The African Transitional Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) said it has completed the first phase of a troop reduction aimed at eventually putting security fully in the hands of the national army and police.
It said in a statement that a total of seven bases had been handed over to Somali security forces, enabling the drawdown of 2,000 troops by the June 30 deadline.
ATMIS chief logistics officer Bosco Sibondavyi described the handover as an “important milestone” in the implementation of the Somalia Transition Plan and UN Security Council resolutions on the transfer of security responsibility, AFP reported.
The Security Council on Tuesday renewed for six months its authorization of the AU force, which has a deadline of the end of September for the departure of a further 3,000 soldiers.
The ATMIS contingent had included over 19,000 soldiers and police officers from several African nations including Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, but will have to be reduced to zero by the end of 2024.
In April 2022, the Council approved the replacement of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), which had been set up in 2007, by ATMIS, a mission with a reinforced mandate to fight Al-Shabaab militants.
The group, which has links with Al-Qaeda, has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile internationally backed government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.
Its fighters continue to carry out deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces, backed by the AU force and US air strikes.
In the deadliest most recent attack, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in late May when Al-Shabaab militants stormed an AU base southwest of the capital.
The Israeli army said early Sunday that a missile was launched from Syrian territory towards Israel. The army clarified in a statement carried by Reuters that the anti-aircraft missile exploded mid-air.
Israeli military spokesman also said Israeli warplanes targeted a Syrian air defense battery from which an anti-aircraft missile was launched. He said the warplanes also attacked other targets in the area, while no casualties were reported from the Syrian missile.
Syrian state media SANA earlier said the country’s air defenses intercepted an Israeli missile strike across central parts of the country and downed most of the missiles.
Quoting an army statement, the Syrian Arab News Agency said missiles that flew over parts of Lebanon’s capital Beirut hit locations in the vicinity of the city of Homs, resulting only in material damage.
Israel has in recent months intensified strikes on Syrian airports and air bases to disrupt Iran’s increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah
The armed wing of Gaza’s rulers Hamas has put its weapons on public display for the first time, drawing hundreds of Palestinians brandishing rocket launchers for selfies.
Dressed in black balaclavas and tactical camouflage suits, members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades mingled with young men and women at the exhibition in Gaza City’s Unknown Soldier’s Square.
“Resistance is an image and a memory. Take souvenir photos with many of Al-Qassam’s weapons,” the group said in an invitation on social media and posters in mosques.
The event was the first at which Hamas has allowed the public to take photos of weapons.
It follows the latest surge in worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence, which cost 16 Palestinian and four Israeli lives in the occupied West Bank over six days in late June.
In May, armed groups in Gaza and Israel traded cross-border fire for five days, killing 34 Palestinians, among them six commanders of the Islamic Jihad, fighters from other Palestinian armed groups and civilians including children. One Israeli woman died.
Among the Hamas weapons on display in Gaza City on Friday were a range of locally manufactured missiles, “Shihab” drones, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Russian-made “Kornet” missiles.
Exhibitions are also scheduled to take place on Saturday in the north and center of the Gaza Strip, where people are normally forbidden to approach and photograph military sites.
At the entrance to the Gaza City exhibition a banner welcomed visitors, some of whom had come with their families and children, an AFP correspondent said.
Dozens of uniformed Al-Qassam Brigades members were on hand.
‘Proud of the resistance’
A young boy in fatigues and wearing a green Brigades headband smiled for the cameras as a man propped a rocket launcher on his shoulder.
“I came with my family to take photos with the weapons and reinforce the spirit of resistance in our children,” said Gaza resident Abu Mohammed Abu Shakian.
The exhibition is “encouraging and means that the liberation of our land is near”, added Shahadeh Dalou.
Bassam Darwish, 58, said people wanted to show their support for the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Australia, Britain, Israel and the European Union.
“Everyone is happy and proud of the Al-Qassam exhibition. We are here because we’re proud of the resistance,” he said.
Around 2.3 million Palestinians live in the impoverished Gaza Strip which has been under a crippling Israeli-led blockade since Hamas seized power in 2007.
Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have fought several wars since.
The US is reportedly pressing the Lebanese government and military to take steps to dismantle a Hezbollah outpost established on the Israel-Lebanon border, Israeli and US officials told Axios news website on Friday.
