Middle-East
Fatal shooting at Azerbaijan Embassy in Iran raises tensions
A gunman stormed the Azerbaijan Embassy in Iran's capital Friday, killing its security chief and wounding two guards in an attack that spiked long-simmering tensions between the two neighboring countries.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said it would evacuate the diplomatic post, accusing Iran of not taking reported threats against it seriously in the past that include inciting comments in hard-line media over Azerbaijan's diplomatic ties to Israel.
Tehran’s police chief, Gen. Hossein Rahimi, initially blamed the attack on “personal and family problems,” something quickly repeated across Iranian state media. But within hours Rahimi would lose his position as police chief after footage emerged that appeared to show a security force member doing nothing to stop the attack.
“Previously, there have been attempts to threaten our diplomatic mission in Iran, and it was constantly raised before Iran to take measures to prevent such cases, and to ensure the safety of our diplomatic missions,” the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry said. “Unfortunately, the last bloody terror attack demonstrates the serious consequences of not showing proper sensitivity to our urgent appeals in this direction.”
“We are of the opinion that the recent anti-Azerbaijani campaign against our country in Iran led to such attack against our diplomatic mission," the ministry added.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev called the assault a “terrorist attack.” He identified the dead security chief as 1st Lt. Orkhan Rizvan Oglu Askarov.
“We demand that this terrorist act be swiftly investigated and the terrorists punished,” Aliyev said in a statement. "Terror against diplomatic missions is unacceptable!”
The attack happened Friday morning, the second day of the Iranian weekend. Surveillance video released in Azerbaijan purportedly showed the gunman arriving by car at the embassy, running into the back of another car parked out front. He exited his car, holding what appeared to be a Kalashnikov-style rifle.
From there, details immediately conflict with the Iranian account of the attack.
Iranian state TV had quoted Rahimi as saying the gunman had entered the embassy with his two children during the attack. However, surveillance footage from inside the embassy, which matched details of the aftermath and bore a timestamp matching the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry’s statement, showed the gunman burst through the embassy’s doors alone.
Read more: Iran execution: Man publicly hanged from crane amid protests
Those inside tried to push through metal detectors to take cover. The man opens fire with the rifle, its muzzle flashing, as he chases after the men into the small side office. Another man bursts from a side door and fights the gunman for the rifle as the footage ends.
Another surveillance video from outside the embassy, which also corresponded to the same details, showed the gunman slam his car into another in front of the embassy. The gunman then got out and leveled his rifle at a figure inside of the Iranian police stand, likely a security force member, who stood still and did nothing as the man stormed the embassy.
Video of the aftermath showed an empty diplomatic police post just near the embassy, with one man apparently wounded in an SUV parked outside. Inside the embassy past a metal detector, paramedics stood over what appeared to be a lifeless body in a small office as blood pooled on the floor beneath.
Associated Press journalists later saw the embassy’s front door pocked with bullet holes after the attack.
Iranian prosecutor Mohammad Shahriari reportedly said the gunman's wife had disappeared in April after a visit to the embassy. The Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency quoted Shahriari as saying the gunman believed his wife was still in the diplomatic post at the time of the attack — even though it was some eight months later.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani also said his country strongly condemned the attack, which was under investigation with “high priority and sensitivity.” Azerbaijan also summoned Iran's ambassador there to lodge a protest over the attack as authorities replaced Rahimi, Tehran's police chief, without offering an explanation.
Azerbaijan borders Iran's northwest and belonged to the Persian Empire until the early 19th century. Ethnic Azeris also number over 12 million people in Iran and represent the Islamic Republic's largest minority group — making maintaining good relations even more important for Tehran.
There have been tensions between the two countries as Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iran also wants to maintain its 44-kilometer (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — something that could be threatened if Azerbaijan seizes new territory through warfare.
Iran in October launched a military exercise near the Azerbaijan border, flexing its martial might amid the nationwide protests rocking the Islamic Republic. Azerbaijan also maintains close ties to Israel, which Tehran views as its top regional enemy. The Islamic Republic and Israel are locked in an ongoing shadow war as Iran's nuclear program rapidly enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. Israel also offered its condolences to Azerbaijan over the attack.
Turkey, which has close ties to Azerbaijan, condemned the attack, called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and for measures to be put in place to prevent similar attacks in the future. Turkey has backed Azerbaijan against Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Turkey, which has been subjected to similar attacks in the past, deeply shares the pain of the Azerbaijani people,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said. “Brotherly Azerbaijan is not alone. Our support to Azerbaijan will continue without interruption, as it always has.”
