Assad and family reportedly in Moscow after Russia grants asylum; Israel watches Syria after 'historic' government collapse

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his family had arrived in Russia and had been granted asylum by the Russian authorities, Russian news agencies reported on Sunday, citing a Kremlin source.

Israeli shelling hit a hospital in northern Gaza, wounding several people, damaging equipment and disrupting surgeries, said Palestinian health officials on Sunday, but Israel’s military denied carrying out strikes in the area.

Israel watching Syria closely after ‘historic’ fall of Assad

Israel has watched the rapid overthrow of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with a mixture of hope and concern as officials weigh the consequences of one of the most significant strategic shifts in the Middle East in years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the ousting of Assad as a “historic day” that followed the blows delivered by Israel against Assad’s supporters Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon that had created a chain reaction throughout the region.

“This of course creates new, very important opportunities for the State of Israel. But it is also not without risks,” he said on a visit to the border area on Sunday.

Israel has pushed tanks over the border into the buffer zone with Syria to prevent a spillover from the turmoil there, but has declared its intention to stay out of the conflict engulfing its neighbour.

Netanyahu said Israel was working on a policy of “good neighbourliness” and would “extend a hand of peace” to Druze, Kurds, Christians and Muslims.

“We will closely follow developments. We will do what is necessary to protect our border and protect our security,” he said in a filmed statement.

The lightning advance of Syrian rebel forces since their seizure of Aleppo last week has thrown further turmoil into a region already reeling from the shocks of the war in Gaza and Israel’s subsequent campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

“At the moment, if we aren’t attacked we will just retain the current situation,” Israel’s consul-general in New York, Ofir Akunis, told Reuters.

Overnight, the Israeli military said it was not interfering with internal events in Syria but would “operate as long as necessary in order to preserve the buffer zone and defend Israel and its civilians”.

The rapid collapse of the Syrian government has presented Israel with a mix of problems and opportunity, said Dina Lisnyansky, a specialist in regional politics at Tel Aviv University.

Iran’s inability to protect its long-time ally Assad has underlined the weakness laid bare by Israel’s devastating campaign against Hezbollah, which left the long-time Iranian proxy reeling, its long-feared missile arsenal largely destroyed and most of its top leadership dead.

But the advance of a disparate group of rebel forces with roots in the Islamist ideology of Al Qaeda risks re-igniting chaos in Syria and creating a new security threat on Israel’s borders.

“It really depends on what happens next in Syria,” said Lisnyansky. “We need to know if it goes to the peaceful side of events or perhaps whether a new civil war could occur in Syria, which would of course endanger our borders,” she said.

Assad and his family are in Moscow, say Russian news agencies

Syria's Bashar al-Assad and his family had arrived in Russia and had been granted asylum by the Russian authorities, Russian news agencies reported on Sunday, citing a Kremlin source.

The Interfax news agency quoted the unnamed source as saying: “President Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them [him and his family] asylum on humanitarian grounds.”

Doctors say Israeli shells hit Gaza hospital, Israel denies strike

Israeli shelling hit a hospital in northern Gaza, wounding several people, damaging equipment and disrupting surgeries, said Palestinian health officials on Sunday, but Israel’s military denied carrying out strikes in the area.

Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the town of Beit Lahiya — one of only three barely operational on the northern edge of the enclave — said the facility was struck by about 100 tank shells and bombs late on Saturday.

“The situation is extremely dangerous. We have patients in the intensive care unit and others awaiting surgeries. Access to the operating rooms is only possible after restoring electricity and oxygen supply,” said Abu Safiya.

The hospital is currently treating 112 wounded people, including six in the intensive care unit, he said.

Israel’s military said it had conducted a review and found that its forces had not struck in the vicinity of the hospital or damaged any of its essential equipment.

“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is in continuous coordination with hospital officials to provide humanitarian assistance to the hospital and maintain a consistent liaison,” said the military.

The health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza said a doctor was killed with his family in an Israeli airstrike near the hospital on Saturday night.

Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses on Sunday in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October.

Later in the day, an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the heart of Gaza City, taking the number of people killed in separate military strikes across the enclave to 11, said medics.

