The rise, fall and contested future of Hizbullah
On the night the Middle East changed, Abdulrazaq al-Masri was at home with his wife and children in the Syrian town of Qusayr, glued to social media. It was December 7th 2024, and his Twitter feed was full of astonishing rumours. Rebels were said to be advancing on Damascus; the president, Bashar al-Assad, had supposedly fled the country. Masri glanced out of his window – it was eerily quiet. Just after midnight, he decided to venture outside to see what was happening. The Assad dynasty was indeed falling that night, but Masri was about to witness the crumbling of a different regime.
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NBC News
a day ago
- NBC News
Ukraine's massive drone attack deep inside Russia highlights how they have changed battlefield tactics
Dubbed operation 'Spiderweb,' Ukraine's audacious drone attack Sunday on four Russian air bases — one of them deep inside Siberia — has brought the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in modern warfare sharply into focus. While accounts differ on the extent of the damage caused by the drones, which were reportedly smuggled to the perimeter of the bases in the backs of trucks, Ukraine's security service, the SBU, put the estimated cost to the Kremlin at $7 billion. Russia has said little about the attacks, although the country's defense ministry acknowledged in a statement that some planes caught fire. The strikes have highlighted the increasing importance of drones for both Russia and Ukraine in the war, which entered its fourth year in February. And experts told NBC News that both sides are increasingly turning to cheap, commercially available first-person view or quadcopter drones that can often be purchased from online retailers and easily converted into deadly weapons — simple technology that is having a huge impact on the battlefield in Ukraine and further afield. Their use is 'going to become very, very common,' Robert Lee, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute think tank, told NBC News in an interview. Drones were used when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime was overthrown in December, he said. 'They're here and because they're ubiquitous, because they are quite useful and they're demonstrating that every day in Ukraine,' he said. 'There's no doubt that they're going to be used by all sorts of groups, whether it's criminal groups or terrorist groups, and they pose a quite significant threat,' he said, adding, 'I think we're a little bit behind the power curve on this and actually getting ready to counter them.' Targeting civilians As she was riding her bicycle to a cosmetology appointment in Antonivka, a rural community in Ukraine's southern Kherson region, Anastasia Pavlenko, 23, said she noticed a drone 'hunting' her. 'It took off, followed me and I zigzagged on the bike,' the mother of two said of the September attack, adding that a second drone suddenly appeared with 'a shell attached to it.' Despite her best attempts to escape, she said the second drone dropped the shell 'right on my head' and it bounced down onto her thigh and exploded on the asphalt next to her. 'Blood was coming from my neck, and there were fragments under my ribs,' Pavlenko said, adding she somehow managed to keep cycling and take cover under a bridge where she screamed for help until she started to lose consciousness. 'I just had a small purse, shorts, a T-shirt and long loose hair, so it was clear that I was a girl,' she said, adding that she was not wearing military colors or carrying any weapons when she was hit. Doctors were unable to remove shrapnel fragments from her neck, ribs, or leg, she said, adding she had been unable to return to work at her coffee shop because she 'can't handle physical stress.'
Reuters
a day ago
- Reuters
Syrian man handed life sentence in Germany for war crimes
BERLIN, June 3 (Reuters) - A German court sentenced a Syrian man to life in prison on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes it said he had committed as a leading member of a Hezbollah-backed militia during Syria's civil war. The Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart found the 33-year-old man guilty of leading a militia that carried out brutal attacks on Sunni Muslim civilians in his home town of Busra al-Sham in southern Syria. It did not name the man. In 2013 the militia beat three people with Kalashnikovs and handed them over to the military intelligence of Syria's then-president Bashar al-Assad, which tortured them and kept them in appalling conditions, the court found. In a 2014 raid, the group also forced a 40-year-old man and his family from their home. The man was tortured and later found on the street unable to walk due to his injuries, the court verdict said. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Iranian-backed Shi'ite group, played a major role propping up Assad during the civil war in Syria. German prosecutors have used universal jurisdiction laws that allow them to seek trials for suspects in crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world. Based on these laws, several people suspected of war crimes during the Syrian conflict have been arrested in the last few years in Germany, which is home to almost one million Syrians. In a landmark case in 2022 a German court jailed Syrian ex-intelligence officer Anwar Raslan for life for murder, rape and crimes against humanity, in the first ever conviction for state-backed torture committed during Syria's civil war. In January this year, a high-ranking member of the Islamic State militant group, a Syrian national identified as Ossama A., was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Germany, partly for alleged involvement in a genocide against the minority Yazidi community. The trial of the man sentenced on Tuesday began last October and lasted for 42 court days. It included 30 witnesses, most of whom were Syrian nationals now living around the world, testifying over multiple sessions. The court also consulted expert witnesses and reviewed extensive image and video evidence, some of which was made available after Assad's fall from power last December, including images of detention facilities and looted homes. The court said the verdict could be appealed.
NBC News
2 days ago
- NBC News
The Netherlands' government collapses as far-right leader Wilders quits coalition
Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders' PVV party left the governing coalition Tuesday, in a move that is set to topple the right wing government and will likely lead to new elections. Wilders said his coalition partners were not willing to support his ideas on halting asylum migration. 'No signature under our asylum plans. The PVV leaves the coalition,' Wilders said in a post on X. Wilders said he had informed Prime Minister Dick Schoof that all ministers from his PVV party would quit the government. Schoof has not yet reacted to the resignation. Wilders' surprise move ends an already fragile coalition which has struggled to reach any consensus since its installation last July. It will likely bring new elections in a few months, adding to political uncertainty in the euro zone's fifth-largest economy. It will likely also delay a decision on a possibly historic increase in defense spending to meet new NATO targets. And it will leave the Netherlands with only a caretaker government when it receives NATO country leaders for a summit to decide on these targets in The Hague later this month. Wilders' coalition partners responded with disbelief and anger. 'This is making us look like a fool,' the leader of the conservative VVD party Dilan Yesilgoz said. 'There is a war on our continent. Instead of meeting the challenge, Wilders is showing he is not willing to take responsibility.' 'This is incredible,' leader of the centrist NSC party Nicolien van Vroonhoven said. 'It is irresponsible to take down the government at this point.' With PVV out, the others parties have the theoretical option to try and proceed as a minority government. They are not expected to, and have yet to confirm it. Wilders won the most recent election in the Netherlands, but recent polls show he has lost support since joining government. Polls now put his party at around 20% of the votes, roughly at par with the Labour/Green combination that is currently the second-largest in parliament. Wilders had last week demanded immediate support for his proposals to completely halt asylum migration, send Syrian refugees back to their home country and to close asylum shelters. Coalition partners did not embrace his idea, and had said it was up to the migration minister from Wilders' own party to work on specific proposals. Wilders was not part of the government himself as its leader or a minister. He was convicted for discrimination after he insulted Moroccans at a campaign rally in 2014 and only managed to strike a coalition deal with three other conservative parties last year after he gave up his bid to become prime minister. Instead, the cabinet was led by the independent and unelected Schoof, a career bureaucrat who had led the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD and was the senior official at the ministry of justice.