Blinken headed to Mideast as US alarm over violence grows
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Egypt, Israel and the West Bank this weekend, the State Department announced Thursday, as the U.S. expressed alarm about escalating violence after Israel’s single deadliest operation in the West Bank in two decades.
Blinken’s visit to Israel has been planned for weeks, but the Israeli raid on a West Bank refugee camp earlier Thursday — which the Palestinians say killed nine people, including a 61-year-old woman — will likely dominate his talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah. The Israeli military also fatally shot a 22-year-old Palestinian later in the day.
The trip, the second by a senior U.S. national security official this month, had already been expected to be fraught with tension over disagreements between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly on the Palestinian conflict. Thursday's raid and the subsequent outcry are expected to make the visit even more difficult.
Read more: Israel, Gaza fighters trade fire after deadliest West Bank raid in two decades
The top U.S. diplomat for the Mideast said the administration was urging both sides to de-escalate tensions in the wake of the raid and decried a Palestinian announcement that they would cut off all security cooperation with Israel as a result.
Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said U.S. officials had been in touch with top Israeli and Palestinian officials since the incident happened to stress the importance of calming the situation. She said the civilian casualties reported in Jenin were “quite regrettable.”
But, she also said the Palestinian announcement that it would suspend all security cooperation with Israel in the aftermath was a mistake, as was a Palestinian vow to bring the matter to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
“Obviously, we don’t think this is the right step to take at this moment,” Leaf told reporters on a conference call. “We want to see them move back in the other direction. We don’t think it makes sense" to go to an international forum now, she said. "They need to engage with each other.”
Blinken will hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on Sunday before going to Jerusalem and Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday to see Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the State Department said.
He will be the second top Biden official to visit Israel this year, following national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who made the trip just last week as U.S. concerns were growing over the violence as well as the direction of Netanyahu’s new right-wing government.
“With both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the secretary will underscore the urgent need for the parties to take steps to deescalate tensions in order to put an end to the cycle of violence that has claimed too many innocent lives,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
In another statement later Thursday, Price again emphasized the “urgent need" for Israelis and Palestinians to "prevent further loss of civilian life, and work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”
Read more: 'Israeli violence': Bangladesh condemns killing of Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp
The trip was announced just hours after the Israeli raid on suspected terrorists at the refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin.
After the raid, Israel’s defense minister directed forces in the occupied West Bank and on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip to go on heightened alert as Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, threatened revenge.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority said it had halted security cooperation with Israel and would file complaints about the raid with the U.N. Security Council, International Criminal Court and other international bodies.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have soared since Israel launched the nightly raids in the West Bank last spring, following a spate of Palestinian attacks. The conflict has only intensified this month, as Netanyahu’s government came to office and pledged to take a hard line against the Palestinians.
In Jerusalem and Ramallah, Blinken will also underscore the importance the U.S. attaches to maintaining the status quo at the flashpoint Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, where clashes have frequently erupted, Price said.
The Biden administration has serious concerns over the composition of Netanyahu’s government that includes several far-right Israeli politicians who are opposed to some of the administration’s fundamental Mideast policies, including a two-state resolution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Like Sullivan, Blinken does not plan to meet with the most controversial of those Cabinet members, according to U.S. officials.
In Egypt, Blinken will raise human rights issues along with the unstable security situations in Libya and Sudan, the State Department said.
Israel, Gaza fighters trade fire after deadliest West Bank raid in two decades
Gaza militants fired rockets and Israel carried out airstrikes early Friday as tensions soared following an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank that killed nine Palestinians, including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman.
It was the deadliest single raid in the territory in over two decades. The flare-up in violence poses an early test for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government and casts a shadow on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s expected trip to the region next week.
Palestinian militants fired five rockets at Israel, the military said. Three were intercepted, one fell in an open area and another fell short inside Gaza. Israel carried out a series of airstrikes at what it said were militant targets. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Read more: Israel and Gaza militants exchange fire after deadly strikes
Thursday's deadly raid in the Jenin refugee camp was likely to reverberate on Friday as Palestinians gather for weekly Muslim prayers that are often followed by protests. Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, had earlier threatened revenge for the raid.
