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Syria’s future up for discussion as more Assad regime horrors revealed. Here’s the latest Foreign ministers from the Middle East and beyond will gather in Jordan over the weekend to discuss ways to support a smooth transitional process in Syria “led by Syrians,” according to Jordan’s foreign ministry. Top US diplomat Antony Blinken, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and Turkey’s foreign minister will convene with diplomats from Arab countries including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The talks come as dozens of competing factions vie for control in different parts of Syria. In Damascus, Syria’s caretaker prime minister has reiterated that the interim government will serve until March. Here’s what you need to know.
Humanitarian crisis: More than 1.1 million people have been displaced across Syria since the collapse of the Assad regime, according to UN estimates. Food shortages are widespread in Aleppo, the second-largest city, and fuel prices remain high, it said.
Israeli strikes: The UN chief said he is deeply concerned about “violations of Syria’s sovereignty” after Israel launched hundreds of strikes and deployed ground troops in the country. The top US diplomat said Israel had made clear its stated purpose of trying to prevent arms from falling into “the wrong hands.” Torture signs: CNN witnessed battered corpses inside a Damascus hospital – tangible evidence of the horrors of life and death under the brutal regime of toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, US authorities said a former Syrian official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged with torture. American found: A missing US man has been found in Syria, where he said he was kept in prison after entering the country as a pilgrim. Separately, Syria’s caretaker government said efforts were ongoing to locate American journalist Austin Tice , who was abducted in 2012 and believed held by the Assad regime.
Celebrations turn deadly: Chaos broke out in Syria’s northern city of Raqqa as hundreds took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Assad . At least one person was killed and 15 wounded after errant gunfire led to panic and clashes with security forces, according to a local journalist and witnesses. No sign of Assad: Five days after he fled Syria for Russia, neither the toppled Syrian dictator nor any of his entourage have been spotted in Moscow.
One possible landing spot for Assad is a glitzy district of the Russian capital, CNN’s Fred Pleitgen writes. Meanwhile in Gaza: Hamas and Israel are “talking seriously” about a hostage and ceasefire deal in Gaza, a diplomatic source familiar with the matter told CNN . It comes as health authorities in Gaza said dozens of people were killed in new Israeli airstrikes.
More than 1.1 million people displaced across Syria, UN estimates More than 1.1 million people have been displaced across Syria since the country was plunged into unrest after the collapse of the Assad regime, according to United Nations estimates.
Tens of thousands of displaced people are staying at about 200 centers in northeast Syria, where aid organizations are distributing food, cash, hygiene kits and other supplies, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in a Thursday update. It added that food shortages are widespread in Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, and fuel prices remain high. Nearby fighting has disrupted access to water and caused power outages affecting more than 400,000 people in the area since Tuesday, it said.
The UN and its partners are working to deliver aid, with 26 trucks carrying food aid crossing from Turkey into northwest Syria on Wednesday, UNOCHA said. However, conditions remain tough in that region due to checkpoints, security issues and reports of looting. "He’s alive!": Joy and relief for parents of missing American found in Syria The parents of an American man who was found in Syria after going missing earlier this year said they were relieved he was safe following a difficult seven months in which they feared “the worst.
” Travis Timmerman , 29, was discovered by locals as he walked barefoot in the streets of southern Damascus on Thursday. He said he was kept in prison for months after entering the country as a pilgrim. “Tears, started bawling, it was so emotional,” Timmerman’s stepfather Richard Gardiner told CNN affiliate KYTV .
“I’m thinking the worst, after seven months you just think he’s gone.” Gardiner said he called Timmerman’s mother, Stacey Timmerman, to break the news. “I called her up and said, ‘It’s him, and he’s alive!’ So we both cried on the phone,” Gardiner said.
“I just want my son to come back home,” Stacey told KYTV. Thousands of people have been released from prisons across Syria this week, after rebels toppled the country’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad. Speaking to CBS News , Timmerman said he had been detained in a Syrian prison after entering the country without permission for “spiritual purposes,” having crossed its border with Lebanon.
He said his cell door was broken down on Monday by two men armed with AK-47s, CBS News reported, and left the prison with a large group to try and reach Jordan. "Even in the Middle Ages, they didn’t torture like this": Assad regime's horrors revealed The bruised and battered bodies inside the morgue of Mujtahid Hospital are hard to look at — tangible evidence of the brutal regime of toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad . But crowds of desperate people wait to see them, hoping finally for an answer to what happened to a loved one.
“Where are they?” pleads one woman. “My mother, she’s been missing for 14 years, where is she? Where is my brother, where is my husband, where are they?” The 35 or so bodies were found in a military hospital in the Syrian capital of Damascus, days after the regime fell. They are believed to be among the last victims of Assad.
A man points to their tattered clothing and suggests they were detainees at the notorious Saydnaya prison. The bodies are identified only by number inside the fluorescent-lit morgue. But there isn’t enough room, so a makeshift area has been set up outside where families gather, using their cellphone lights to look at the faces of the dead, hunting for features they recognize.
But they also see the horrific wounds that seem to be consistent with torture. A woman searching among the bodies retches as she leaves the morgue. Dr.