The officials, who were not named by Axios, told the news website that Hezbollah established the outpost several weeks ago in Israeli territory.
According to a senior Israeli official, Hezbollah operatives set up a tent on April 8 in an area that is north of the border fence between Israel and Lebanon, but 30 meters south of the internationally recognized Blue Line in an area considered by the UN to be Israeli territory.
Not until weeks later, was the Israeli military aware of the tent in Israeli territory when the party added a second tent, a water tank and a generator to the outpost, he noted.
Officials in the US State Department and the Department of Defense (the Pentagon) had assured the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the Lebanese government and army, of the need to evacuate the Hezbollah site, US and Israeli officials pointed out.
“Our goal is to move the outpost out of there. We prefer Hezbollah will do it themselves than to bomb it,” Axios quoted a senior Israeli official as saying.
The Israeli army is concerned about what it describes as a significant change in the concept of air defense by Hezbollah in Lebanon, following the party’s doubling of the number of air defense systems in its possession, according to Israeli Army Command sources in Tel Aviv.
Israel believes that Hezbollah plans to restrict the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon.
They claimed that “Hezbollah’s decision to restrict the Israeli Air Force with available Russian air defense systems, SA8 and SA22, is a fundamental change in Hezbollah’s strategic concept, within which attempts are being made to restrict the Israeli Air Force’s freedom to operate during normal hours.”
Israel’s Maariv newspaper quoted the sources as saying that Israeli estimates indicate that Hezbollah “doubled the amount of air defense systems in its possession during the last five years and that these defense systems are based mainly on modern Iranian systems.”
It pointed out that the improvement of these capabilities by Hezbollah is ongoing and this is expressed, in the availability of these systems for rapid use and in accordance with the decision of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israeli security service believes that “the attack by an Israeli drone, in August 2019, of a facility in a building in the heart of the southern suburbs of Beirut, the stronghold of Hezbollah, which has been described as a facility to improve the accuracy of missiles, initiated the turning point in Hezbollah’s strategy, and the threat by Nasrallah at the time to “start shooting down Israeli drones.”
According to the newspaper, “Hezbollah implemented this threat two months later when it fired an SA8 missile at an Israeli Hermes 450 drone, which was on an intelligence-gathering mission, but the missile missed the target.”
The newspaper pointed out that the Israeli army “monitored the vehicle from which the missile was launched, and requested to target it, but the Israeli political level, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu did not approve of this, in anticipation of an escalation.”
The newspaper added that the Israeli army “views this event as extremely important for the future and that it motivated Nasrallah to show other field capabilities. This was followed by three attempts by Hezbollah to shoot down Israeli drones.”
Afterward, the Israeli army discussed “the possibility of targeting Hezbollah’s air defense systems, then removed this issue from its agenda, while Hezbollah enhanced its arming with air defense systems,” said the newspaper.
Moreover, Hezbollah placed tents two months ago on the Israeli side of the border in Shebaa Farms. Political sources revealed on Friday that the Israeli army said it intended to handle the matter “through diplomatic channels” and have the tents removed by the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
In her small apartment in opposition-held Idlib in northwest Syria, Umm Mohammed is depressed and lethargic. But when her phone rings or someone knocks on the door she becomes suddenly alert. Maybe, finally, her husband has come back.
In 2013, Syrian soldiers broke into the couple’s home in Damascus as they were having breakfast, she said. She and her husband had previously taken part in anti-government protests, The Associated Press said.
“They beat him up in front of my young daughter” and then took him away, said Umm Mohammed, or “mother of Mohammed,” the name of her oldest son. She did not want to give her own full name for fear the authorities would harm her husband if he is still alive.
The only news she has received about him since that day came in 2015, when someone claimed to have seen him in the Syrian military intelligence’s 248 Branch prison — which former detainees and human rights groups have called a torture center.
“When someone is martyred, they’re buried and you know they’re dead,” she said, sitting on floor cushions. “In this case, you don’t know and you’ll always be wondering.”
Her husband is among more than 130,000 people believed to have gone missing in Syria since the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad that quickly turned into a civil war. Their families, trapped in painful uncertainty for years, might now have reason for hope.
The UN General Assembly voted Thursday to form an independent international institution to search for the missing in Syria in both government and opposition-held areas.
