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WHO chief calls for end to hospital attacks in Gaza; Syria appoints some foreign Islamist fighters to military - sources

WHO chief calls for end to hospital attacks in Gaza; Syria appoints some foreign Islamist fighters to military - sources
Reuters
By Reuters
30 Dec 2024
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The head of the World Health Organization on Monday called for an end to attacks on hospitals in Gaza after Israel struck one and raided another in the past few days.

Syria's new rulers have installed some foreign fighters including Uyghurs, a Jordanian and a Turk in the country's armed forces as Damascus tries to shape a patchwork of rebel groups into a professional military, two Syrian sources said.

Yahya Al-Batran woke up in the early hours of Sunday morning to find his wife, Noura, trying to wake their newborn twin sons Jumaa and Ali as they lay together in the makeshift tent the family occupied in an encampment in the central Gaza Strip.

WHO chief calls for end to hospital attacks in Gaza


The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday called for an end to attacks on hospitals in Gaza after Israel struck one and raided another in the past few days.

"Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

"We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!" he added.

The Israeli military said Hamas militants were the targets of a strike on Gaza City's Al Wafa hospital on Sunday, which the Palestinian civil defence said killed seven people.

Israeli forces also detained more than 240 Palestinians including dozens of medical staff from Kamal Adwan hospital on Friday, among them its director Hussam Abu Safiya, according to health authorities in the enclave and Israel's military.

The Israeli military said the hospital was being used as a command centre for Hamas military operations and those arrested were suspected militants. It said Abu Safiya was taken for questioning as he was suspected of being a Hamas operative.

Tedros, who last week was caught up in an Israeli strike against Yemen's main airport that he said might have cost him his life, called for Abu Safiya's immediate release and said the Al-Ahli hospital had also faced attacks.

Tedros said the WHO and partners had delivered basic medical supplies, food and water to Gaza's Indonesian hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to Al Shifa hospital. Four patients were detained during the transfer, he said.

"We urge Israel to ensure their health care needs and rights are upheld," Tedros said.

At least 45,514 Palestinians have been killed and 108,189 wounded in Israel's military offensive in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Syria appoints some foreign Islamist fighters to its military - sources 


Syria's new rulers have installed some foreign fighters including Uyghurs, a Jordanian and a Turk in the country's armed forces as Damascus tries to shape a patchwork of rebel groups into a professional military, two Syrian sources said.

The move to give official roles, including senior ones, to several jihadists may alarm some foreign governments and Syrian citizens fearful about the new administration's intentions, despite its pledges not to export Islamic revolution and to rule with tolerance towards Syria's large minority groups.

A Syrian government spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment on the thinking behind the appointments.

The sources said that out of a total of almost 50 military roles announced by the Defence Ministry on Sunday, at least six had gone to foreigners.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the nationalities of the individuals appointed.

Thousands of Sunni Muslim foreigners joined Syria's rebels early in the 13-year civil war to fight against the rule of Bashar al-Assad and the Iran-backed Shi'ite militias who supported him, giving the conflict a sectarian overtone.

Some foreign fighters formed their own armed groups while others joined established formations such as Islamic State as it rampaged across Iraq and Syria, briefly declaring a so-called caliphate before being routed by U.S. and Iran-backed forces.

Other groups of foreign jihadists joined HTS, which disavowed previous links to al Qaeda and Islamic State and fought bloody battles against them before going on to spearhead the lightning advance that toppled Assad on December 8.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the HTS-leader-turned de facto ruler of Syria, has purged dozens of foreign jihadi fighters as part of a campaign to Syrianise and moderate his group.

In remarks broadcast on Sunday, Sharaa said the new Syria "cannot be run by the mentality of groups and militias".

Syria's new rulers, drawn mainly from HTS, have indicated that foreign fighters and their families may be given Syrian citizenship and be allowed to stay in the country because of their contributions to the fight against Assad.

The Defence Ministry on Sunday announced 49 appointments to the army that included leaders of key Syrian armed factions.

Among them were several foreign fighters, three given the rank of brigadier-general and at least three others the rank of colonel, a Syrian military source said.

"This is a small token of recognition for the sacrifices Islamist jihadists gave to our struggle for freedom from Assad's oppression," an HTS source told Reuters.

Chinese Uyghur militant Abdulaziz Dawood Khudaberdi, also known as Zahid and the commander of the separatist Turkistan Islamic Party's (TIP) forces in Syria, was appointed a brigadier-general, a TIP statement said and the Syrian military source confirmed.

Two other Uyghur fighters, Mawlan Tarsoun Abdussamad and Abdulsalam Yasin Ahmad, were given the rank of colonel, said the TIP statement published on its website, congratulating them and the Uyghur community on the appointments.