Raising the stakes, the Palestinian Authority said it would halt the ties that its security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants. Previous threats have been short-lived, in part because of the benefits the authority enjoys from the relationship and also due to U.S. and Israeli pressure to maintain it.
The Palestinian Authority already has limited control over scattered enclaves in the West Bank, and almost none over militant strongholds like the Jenin camp. But the announcement could pave the way for Israel to step up operations it says are needed to prevent attacks.
The Israeli strikes early Friday targeted training sites for Palestinian militant groups, the military said. Witnesses and local media reported that Israeli drones fired two missiles at a Hamas militant base before fighter jets struck it, causing four large explosions.
Read more: 'Israeli violence': Bangladesh condemns killing of Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp
Air raid sirens went off in southern Israel as the initial two rockets were fired and then again after the airstrikes, when the militants fired the other three rockets.
On Thursday, Israeli forces went on heightened alert as Palestinians filled the streets across the West Bank, chanting in solidarity with Jenin. President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning, and in the refugee camp, residents dug a mass grave for the dead.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Abbas had decided to cut security coordination in “light of the repeated aggression against our people." He also said the Palestinians planned to file complaints with the U.N. Security Council, International Criminal Court and other international bodies.
Barbara Leaf, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, said the Biden administration was deeply concerned about the situation and that civilian casualties reported in Jenin were “quite regrettable.” But she also said the Palestinian announcement to suspend security ties and to pursue the matter at international organizations was a mistake.
Thursday's gun battle that left nine dead and 20 wounded erupted when Israel's military conducted a rare daytime operation in the Jenin camp that it said was meant to prevent an imminent attack on Israelis. The camp, where the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group has a major foothold, has been a focus of near-nightly Israeli arrest raids.
Hamas’ armed wing claimed four of the dead as members, while Islamic Jihad claimed three others. An earlier statement from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a militia loosely affiliated with Abbas' secular Fatah party, claimed one of the dead was a fighter named Izz al-Din Salahat, but it was unclear if he was among those seven militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the 61-year-old woman killed as Magda Obaid, and the Israeli military said it was looking into reports of her death.
The Israeli military circulated aerial video it said was taken during the battle, showing what appeared to be Palestinians on rooftops hurling stones and firebombs on Israeli forces below. At least one Palestinian can be seen opening fire from a rooftop.
Later in the day, Israeli forces fatally shot a 22-year-old and wounded two others, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, as Palestinians confronted Israeli troops north of Jerusalem to protest Thursday’s raid. Israel's paramilitary Border Police said they opened fire on Palestinians who launched fireworks at them from close range.
Tensions have soared since Israel stepped up raids in the West Bank last spring, following a series of Palestinian attacks.
Israel’s new national security minister, far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who seeks to grant legal immunity to Israeli soldiers who shoot Palestinians, posted a video of himself beaming triumphantly and congratulating security forces.
The raid left a trail of destruction in Jenin. A two-story building, apparently the operation's target, was a charred wreck. The military said it entered the building to detonate explosives.
Palestinian Health Minister May Al-Kaila said paramedics struggled to reach the wounded during the fighting, while Akram Rajoub, the governor of Jenin, said the military prevented emergency workers from evacuating them.
Both accused the military of firing tear gas at the pediatric ward of a hospital, causing children to choke. Video at the hospital showed women carrying children into a corridor.
The military said forces closed roads to aid the operation, which may have complicated rescue efforts, and that tear gas had likely wafted into the hospital from nearby clashes.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said Thursday marked the single bloodiest West Bank incursion since 2002, at the height of an intense wave of violence known as the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which left scars still visible in Jenin.
U.N. Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said he was “deeply alarmed and saddened” by the violence. Condemnations came from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Turkey, which recently reestablished full diplomatic ties with Israel. Neighboring Jordan, as well as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries also condemned the Israeli raid.
The Islamic Jihad branch in Gaza has repeatedly fought against Israel, most recently in a fierce three-day clash last summer that killed dozens of Palestinians and disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Hamas, which seized power from the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in 2007, has fought four wars and several smaller skirmishes with Israel.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, making 2022 the deadliest in those territories since 2004, according to B’Tselem. So far this year, 30 Palestinians have been killed.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed. So far this year, not including Thursday, one-third of the Palestinians killed by Israeli troops or civilians had ties to armed groups.