Ahmed Abdullah, an employee at the morgue, condemns the people who left these marks, accusing the Assad regime. “This is the crime of the regime — the way they tortured people,” he tells CNN. “Even in the Middle Ages, they didn’t torture people like this.
” Related article Battered corpses show the horrors of life and death under Syria’s Assad UN chief concerned by Israeli attacks in Syria The United Nations chief said he is deeply concerned about “extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” after Israel launched hundreds of strikes and deployed ground troops in the country following the collapse of the Assad regime. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he is “particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria,” stressing “the urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts, throughout Syria,” according to a statement from his office Thursday. The Israeli military on Tuesday said it had carried out about 480 strikes across Syria over two days, hitting most of the country’s strategic weapon stockpiles.
Defense Minister Israel Katz also said the Israeli navy had destroyed the Syrian fleet. Israel, which said it is trying to make sure military equipment does not fall into the hands of adversaries, has also deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years. Guterres’ said “the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement remains in force” and urged all “parties to the agreement to uphold their obligations under this instrument, including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the ceasefire and stability in Golan (Heights).
” Coalition fighting ISIS must be able to execute its mission, Blinken tells Erdogan The coalition fighting to defeat ISIS must be able “to execute its critical mission” in Syria, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, amid a spate of fighting between Turkey-backed militants and the US-supported Syrian Defense Forces (SDF). The roughly hour-long meeting in Ankara Thursday also focused on the need for a “Syrian-owned political transition to an accountable and inclusive government,” and the continued protection of displaced Syrians, according to a US State Department statement. Some context: The primarily Kurdish SDF is a key ally of the US in preventing the resurgence of ISIS in northeast Syria.
Top SDF Gen. Mazloum Abdi said this week that attacks by the Turkish-supported groups had forced his forces to halt their anti-ISIS operations. “If these attacks persist, joint operations will remain suspended.
ISIS is now stronger in the Syrian desert,” he told Sky News on Wednesday. Speaking earlier, Blinken said Turkey “has real and clear interests, particularly when it comes to the PKK and terrorism,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union. “At the same time, again, we want to avoid sparking any kinds of additional conflicts inside of Syria at a time when we want to see this transition to an interim government into a better way forward for Syria,” he said.
“And part of that also has to be ensuring that ISIS doesn’t rear its ugly head again.” Syrian prison "wasn't too bad," says missing US man found in Damascus A missing US man has been found in Syria , where he says he was kept in prison for months after entering the country as a pilgrim. Travis Timmerman spoke to several outlets Thursday, after locals saw him walking barefoot in the streets of southern Damascus.
Thousands of people have been released from prisons across Syria this week, after rebels toppled the country’s former president Bashar al-Assad. Speaking to CBS News , Timmerman said he had been detained in a Syrian prison for several months after entering the country without permission, having crossed its border with Lebanon. He had decided to travel to Syria for “spiritual purposes,” he told the network.
He said that his cell door was broken down on Monday by two men armed with AK-47s, CBS News reported, and left the prison with a large group to try and reach Jordan. Timmerman’s time in the Syrian prison “wasn’t too bad,” he said, according to CBS News. “I was never beaten.
The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom,” he said. Related article Missing US man found in Syria says he was kept in prison after entering country as a pilgrim Jordan to host summit on Syria with US, EU, Turkish and Arab diplomats Jordan will host a summit on Syria over the weekend with foreign ministers from Western and Arab nations, the foreign ministry in Amman announced in a statement Thursday.
Top diplomats will meet on Saturday in the Jordanian coastal city of Aqaba to discuss ways to support a smooth transitional process “led by Syrians,” the statement said. Top diplomats from numerous Arab nations will be there, including: Jordan Saudi Arabia Iraq Lebanon Egypt The United Arab Emirates Bahrain Qatar They will convene with: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas United Nations envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen The summit will focus on reconstructing Syrian state institutions in a way that “preserves Syria’s unity, territorial integrity, sovereignty, security, stability, and the rights of all its citizens,” the statement said.
Israelis "clear" about reasons for military actions in Syria, top US diplomat says Israel has “been clear” about the reasons for its military actions in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime, the top US diplomat said on Thursday. Israel has sent troops into the “buffer zone” between Israel and Syria and launched hundreds of strikes on Syrian air bases, ports and weapons stockpiles across the country this week. It is “really important.
.. that we all try to make sure that we’re not sparking any additional conflicts,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters before departing Jordan for Turkey.
“The stated purpose of those actions from the Israelis is to try to make sure that equipment that’s been abandoned — military equipment that’s been abandoned by the Syrian army — doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, terrorists, extremists, etc. “The Israelis have been clear about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.” US-Israel talks: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to discuss events in Syria, according to the prime minister’s office.
Sullivan said later during a news conference that the US is “in deep consultations with the Israeli government about where this goes from here, what that will look like in the days and weeks ahead.” “We do have every expectation that it will be temporary,” Sullivan added. “And we take them at their word that that is the intention here, as we work through a new arrangement that can ensure that Israel is secure.
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