Palestinians say Israel’s operations on the northern edge of the enclave are part of a plan to clear people out through forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone. The Israeli military denies this, saying it is fighting Hamas.

The war in Gaza has been raging for over 14 months, with much of the enclave laid to waste and more than 44,000 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza health authorities, as Israeli forces continue their drive to wipe out Hamas and rescue hostages taken by the militant group.

The deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence in decades began when Hamas stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Iran says only Syrians can decide on their country’s fate

Syria’s fate was the sole responsibility of the Syrian people and should be pursued without foreign imposition or intervention, said Iran’s foreign ministry on Sunday, after Tehran’s ally Bashar al-Assad was toppled by rebels.

Iran spent billions of dollars propping up Assad during the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011 and deployed its Revolutionary Guards to Syria to keep its ally in power to maintain Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” to Israel and US influence in the Middle East.

Following Assad’s fall from power, Iran’s foreign ministry called for a national dialogue to form an inclusive government representing all segments of Syrian society.

“We will spare no effort to help establish security and stability in Syria, and to this end, we will continue consultations with all influential parties, especially in the region,” added the foreign ministry.

The foreign ministry said it expected ties between Tehran and Damascus to continue based on the two countries’ “far-sighted and wise approach”.

Tehran’s ties to Damascus had allowed Iran to spread its influence through a land corridor from its western border via Iraq all the way to Lebanon to bring supplies to Hezbollah.

Iranian state TV reported that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which spearheaded the rebel advances across western Syria, had guaranteed that the sanctity of Shi’ite shrines in Syria would be preserved.

Hamas releases video claiming to show living hostage

Hamas released a video claiming to show Israeli hostage Matan Zangauker in captivity on Saturday.

In the video a man who introduces himself as Matan Zangauker (24) can be seen pleading with the Israeli leaders to make a deal that would bring captives being held by Hamas in Gaza back to Israel.

Mediating countries, including Qatar, see increased momentum for a possible deal that could allow the 100 hostages being held in Gaza to be released in exchange for scores of Palestinian prisoners, after Israel signed a landmark ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon last month.

Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has travelled to Qatar and Israel to try to kickstart the US president-elect’s diplomatic push for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal before he takes office on 20 January, a source briefed on the talks told Reuters.

Hamas has released several videos of hostages begging to be released over the course of the war as it enters its fifteenth month, but Israeli officials have dismissed the short, edited clips as psychological propaganda meant to put pressure on the government.

Syria not out of the woods yet, says UAE official

Syria was not out of the woods yet and extremism and terrorism remained a main concern, said the United Arab Emirates diplomatic adviser to the president on Sunday, adding that he did not know whether or not Bashar al-Assad was in the UAE.

“I don’t know,” Anwar Gargash told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Security dialogue in Bahrain when asked if Assad was in the UAE.

Syrian rebels said on Sunday they had ousted Assad, eliminating a 50-year family dynasty in a lightning offensive that raised fears of a new wave of instability in a Middle East gripped by war.

Gargash blamed Assad’s downfall on a failure of politics and said he had not used the “lifeline” offered to him by various Arab countries before, including the UAE.

“We’re very worried about chaos. We’re very worried about extremism. We remain worried about the territorial integrity of Syria,” said Gargash, adding that recent events created a moment to connect and speak with Iran about what comes next.

“We don’t know about the shape of developments in Syria. Is this going to be a sort of wiser group that will be able to actually transcend … Syria’s tortured history, or are we going to go back into a reincarnation of radical and terrorist organisations playing a major role?”

Israeli strikes on southern Lebanese villages kill six

Israeli strikes on two southern Lebanese villages killed six people and wounded five, said the Lebanese health ministry on Saturday, in the latest potential challenge to a fragile ceasefire that has been in place for less than two weeks.

Five people were killed in an attack on Beit Lif village while one person was killed in a drone strike on Deir Seryan, said the health ministry.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the incidents.

Tensions have persisted despite the ceasefire, with Israel and the Lebanese armed faction Hezbollah trading accusations of violations. Earlier this week, Israel threatened to return to war if its truce with Hezbollah collapsed. DM

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