Last year, 30 people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
Israel says its raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart attacks. The Palestinians say they further entrench Israel’s 55-year, open-ended occupation of the West Bank, which Israel captured along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim those territories for their hoped-for state.
Israel has established dozens of settlements in the West Bank that now house 500,000 people. The Palestinians and much of the international community view settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace, even as talks to end the conflict have been moribund for over a decade.
Palestinians say Israeli troops kill 9 in West Bank raid
Israeli forces killed at least nine Palestinians, including a 60-year-old woman, and wounded several others during a raid in a flashpoint area of the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said, in the deadliest day in years in the territory.
The violence occurred during what Palestinian health officials described as a fierce, daytime operation in the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold of the West Bank that has been a focus of nearly a year of Israeli arrest raids. The conflict spiked this month, with 29 Palestinians killed since the start of the year. It was not immediately clear how many of those killed Thursday were affiliated with armed groups.
The fighting comes weeks into Israel's new government, its most right-wing ever, which has pledged to take a hard line against the Palestinians and ramp up settlement construction on lands the Palestinian seek for their hoped-for state. It also comes days before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in the region and push for steps that might improve daily life for the Palestinians.
The Israeli military said it was conducting the rare daytime operation because of intelligence it had received that a militant grouping linked to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has a major foothold in the camp, was set to carry out imminent attacks against Israelis. A gun battle erupted, during which the military said it targeted the militants. At least one of the dead was identified by Palestinians as a militant.
Palestinian Health Minister May Al-Kaila said paramedics were struggling to reach the wounded amid the fighting. She also accused the military of firing tear gas at the pediatric ward of a hospital, causing children to choke. Video from the hospital showed women carrying children out of hospital rooms and into the corridor. The military said tear gas had likely wafted into the hospital from the clashes nearby.
Read more: Israeli military kills 3 Palestinians during raids in occupied West Bank
Jenin hospital identified the woman killed as Magda Obaid and the Israeli military said it was looking into reports of her death. The Palestinian Health Ministry earlier identified another one of the dead as Saeb Azriqi, 24, who was brought to a hospital in critical condition after being shot, and died from his wounds. And the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed militia affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority, claimed one of the dead, Izz al-Din Salahat, as a fighter. The ministry said at least 20 people were wounded.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, condemned the violence, calling on the international community to speak out against it.
Akram Rajoub, the governor of Jenin, told The Associated Press the military prevented medical teams from evacuating the wounded and fired tear gas that seeped into the government hospital, affecting infants and interrupting surgeries. The military said forces closed roads to facilitate their operation, which may have complicated the efforts of rescue teams to reach the wounded.
“We ask that the international community help the Palestinians against this extremist right-wing government and protect our citizens,” he said.
The deaths drew condemnation from neighboring Jordan as well as from the militant Islamic Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip.
The Islamic Jihad branch in the coastal enclave has repeatedly fought against Israel, most recently in a fierce three-day clash last summer that killed dozens of Palestinians and disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Tensions surrounding violence in the West Bank have in the past spilled over to Gaza.
“The response of the resistance to what happened today in Jenin camp will not be delayed,” warned top Hamas official Saleh Arouri.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have soared since Israel launched the raids last spring, following a spate of Palestinian attacks that killed 19 people, while another round of attacks later in the year brought the death toll to 30.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year, making 2022 the deadliest since 2004, according to the Israeli rights group B'Tselem.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations have also been killed. So far this year, and not including Thursday, one-third of the Palestinians killed by Israeli troops or civilians had ties to armed groups.
Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians say they further entrench Israel's 55-year, open-ended occupation.
Read more: Israel troops kill 2 Palestinians during raid in occupied West Bank
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians claim for their hoped-for state.
Israel's new far-right government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and propped up by ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties, has pledged to put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its priority list and has already announced a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians for pushing the U.N.’s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the Israeli occupation.
Iran sanctions Europeans over criticism of protest crackdown
Iran on Wednesday announced sanctions targeting more than 30 European individuals and entities, portraying the move as a response to recent European sanctions against officials linked to a crackdown on nationwide protests.
Those targeted with sanctions include Britain's attorney general and army chief of staff, several European parliamentarians and European military officials. Also targeted are the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy and three senior staffers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which recently published a series of cartoons lampooning Iran's clerical rulers.
The sanctions would bar travel to Iran and allow authorities to block bank accounts and confiscate property in Iran. Those targeted are unlikely to have either, rendering the move largely symbolic.