The resolution was adopted by the 193-member world body on a vote of 83-11 with 62 abstentions. The countries voting for the resolution included the United States and other Western nations. Syria and key allies Russia, Iran, and China opposed the move. Arab countries that in recent months rekindled ties with Damascus abstained, which endorsed the move.
Some of the missing are believed to be languishing in government prisons. Others were taken by non-state armed groups. Others are buried in mass graves, which have been found on both sides of the front line.
The newly created institution would collect information from families, Syrian civil society organizations, whistle blowers, UN agencies and through inquiries to the Syrian government and authorities in opposition-held areas.
The resolution gives three months for UN officials to set up the institution’s structure and start recruiting staff.
There have been long-standing demands to investigate the fate of the missing, from the families and from human rights activists.
Hanny Megally, a member of a commission set up by the UN in 2011 to investigate human rights violations in Syria, said he hopes a single team focusing on the missing could encourage more whistleblowers to come forward, and could collect scattered data from rights groups.
In recent years, whistle blowers and defectors have come forth with some information, including the so-called Caesar photos, a trove of 53,000 images taken in Syrian prisons and military hospitals. The photos showed the bodies of detainees with signs of torture.
A video shot in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon in 2013 revealed the fate of dozens of Syrians who went missing. The video showed Syrian security agents leading blindfolded men into a pit, shooting them and setting the bodies on fire.
The Caesar photos allowed some families to identify missing loved ones. The leak also enabled European courts to try and convict former Syrian military officers who were seeking asylum in European countries for their involvement in forced disappearances and torture.
Setting up an international body would be a significant move in a region scarred by war, where tens of thousands of families in neighboring countries are waiting for information about their loved ones.
In Lebanon, family members of some 17,000 people kidnapped by sectarian militias during its 1975-1990 civil war are dying of old age, never knowing the fate of their loved ones. In Yemen, human rights groups say hundreds are still missing.
In Iraq, over 43,000 people remain missing since a US-led invasion in 2003 toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, followed by a ferocious civil war and the rise of the ISIS extremist group. The UN set up an investigation in 2017 into human rights abuses by the militant group, including enforced disappearances, which led to the discovery of over a dozen mass graves.
Setting up an investigative body for Syria’s missing “might set a precedent for addressing the suffering of different people in different parts of the world,” said Wafa Mustafa, whose father Ali disappeared in July 2013 in Damascus. Mustafa had joined her father, an outspoken Assad critic, in protests.
Mustafa, who welcomed the vote, is one of many Syrian civil society activists who have spent years campaigning for international action on the missing.
Investigating their fate should also pave the way for addressing other human rights issues in Syria, including the dire conditions for political prisoners. “A lot should be happening, a lot should be done in parallel to this institution,” Mustafa said.
In the Kurdish-held city of Qamishli in northeast Syria, Hamed Hemo believes that an investigation could uncover the fate of his missing son.
Hemo has turned his living room into a shrine for his son, Ferhad, a journalist who went missing after IS militants kidnapped him and a colleague, Masoud Aqil, in 2014. Aqil, released in a prisoner swap, relocated to Germany. Ferhad never came home.
“To this day our lives have completely changed,” Hemo said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “His mother once weighed 70 kilos (154 pounds), and she’s dropped to 40 (88 pounds).”
ISIS’s so-called “caliphate” once stretched across large areas of Syria and Iraq, but the extremists lost their last hold on the land in 2019.
Thousands of captured ISIS fighters are held in prisons run by Kurdish-led forces who Hemo believes could provide information about the missing.
Umm Mohammad is less hopeful of getting information about her husband from Syrian authorities.
Assad has denied holding political prisoners, labeling the opposition as terrorists. Direct cooperation with Syria by investigators could also be difficult as it does not extradite its citizens.
“What’s he going to say?” she wondered. “All those people I detained were killed under my custody?’”
Deputy head of the Sudanese transitional council Malek Akar was in Moscow to ask for help to end the war in his country.
He met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday.
Akar explained to the minister the root of the problem in Sudan, reported Russia’s Sputnik news agency.
They also discussed bilateral relations between their countries.
Lavrov said he hopes Russia would be able to use its connections with all concerned parties to resolve the conflict in Sudan.
Akar revealed that head of the transitional council, army commander Abdul Fattah al-Burhan will attend the Russian-African summit that will be hosted by St. Petersburg in late July.
