechanisms to protect the Christians and integrate them in the new system," the source said. This includes readmitting Christians into the security apparatus and stopping perceived provocation against them, such as encroachment by HTS loyalists on Christian neighbourhoods. Since the removal of Assad family rule, new security personnel have all been drawn from the majority Sunni community. Some Christians, however, have been readmitted to administrative roles. An 11-day HTS-led offensive at the tail end of last year has all but ended 14 years of civil war, in which many Christians and other minorities supported the Assad regime against Sunni rebels. However, sectarian attacks have continued, claiming victims from the country's Alawite minority, the bulk of whom were killed in March and more recently the Druze community of Sweida. A Christian politician said an ongoing siege by the army and militias allied with the government on Sweida has unsettled the Christians. "Al Shara has shown that he can be practical and back off," he said. "But he has not shown that he can contain his core constituency, which is ultimately militant, and this scares the Christians." In 2010, a year before the uprising against Mr Al Assad, Syria had about 850,000 Christians, forming about 4.5 per cent of the population. Late in 2011, the civil war broke out, broadly pitting Mr Al Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, against the Sunni Muslim majority.
The National
11 hours ago
- The National
Iraq begins long-awaited excavation of largest ISIS-era mass grave
Authorities in Iraq on Sunday began exhuming bodies from a vast natural sinkhole south of Mosul that is believed to have been turned into the country's largest mass grave by ISIS. The Governor of Nineveh, Abdul Qadir Al Dakhil, announced the start of the first phase of the excavation of Al Khasfa cemetery, which lies in a remote area about 20km outside Mosul. The provincial government will work to build a memorial to commemorate the victims, Mr Abdul Qadir said. Senior judicial officials oversaw the operations, marking a long-delayed step to recover the remains of thousands of people believed to have been executed and dumped into the pit during ISIS control of the city between 2014 and 2017. A forensics team – clad in white protective suits, gloves and masks – carefully began digging at the site. They methodically brushed away dirt and debris, documenting every step of the process. Nearby, some remains were covered with plastic sheets. For now, authorities say the immediate task is to recover and identify the dead in the surrounding area. Forensic experts are expected to begin DNA testing once remains are retrieved. The first phase focuses on the area surrounding the sinkhole with surface-level excavation, cleaning up, and the preservation of evidence, the General Director of Mass Graves Department at the Martyrs Foundation Dhiya Al Saiedi said. All remains that will be exhumed will be handed over to the Forensic Medicine Department for final examination, Mr Al Saiedi added in a statement. Human Rights Watch first identified Al Khasfa in 2017, reporting that ISIS fighters turned the natural sinkhole into a killing field where they disposed of potentially thousands of victims. Later investigations by Iraqi and international groups described it as the largest mass grave linked to ISIS. A UN-backed survey in 2018 recorded more than 200 ISIS-era mass graves across Iraq, many in and around Mosul, with an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 bodies buried. For years, families of the missing have pressed the government to open Al Khasfa, but technical challenges, security concerns and funding delays stalled efforts. In March, Nineveh authorities announced that they had secured money and logistical support to begin the dig, describing Al Khasfa as a "priority case' for the courts and forensics teams. The excavation comes against the backdrop of Iraq winding down international support for war crimes investigations. The UN's investigative team for ISIS crimes, Unitad, ended its mandate in 2024 after Baghdad declined to renew it. Rights groups have since urged Iraq to ensure evidence recovery and prosecutions continue without international oversight. ISIS overran large parts of Iraq and Syria, in the summer of 2014, declaring a caliphate that spanned areas of both countries. During that time, the extremists led a campaign of widespread and systematic violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Three years later, Iraqi forces, backed by a US-led international coalition, reclaimed all ISIS-held territory across the country after gruelling fighting that left thousands dead and large areas in ruin. Hundreds of mass graves have since been discovered in various parts of Iraq, mainly around the Yazidi minority hometown of Sinjar, in the north-west. In August 2014, ISIS fighters captured Sinjar and the surrounding villages, taking thousands of Yazidis captive and killing others.
Khaleej Times
15 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Iraq starts work on Daesh mass grave thought to contain thousands
Iraqi authorities have begun excavating the site of a mass grave believed to contain thousands of victims of the Daesh group near Mosul city, the project's director told AFP on Sunday. The first phase, which was launched on August 10, includes surface-level excavation at the Khasfa site, director Ahmed Al Assadi said. An AFP correspondent visiting the site in northern Iraq on Sunday said the team unearthed human skulls buried in the sand. Khasfa is located near Mosul, where Daesh had established the capital of their self-declared "caliphate" before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017. Assadi said that there were no precise figures for the numbers of victims buried there — one of dozens of mass graves IDaesh left behind in Iraq — but a UN report from 2018 said Khasfa was likely the country's largest. Official estimates put the number of bodies buried at the site at at least 4,000, with the possibility of thousands more. The project director said the victims buried there include "soldiers executed by IS", members of the Yazidi minority and residents of Mosul. Exhuming the bodies from Khasfa is particularly difficult, Assadi said, as underground sulphur water makes the earth very porous. The water may have also eroded the human remains, complicating DNA identification of victims, he added. Assadi said further studies will be required before his team can dig deeper and exhume bodies at the site -- a sinkhole about 150-metre (nearly 500-foot) deep and 110-metre wide. Iraqi authorities said it was the site of "one of the worst massacres" committed by Daesh militants, executing 280 in a single day in 2016, many of them interior ministry employees. In a lightning advance that began in 2014, IDaesh had seized large swathes Iraq and neighbouring Syria, enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law and committing widespread abuses. The United Nations estimates the militants left behind more than 200 mass graves which might contain as many as 12,000 bodies. In addition to Daesh-era mass graves, Iraqi authorities continue to unearth such sites dating to the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2003.
