
Clashes in Syria ‘have killed 1,200 and triggered humanitarian crisis'
Syria
between Druze and Bedouin factions and assaults on civilians in the country's southern Sweida province have killed 1,200 and displaced at least 93,000 people, according to the
United Nations
.
The violence, exacerbated by Syrian government intervention and
Israeli
air strikes, has triggered a humanitarian crisis,
Human Rights Watch
(HRW) said on Tuesday, with widespread disruption to electricity, water and healthcare.
A Sweida city resident said: 'All our food spoiled, we had to throw it out. We're showering in our own sweat. I scraped mould off a carton of yoghurt and fed it to my children. What we need most now is water and electricity.'
While communities in Sweida are suffering, 'political obstacles and deep mistrust are holding up humanitarian aid', HRW deputy Middle East director Adam Coogle said.
READ MORE
'No matter who controls the territory, humanitarian assistance needs to be allowed in immediately and without interference.'
HRW said: 'Most hospitals are out of service due to physical damage, staff shortages, roadblocks and fuel and supply disruptions.'
Displaced families face 'growing public health risks, including reports of unburied bodies in residential areas', it said.
Conditions at the national hospital in Sweda were 'catastrophic', witnesses told HRW. It cited a local journalist who 'saw many corpses in the hospital and morgue, including children and entire families'.
HRW said that 'armed groups and civilians have been transporting the dead and wounded in private vehicles, while volunteers have documented fatalities'.
This round of v
iolence began on July 12th with heavy fighting between militias
'aligned with Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, a spiritual leader of Sweida's Druze community, and pro-government Bedouin fighters', HRW said.
After Syrian interior and defence ministry units imposed curfews on July 14th and attempted to restore order, 'residents reported looting, home burning, sectarian abuse and summary executions, including of women and children', HRW said. 'Bedouin armed groups and Druze militias have also been implicated in serious abuses.'
When the first Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) convoy entered Sweida on Sunday, the health ministry spokesman said Hijri had barred accompanying government representatives.
The SARC reported on that day assaults on its volunteers, torching of a warehouse, and firing on an ambulance, HRW said. A second, independent SARC convoy was expected on Tuesday.
UN agencies, international humanitarian groups, diplomats and foreign journalists had been barred from entering Sweida, HRW said.
Separately, a Syrian fact-finding committee said on Tuesday that 1,426 people died in March in attacks on security forces and subsequent mass killings of Alawites, but it also said commanders had not given orders for the revenge attacks.
Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa has struggle to stabilise and unify the fragile state eight months after he led a rebel offensive that toppled dictator
Bashar al-Assad's
. regime.
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Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
Bracing for a trade war: the Irish whiskey, cheese and sweet makers sweating Trump's tariff plans
Depending on who you talk to, a trade deal between the European Union and the United States has essentially been agreed or negotiations are on the brink of collapse. The latter outcome could precipitate a nasty and damaging trade war between the two massive economies. The benign scenario, on the other hand, is likely to be greeted by many Irish exporters not with relief but weary resignation. Developments over recent days point not to the 30 per cent tariffs Trump threatened the EU with two weeks ago, but a still painful 15 per cent flat rate for most EU goods entering the US. The agreement Trump's administration struck with Japan last week, will lead to a general 15 per cent tariff applied to Japanese imports. This was secured after the US president had threatened the country with a 25 per cent rate. 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Irish Times
21 hours ago
- Irish Times
Israeli gunfire and strikes kill 42 in Gaza as many of the dead sought aid
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Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Words like ‘humanitarian' have lost all meaning. Let the images speak instead
Chapin Fay is the spokesperson for an organisation called – in one of the many grossly Orwellian inversions of language and meaning we have come to associate with the Israeli war on Gaza – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. An American operation based in Delaware and backed by Israel , GHF – which has no experience in humanitarian aid distribution – has been entirely responsible for it in Gaza since May. The United Nations and major aid groups have refused to co-operate with GHF because they say it prioritises Israeli military objectives over the safe delivery of aid. As such, until a ceasefire holds and the safe flow of aid resumes, GHF has been the only thing standing between 90,000 already seriously malnourished women and children and imminent death by starvation. According to his online biography, Fay is 'one of the best media strategists and Republican operatives in the state' and a 'crisis management expert with a track record of helping Fortune 500 companies'. He is also now the public face of the group operating what has been called by the head of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), ' sadistic death traps ', food hubs staffed by US mercenaries and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). These hubs, which are located in areas Palestinians have been ordered to leave, typically open for an average of 11 minutes at a time, according to a powerful Guardian investigation . As desperate Palestinians, who have trekked long distances and waited many hours, rush towards unattended packages of flour, they risk being shot by the IDF. Since May, more than 1,000 people have reportedly died in the scramble for food from the centres, according to Unrwa. READ MORE During the masterclass in Orwellian Newspeak he delivered at a briefing this week, Fay shrugged this off. 'Civilians are being killed all over the Strip,' he said. But then he went on: 'By Hamas, the IDF and other armed groups. But I'd like to point out that actually, the most violent incidents, the highest casualties have been linked to the UN or other humanitarian convoys. That's a fact.' [ Doctors report wave of hunger deaths in Gaza as US envoy arrives to 'push for ceasefire' Opens in new window ] As words like 'fact' and 'humanitarian' have lost all meaning – have been so violently divorced from their normal use as to now infer precisely the opposite – we may need to start inventing new ones. Like inhumanitarian. Binyamin Netanyahu wants to ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza, removing survivors to an inhumanitarian city. US president Donald Trump wants to create an inhumanitarian transit area . Or we can take the approach of Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, and use the names we already have for these kind of places: concentration camps . Whatever words we use, none can occlude the reality of what is happening in Gaza. No words can adequately capture it either. Language has been so debased that maybe we should abandon it altogether and allow the images to speak instead. One such photograph was published on the front of this newspaper on Wednesday. Taken by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-Arni, it shows a woman dressed in mauve robes with a stained white headscarf knotted under her chin. Only the lower half of her face is visible. The serene set of her mouth belies the unspeakable horror of what she has seen, and what she wants us to see. Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a one-and-a-half-year-old child, in Gaza city this week. Photograph: Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu/Getty A little boy of 18 months, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, clings to her. Her hand is tenderly cradling the back of his head. Instead of a nappy, he is wearing a black bin liner. The outline of his vertebral column, his shoulder blades and his rib cage protrude under his dry, papery skin. 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Fay recommends we don't believe the ministry, because it is run by Hamas. Who, then, do we believe? Who does the EU choose to believe? Whose words will be enough for the United Nations Security Council to intervene? What about the evidence of researchers from University of London, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Princeton, Stanford, Peace Research Institute Oslo and Université Catholique de Louvain and the first independent study of the number of people killed as a result of Israel's military campaign in Gaza? The study was based on household surveys and found that at least 75,200 Palestinians were killed between October 2023 and January 2025. Another 8,540 died due to starvation, disease and the collapse of healthcare systems. The researchers say the Gaza health ministry's figures are, in fact, far too conservative. Do we believe the AFP when it warns that the 10 freelance journalists it has left in Gaza face death by starvation? Do we believe the 109 aid organisations that wrote a letter this week begging Israel to end the blockade? Do we believe the evidence of our own eyes? Or do we believe the Newspeak of Chapin Fay, of Binyamin Netanyahu's government and of Donald Trump, when they insist that freedom is slavery, that concentration camps are humanitarian cities, and that the babies starving to death in front of us are Hamas propaganda?