The move came two days after the European Union widened its sanctions to target dozens of Iranian officials and organizations linked to the violent suppression of recent protests. It stopped short of branding Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group despite an appeal from the European Parliament.
Iran has long been under heavy U.S. and European sanctions linked to its disputed nuclear program and support for regional militant groups. The nuclear sanctions were lifted under a landmark 2015 agreement with world powers, but President Donald Trump restored them after unilaterally withdrawing the U.S. from the deal.
Read more: US imposes more sanctions on Iran over Mahsa Amini's death
Iranians have taken to the streets since September over the death of a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran's strict Islamic dress code.
The demonstrations have called for the overthrow of Iran's theocracy and pose one of the biggest challenges to the ruling clerics since the 1979 revolution that brought them to power. Rights groups say security forces have used live ammunition, bird shot and beatings to disperse protests.
At least 527 protesters have been killed and over 19,500 people have been arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not provided an official count of those killed or detained, and have blamed the protests and violence on foreign powers without providing evidence.
The demonstrators say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression by a clerical leadership they view as corrupt and incompetent.
Netanyahu flies to Jordan for surprise meeting with king
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise trip to Jordan on Tuesday to meet with King Abdullah II, his first visit since taking power at the helm of Israel's most right-wing and religiously conservative government in history.
The rare meeting between the leaders, who have long had a rocky relationship, comes as friction grows between the neighbors over Israel’s new ultranationalist government, which took office late last year. The talks centered around the status of a contested holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem sacred to both Jews and Muslims, Jordan's official statement suggested.
Jordan's royal court said the king urged Israel to respect the status quo at the sacred compound, which Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount.
Under an arrangement that has prevailed for decades under Jordan's custodianship, Jews and non-Muslims are permitted visits during certain hours but may not pray there. Religious nationalists, including members of Israel's new governing coalition, have increasingly visited the site and demanded equal prayer rights for Jews there, infuriating the Palestinians and Muslims around the world.
The compound — the third-holiest site in Islam — sits on a sprawling plateau also home to the iconic golden Dome of the Rock.
In Tuesday's meeting, King Abdullah II also pushed Israel to “stop its acts of violence” that are undermining hopes for an eventual peaceful settlement to the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Jordanian government added, reaffirming support for a two-state solution. Israel's new coalition has vowed to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and even annex the territory — which would make a future independent Palestinian state unviable.
Netanyahu’s office said he discussed “regional issues” and security and economic cooperation with Jordan, a key regional ally. Jordan’s 1994 treaty normalizing ties with Israel produced a chilly-at-best peace between the countries. Netanyahu has repeatedly offered assurances that there has been no change in the status quo at the site.
The Jordanian government has already summoned the Israeli ambassador to Amman twice in the last month since Israel's new government took office — both times after an incident at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Read more: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says military campaign is continuing full-force and will take time
Earlier this month, Israel’s new hard-line minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, made a provocative visit to the site, drawing condemnations from Jordan and across the Arab world. Jordan also protested to Israel after Israeli police briefly blocked the Jordanian ambassador from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque, decrying the move as an unusual affront to Jordan's role as custodian.
The compound is administered by Jordanian religious authorities as part of an unofficial agreement after Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza, in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel is in charge of security at the site. Because of Jordan’s role and the site’s importance to Muslims around the world, whatever happens at the site has regional implications.
Building collapse in Syrian city of Aleppo leaves 10 dead
A building collapsed in a neighborhood in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo early Sunday, killing at least 10 people, including one child, Syrian state media reported.
The five-story building housing about 30 people in the Sheikh Maksoud neighborhood under the control of the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces collapsed overnight, according to the report. Water leakages had weakened the structure's foundation, it said.
Dozens of firefighters, first responders and residents covered in debris and dust were searching through the rubble for the remaining residents with drills and a bulldozer.
Read more: Attack kills 10 in Syria, Kurdish forces arrest 52 militants
Some relatives of the tenants waited anxiously nearby, while others mourned at the entrance of a nearby hospital as the bodies arrived in ambulances and on the back of trucks.
Hawar News, the news agency for the semiautonomous Kurdish areas in Syria, reported that seven people were killed and three were injured, two of them critically.
Many buildings in Aleppo were destroyed or damaged during Syria’s 11-year conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
Although the Syrian government under President Bashar Assad has retaken the city of Aleppo from armed opposition groups, Sheikh Maksoud is among some neighborhoods under the control of Kurdish forces.