All the names appear in Sunday's Defence Ministry announcement, though the nationalities are not included.

The TIP is thought to have hundreds of fighters in Syria and aims to establish an Islamic State in parts of China and central Asia, where there is a large Uyghur Muslim population.

Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority that numbers around 10 million in the western region of Xinjiang, including the mass use of forced labour in camps. Beijing denies any abuses.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese foreign ministry.

China labels the TIP a terrorist organisation responsible for plots to attack overseas Chinese targets. Beijing has said TIP "gravely threatens" China's interests and security overseas and that combating the group was China's "core concern" in its counter-terrorism effort.

Turkish citizen Omar Mohammed Jaftashi and Jordanian citizen Abdul Rahman Hussein al-Khatib were also made brigadier-generals, the Syrian military source and the HTS source said.

Abdul Jashari, an ethnically Albanian fighter also known as Abu Qatada al-Albani, was appointed colonel, the military source said.

Jashari head the Albanian jihadist group Xhemati Alban and was designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury in 2016.

Egyptian Alaa Mohammed Abdel-Baqi was also given a military rank, the source said.

Egypt's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Displaced Gaza newborn twin freezes to death as rain floods tents


Yahya Al-Batran woke up in the early hours of Sunday morning to find his wife, Noura, trying to wake their newborn twin sons Jumaa and Ali as they lay together in the makeshift tent the family occupied in an encampment in the central Gaza Strip.

Intense winter cold and heavy rain across the coastal enclave in previous days had made their lives a misery but what he heard was more serious.

"She said she had been trying to wake Jumaa up, but he was not waking up, and I asked about Ali and she said, he was not walking up either," he told Reuters on Sunday. "I held up Jumaa, he was white and freezing like snow, like ice, frozen."

Jumaa, a month old, died of hypothermia, one of six Palestinians who have died of exposure and cold over recent days in Gaza, according to doctors. Ali was in critical condition on Monday in intensive care.

In the second winter of the war in Gaza, the weather has added an extra element of suffering to hundreds of thousands of people already displaced, often multiple times, while efforts to agree a ceasefire go nowhere.

The death of Jumaa al-Batran shows how severe the situation facing vulnerable families remains.

Israeli authorities say they have allowed thousands of aid trucks carrying food, water, medical equipment and shelter supplies into Gaza. International aid agencies say Israeli forces have been hampering aid deliveries, making the humanitarian crisis even worse.

Yahya al-Batran's family, from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, fled their home early in the war for al-Maghazi, an open air patch of dunes and scrubland in central Gaza which Israeli authorities decreed as a humanitarian zone.

Later on, as al-Maghazi became increasingly unsafe, they moved to another encampment in nearby Deir al-Balah city.

"Since I am an adult I may take this and endure it, but what did the young one do to deserve this?" Jumaa's mother, Noura al-Batran said, as she embraced her son's colourful blanket to her chest. "He could not endure it, he could not endure the cold or the hunger and this hopelessness."

Around the area, dozens of tents, many already tattered from months of use, have been blown away or flooded by the strong winds and rain, leaving families struggling to repair the damage, patching torn sheets of plastic and piling up sand to hold back the water.

"The water seeped inside and on the mattresses and my children's clothes. I changed the children’s clothes this morning to their underwear," said Sabreen Abu Shanab, a mother of three, whose tent was flooded.

"They were sleeping and soaked wet to their underwear. I swear. The pants and underwear (were all soaked). Everything is soaked, the blankets, the pillows, everything," added the woman.

Abu Shanab suffers from asthma and despite medication, she has not been feeling better for a month because of the cold weather and the lack of heavy blankets and clothes.

It is another aspect of the humanitarian crisis facing Gaza's 2.3 million population, caught by the relentless Israeli campaign against the remnants of Hamas and dependent on an erratic aid system increasingly vulnerable to looting as order has broken down.

Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, and turned the enclave into a wasteland of rubble and destroyed buildings.

The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The United Nations relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) said on Sunday that the aid is nowhere near enough and a ceasefire was desperately needed to deliver as famine loomed.

Earlier this month, Israeli and Hamas leaders expressed hopes that talks brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States could lead to an agreement to halt the fighting and return Israeli hostages held by Hamas, potentially opening the way to a full ceasefire agreement.

But optimistic talk of a deal before the end of the year has faded and it remains unclear how near the two sides are to an agreement.

Even as the displaced suffer, Israeli troops have been battling Hamas fighters in the ruined area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, now out of reach of emergency services cut off by the fighting. DM

Read more: Middle East crisis news hub

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