War erupted between the army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in mid-April. It has caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced nearly 2.8 million people, of which almost 650,000 have fled to neighboring countries.
The three cities that make up the wider capital around the confluence of the River Nile – Khartoum, Bahri and Omdurman – have seen more than 10 weeks of heavy clashes and looting, while the conflict has triggered a resurgence of ethnically motivated killings in the western region of Darfur.
Multiple ceasefire deals have failed to stick, including several brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States at talks in Jeddah that were suspended last week.
Thousands of followers of influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rallied in major cities in Iraq on Friday, condemning the burning of the holy Quran during a protest in Sweden earlier this week. Some of the demonstrators called for expulsion of the Swedish ambassador from Iraq.
At the rallies in the capital of Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, followers burned Swedish flags and chanted “Yes, yes to Islam” and “No, no to the devil.”
Addressing the crowds in a speech in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, Friday prayers preacher Sattar Batat, called on Iraqi authorities to “if necessary, expel the Swedish ambassador and cut all diplomatic relations with them.”
The protests came a day after hundreds of protesters briefly stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad.
On Wednesday, a man who identified himself in Swedish media as a refugee from Iraq burned a Quran outside a mosque in central Stockholm.
An Iraqi security official said the man was an Iraqi Christian who had previously fought in a Christian unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of mostly Shiite militias that were incorporated into the country’s armed forces in 2016.
Swedish police had authorized the protest, citing freedom of speech, after a previous decision to ban a similar protest was overturned by a Swedish court.
The act, coming during the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, drew widespread condemnation in the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday suggested that the incident would pose another obstacle to Sweden’s bid for NATO membership.
Iraqi officials have called on Sweden to extradite the man who had burned the Quran for prosecution in Iraq.
The UN rights office has updated a list of companies doing business with Israeli settlements, removing 15 companies from the database that were no longer involved, a spokesperson said on Friday.
The long-awaited update was limited in scope due to budget restrictions and was only able to review the original list of 112 companies, UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing.
The database was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016 but was not released until 2020.
Most of the firms it named were domiciled in Israel, but it also included international firms listed in the United States, Britain and France, among others.
As the world marked the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26, the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen were again accused of turning the country into a hub for drug trafficking in the region.
On the occasion, the US and the UK released statements revealing the volume of Houthi drug smuggling while the militias continue to claim that they have been destroying illicit substances that they seize.
On June 26, the British Embassy in Yemen said the country has become a frequent market and route for drug smuggling in the region and that such operations fuel conflict and organized crime and destabilize societies.
The embassy tweeted a posted by Rosie Dyas, Spokesperson for the British Government in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) region, as saying that HMS Lancaster seized more than 10 million Sterling pounds worth of narcotics and assisted a merchant vessel in three separate incidents in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf.
In May, sources said that American and international naval units in the Middle East seized illegal drugs worth $1 billion in 2022.
They revealed that during the past months, the Houthis had obtained equipment to build factories for the production of Captagon pills in regions under their control to smuggle them abroad.
Prior to the announcement, US Navy 5th Fleet spokesman Commander Tim Hawkins said the US Navy and partner forces seized more than $130 million worth of illegal drugs that were destined to Yemen and the region.
In April, the Yemeni Coast Guard said it seized a dhow carrying over three tons of drugs during an inspection at the port of Nishtun.
Minister of Information Muammar al-Eryani accused the Houthis of being behind the smuggling, which included over three tons of cannabis and 173 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine and heroin. The government-run Saba news agency said the dhow was flying an Iranian flag and was manned by seven Iranian nationals.
Meanwhile, the Houthis claimed to have destroyed hashish and narcotic pills in what was viewed as a ploy to cover their drug smuggling activities.
The Security Media Center, the official Houthi media outlet, said it destroyed over 12 tons of hashish and 4.2 million narcotic pills in Al-Jawf province, northern Yemen.
A Yemeni judicial source said the Houthi claims are false because seizing a large quantity of drugs cannot happen without arresting part of the smuggling network.
He accused the Houthis of freeing a number of prisoners accused of drug smuggling during the past years, adding that the militias have cooperated with those smugglers.
The source, who works in Houthi-controlled areas, spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat about the flow of drugs into Yemen in recent years.
He revealed that the Houthis close the files of drug cases without punishing the smugglers or dealers to encourage the spread of drugs in Yemen and to blackmail small traffickers for military purposes.