Aleppo is Syria’s largest city and was once its commercial center.
Israelis press on with protests against new government
Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night to protest plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to overhaul the judicial system, measures that opponents say imperil the country's democratic fundamentals.
Israeli media, citing police, said some 100,000 people were out protesting.
The protest followed another demonstration last week that also drew tens of thousands in an early challenge to Netanyahu and his ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox government — the most right-wing in Israeli history.
Read more: Israel troops kill 2 Palestinians during raid in occupied West Bank
The government says a power imbalance has given judges and government legal advisers too much sway over lawmaking and governance. Netanyahu has pledged to press on with the changes despite the opposition.
Protesters filled central streets in the seaside metropolis, raising Israeli flags and banners that read “Our Children will not Live in a Dictatorship” and “Israel, We Have A Problem.”
“This is a protest to defend the country,” said opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who joined the protest. “People came here today to protect their democracy.”
“All generations are concerned. This is not a joke,” said Lior Student, a protester. "This is a complete redefinition of democracy.”
Other protests took place in the cities of Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheba.
In addition to the protests, pressure has built up on Netanyahu’s government after the country’s attorney general asked Netanyahu to fire a key Cabinet ally following a Supreme Court ruling that disqualified him from holding a government post because of a conviction of tax offenses.
While Netanyahu was expected to heed the court ruling, it only deepened the rift in the country over the judicial system and the power of the courts.
Earlier this week, Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, vowed to continue with the judicial overhaul plans despite the protests. Opponents say the changes could help Netanyahu evade conviction in his corruption trial, or make the court case disappear altogether.
Read more: Over 90 nations express ‘deep concern’ at Israeli punitive measure against Palestinians
One protester said she thinks the judicial changes are meant to protect Netanyahu. “The aim is to save only one person and one only — this is Mr. Netanyahu, from his trial, and that’s why I’m here.”
On Friday, Netanyahu's coalition was put for a new test after a disagreement between Cabinet members over the dismantling of an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank.
Defense Minister Yoav Galant, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party, ordered the removal of the outpost, upsetting a pro-settlement Cabinet member who had issued a directive to postpone the eviction pending further discussions.
Israel troops kill 2 Palestinians during raid in occupied West Bank
Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians during a military raid in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, Palestinian media reported, as Israeli-Palestinian violence continued to surge.
The official news agency Wafa identified the dead as Jawad Bawatqa, 58, and Adham Jabarin. They were shot in the Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank.
Read more: UN to hold emergency meeting on Israeli visit to holy site
The Palestinian media said Bawatqa was a teacher, while the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed militia affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority — claimed Jabarin as a fighter.
The Israeli military said it had no immediate comment.
Palestinian media also reported that the Israeli forces arrested a local official of the militant group Islamic Jihad in Jenin.
Tensions have soared in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been conducting near-nightly arrest raids since last spring, after a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis that killed 19 people. Another 10 Israelis were killed in a second string of attacks later last year.
Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as further entrenchment of Israel’s open-ended, 55-year occupation of lands they seek for their future state.
Read more: Over 90 nations express ‘deep concern’ at Israeli punitive measure against Palestinians
Thursday’s deaths put at 17 the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in the West Bank since the beginning of 2023.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, making it the deadliest year since 2004.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But Palestinian stone-throwers, youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations also have been killed.
Yemen rebels, Saudis in back-channel talks to maintain truce
Amid Yemen’s longest-ever pause in fighting — more than nine months — Saudi Arabia and its rival, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, have revived back-channel talks, hoping to strengthen the informal cease-fire and lay out a path for a negotiated end to the long civil war, according to Yemeni, Saudi and U.N. officials.
The quiet is fragile, with no formal cease-fire in place since a U.N.-brokered truce ended in October. It has been shaken by Houthi attacks on oil facilities and fiery rhetoric from Yemen's internationally recognized government, allied with Saudi Arabia, which complains it has so far been left out of the talks. Lack of progress could lead to a breakdown and a renewal of all-out fighting.
But all sides appear to be looking for a solution after eight years of a war that has killed more than 150,000 people, fragmented Yemen and driven the Arab world’s poorest country into collapse and near starvation in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Saudi Arabia restarted indirect exchanges with the Houthis in September, when it became clear the U.N.-brokered truce wouldn’t be renewed. Oman has been acting as intermediary.
“It’s an opportunity to end the war,” a U.N. official said, “if they negotiate in good faith and the talks include other Yemeni actors.” Like other officials, the U.N. official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the fragility of the talks.
Read more: Yemen official says Houthi rebel missile hits city, kills 14
A Saudi diplomat said his country has asked China and Russia to exert pressure on Iran and the Houthis to avoid escalations. Iran, which has been regularly briefed on the talks by the Houthis and the Omanis, has so far supported the undeclared truce, the diplomat said.
Yemen’s war began when the Houthis descended from their strongholds in northern Yemen and seized the capital of Sanaa in 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee to the south then into exile in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia entered the war in 2015, heading a military collation with the United Arab Emirates and other Arab nations. The coalition, which was supported by the United States, carried out a destructive bombardment campaign and backs government forces and militias in the south. The conflict became a proxy war between regional foes Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Neither side has made territorial gains for years. The Houthis maintain their grip over the north, Sanaa, and much of the heavily populated west. The government and militias hold the south and east, including the key central areas with most of Yemen’s oil reserves.
The war has bled beyond Yemen’s borders, with the Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia and the UAE with ballistic missiles and explosive-laden drones. The rebels also attacked vessels in the Red Sea. They used weapons from the stockpiles they seized in Sanaa and weapons supplied by Iran, according to independent and U.N. experts and Western nations.
Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have held indirect negotiations in the past, mainly for prisoner swaps or sporadic cease-fires.
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The most ambitious talks, in 2019, helped stop a government’s advance on the Houthi-held port of Hodeida on the Red Sea. But Saudi officials accused the rebels of using an undeclared truce to make territorial gains and advance on the prized, government-held city of Marib. A monthslong battle for Marib ensued, in which the Houthis suffered huge casualties and were eventually repelled in late 2021.
The U.N. brokered a more formal truce that began in April 2022 and was extended twice. It ran out in October. Houthi attacks on oil facilities in government-controlled areas have been the most significant disruption in recent months — but so far, the warring sides have not resumed full-fledged fighting.
“An escalation would be costly on all fronts,” a Yemeni government official said. Still, “all are building up for the next round (of war) if U.N. efforts and the Saudi-Houthi talks collapse.”
One problem is that past attempts at resolution have been hampered by the conflicting interests of the powers involved in the war — Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran, said Abdel-Bari Taher, a Yemeni commentator and former Journalists' Union head.
“These talks won’t lead to concrete conclusions if they don’t include all Yemeni parties in the process,” Taher said.
The Houthis’ chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, said visits to Sanaa by Omani officials show the Houthis’ seriousness. The most recent visit ended Sunday.
“There is give and take with other parties,” he said, in an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom has developed a phased roadmap for a settlement, which has been backed by the U.S. and the United Nations, said the U.N. official. In it, the coalition makes a number of key promises, including to further reopen the airport in Sanaa and ease a blockade on Hodeida, the official said.
The Houthis demand the coalition pay salaries of all state employees — including the military — from oil and gas revenues, as well as open all airports and ports under Houthi control. A Houthi official involved in the deliberations said the Saudis had promised to pay the salaries.
The Saudi diplomat, however, said paying military salaries is conditioned on the Houthis accepting security guarantees, including a buffer zone with Houthi-held areas along the Yemeni-Saudi border. The Houthis also should lift their blockade on Taiz, Yemen's third largest city, he said.
The Saudis also want the Houthis to commit to joining official talks with other Yemeni stakeholders, the diplomat said.
The Houthi official said his side has not accepted parts of the Saudi proposal, particularly the security guarantees, and refuses the resumption of oil exports from government-held areas without paying the salaries. The Houthis proposed a distribution of oil revenues according to a pre-war budget, the official said. That means Houthi-held areas receive up to 80% of the revenues since they are the most populated, according to the official.
The Saudi diplomat said both sides were working with Omani officials to develop the proposal to be “more satisfactory for all sides,” including other Yemeni parties.
All of this has left the internationally recognized government without a voice, a Yemeni government official said. He said the government’s presidential council worries Saudi Arabia “might give unacceptable concessions” to reach a deal.
But the Yemen anti-Houthi alliance remains riven with internal divisions so there is little room to maneuver.
“We have no option but to wait and see the conclusion of these negotiations,” the official said.