Moreover, the source spoke of evidence of the Houthis’ use of drugs to recruit young men and children. They offer them narcotics for free to increase the number of Yemenis loyal to them, he explained.
Arab and western countries condemned on Thursday the burning of the holy Quran by an extremist at Stockholm Central Mosque in the Swedish capital following Eid al-Adha prayer, saying it was act of hatred that provokes Muslims across the globe.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation said it will hold an emergency meeting next week to address the issue and its fallout. The meeting was called for by Saudi Arabia and will be held in Jeddah.
The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs voiced the Kingdom’s strong condemnation of Wednesday’s burning of the Quran.
“These hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification, as they clearly incite hatred, exclusion, and racism, and directly contradict international efforts seeking to spread the values of tolerance, moderation, and rejection of extremism,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The statement added that similar acts only “undermine the necessary mutual respect for relations between peoples and states.”
Kuwait described the act a “dangerous provocation” of Muslims across the world. It called on the international community and concerned governments to assume their responsibility and immediately towards such acts of hatred, extremism and intolerance.
It urged them to stand against such acts that target religious symbols and sanctities and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
United Arab Emirates Presidential Advisor Dr. Anwar Gargash tweeted on Thursday that the “flagrant and repeated attacks on our Islamic beliefs under the pretext of freedom of expression only fuels hatred and conflict.”
The UAE foreign ministry summoned the Swedish ambassador to file a complaint.
Qatar slammed the Quran burning, saying it was an act of incitement and dangerous provocation of over two billion Muslims around the world, most notably on Eid al-Adha.
Egypt expressed its “deep alarm” over the rising Islamophobia. Its foreign ministry voiced its complete rejection of such “hateful acts that infringe on Muslim religious beliefs.”
It said countries have the responsibility to stand against such acts of incitement and hate crimes that could undermine security and stability in societies.
Dozens of Iraqis protested on Thursday in front of the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. Iraq’s Foreign Ministry summoned Sweden’s ambassador.
Morocco recalled its ambassador to Sweden for an indefinite period following the Stockholm incident, the state news agency said.
Morocco’s foreign ministry also summoned Sweden’s chargé d’affaires in Rabat on Wednesday and expressed the kingdom’s “strong condemnation of this attack and its rejection of this unacceptable act”, the state news agency said.
Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Sweden’s charge d’affaires in Tehran over the incident, condemning what it said was an insult to the most sacred Islamic sanctities.
“While Muslims are performing the Hajj, … insulting their sanctities merely serves the path of spreading hatred and violence, exploiting the principle of freedom of expression,” Iranian state media said, citing a statement by the ministry.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday condemned the Quran-burning, signaling that this would pose another obstacle to the country’s bid for NATO membership.
Speaking to members of his Justice and Development Party, Erdogan equated “those who permitted the crime” to those who perpetrated it.
Swedish police had granted permission for the anti-Quran protest to take place. But after the burning, police charged the man who carried it out with agitation against an ethnic or national group.
“We will eventually teach Western monuments of hubris that insulting Muslims’ sacred values is not freedom of thought,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan implied that Türkiye wasn’t ready to lift its objections that are holding up Sweden joining NATO. “We will put forward our reaction in the strongest possible way until there is a concerted effort to combat the enemies of Islam as well as terrorist organizations.”
Sweden applied to join NATO last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the military alliance had hoped the road to membership would be smoothed out ahead of a key July 6 summit.
The United States on Thursday said it condemned the burning of the Quran, but added that issuing the permit for the demonstration supported freedom of expression and was not an endorsement of the action.
Speaking at a daily press briefing, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Washington believes the demonstration created “an environment of fear” that effectively curbs the ability of Muslims to practice their religion freely.
“I will say that we do condemn it,” Miller said.
“We believe the demonstration created an environment of fear that will impact the ability of Muslims and members of other religious minority groups from freely exercising their right to freedom of religion or belief in Sweden,” he added.
“We also believe that issuing the permit for this demonstration supports freedom of expression and is not an endorsement of the demonstration’s actions.”
Miller declined to say whether the demonstration and its fallout would have an impact on Türkiye-Sweden ties and therefore the latter’s NATO bid, but reiterated Washington’s position that the Nordic country was ready to join the alliance.
“It is time to move to full accession to NATO for Sweden,” he said.
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