Kategori: NEWS

Mohammed al-Bashir announced Tuesday that he has been tasked with heading a transitional government in Syria until early March 2025 following the collapse of the government of Bashar al-Assad.

In a brief televised statement, al-Bashir said he would lead the transitional authority until March 1.

Al-Bashir, born in 1983, was an electrical engineer and head of the “Syrian Salvation Government” (SSG) in Idlib formed in 2017 by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other Syrian militant groups during the Syrian civil war. The SSG wielded administrative and service-related authority in areas under the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) control in northern Syria.

XINHUA

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that its navy carried out a large-scale operation to destroy the former Bashar al-Assad regime’s fleet.

The strikes destroyed “numerous” vessels armed with sea-to-sea missiles in Mina al-Bayda Bay and the port of Latakia on the Syrian coast in an overnight attack between Monday and Tuesday, it said.

The operation aimed to prevent the fleet’s weaponry from falling into hostile hands, it added.

Separately, the Israeli Air Force has conducted about 250 airstrikes in Syria since the collapse of Assad’s government, Israel’s state-owned Kan TV reported.

Israeli officials said the strikes were intended to destroy advanced weapons that could threaten Israel.

XINHUA

MANILA — About 87,000 people were being evacuated in a central Philippine region Tuesday a day after a volcano briefly erupted with a towering ash plume and superhot streams of gas and debris hurtling down its western slopes.

The latest eruption of Mount Kanlaon on central Negros island did not cause any immediate casualties, but the alert level was raised one level, indicating further and more explosive eruptions may occur.

Volcanic ash fell on a wide area, including Antique province, more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) across seawaters west of the volcano, obscuring visibility and posing health risks, Philippine chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol and other officials said by telephone.

At least six domestic flights and a flight bound for Singapore were canceled and two local flights were diverted in the region Monday and Tuesday due to Kanlaon’s eruption, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.

The mass evacuations were being carried out urgently in towns and villages nearest the western and southern slopes of Kanlaon which were blanketed by its ash, including in La Castellana town in Negros Occidental where nearly 47,000 people have to be evacuated out of a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) danger zone, the Office of Civil Defense said.

More than 6,000 have moved to evacuation centers aside from those who have temporarily transferred to the homes of relatives in La Castellana by Tuesday morning, the town’s mayor, Rhumyla Mangilimutan, told The Associated Press by telephone.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said authorities were ready to provide support to large numbers of displaced villagers and that his social welfare secretary flew early Tuesday to the affected region.

“We are ready to support the families who have been evacuated outside the 6-kilometer danger zone,” Marcos told reporters.

Government scientists were monitoring the air quality due to the risk of contamination from toxic volcanic gases that may require more people to be evacuated from areas affected by Monday’s eruption.

Disaster-response contingents were rapidly establishing evacuation centers and seeking supplies of face masks, food and hygiene packs ahead of the Christmas season, traditionally a peak time for holiday travel and family celebrations in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

Authorities also shut schools and imposed a nighttime curfew in the most vulnerable areas.

The Philippines’ Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the nearly four-minute eruption of Kanlaon volcano on Monday afternoon had caused a pyroclastic density current — a superhot stream of gas, ash, debris and rocks that can incinerate anything in its path.

“It’s a one-time but major eruption,” Bacolcol told the AP, adding that volcanologists were assessing if Monday’s eruption spewed old volcanic debris and rocks clogged in and near the summit crater or was caused by rising magma from underneath.

Few volcanic earthquakes were detected ahead of Monday’s explosion, Bacolcol said.

The alert level around Kanlaon was placed on Monday to the third-highest of a five-step warning system, indicating “magmatic eruption” may have begun and may progress to further explosive eruptions.

The 2,435-meter (7,988-foot) volcano, one of the country’s 24 most-active volcanoes, last erupted in June sending hundreds of villagers to emergency shelters.

In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said.

Located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year and is among the countries most prone to natural disasters.

AN-AP

BRUSSELS, Belgium — This year has been “particularly deadly” for journalists with 104 killed worldwide, over half of them being in Gaza, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said Tuesday.

The toll for 2024 is down on the 129 deaths in 2023 but still makes it “one of the worst years” on record, IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger told AFP.

According to the figures collated by the press group 55 Palestinian media workers were killed in 2024 in the face of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

“Since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, at least 138 Palestinian journalists have been killed,” the federation said.

Bellanger condemned the “massacre that is happening before the eyes of the world.”

He said that “many journalists were targeted” in Gaza deliberately, while others had found themselves “in the wrong place, at the wrong time” in the fighting.

After the Middle East, the second most dangerous region for journalists was Asia with 20 killed, including six in Pakistan, five in Bangladesh and three in India.

In Europe, the war in Ukraine continued to claim journalist victims with four killed in 2024.

Meanwhile, the IFJ said that across the globe 520 journalists were in prison — a sharp uptick on the 427 being held behind bars last year.

China topped the list as the worst jailer of reporters with 135 being detained, including in Hong Kong, where the authorities have been criticized by Western nations for imposing national security laws quashing dissent and other freedoms.

The IFJ’s count for the number of journalists killed is typically far higher than that of Reporters Without Borders, due to different counting methods.

In 2023 Reporters Without Borders said 54 journalists and two collaborators were killed in the course of their work. The NGO will publish its own figure for 2024 later this week.

AN-AFP

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials are communicating with people on the ground in Syria to seek information about Austin Tice, an American journalist captured more than 12 years ago in Syria, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday.

“This is a top priority for us – to find Austin Tice, to locate the prison where he may be held, get him out, get him home safely to his family,” Sullivan said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“”We are talking through the Turks and others to people on the ground in Syria to say, ‘Help us with this. Help us get Austin Tice home.’”

Tice, a former U.S. Marine and a freelance journalist, was 31 when he was abducted in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted by Syrian rebels who seized the capital Damascus on Sunday. Syria had denied he was being held.

Assad fled to Russia after a 13-year civil war and six decades of his family’s autocratic rule.

President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the U.S. government believes Tice is alive.

“We believe he’s alive. We think we can get him back but we have no direct evidence to that yet.

And Assad should be held accountable,” Biden said. “We have to identify where he is.”

Sullivan met Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, on Friday at the White House after she told journalists at the National Press Club that she believed her son was alive.

REUTERS

ANKARA — Two Turkish military helicopters collided in midair on Monday, causing one of them to crash and killing six military personnel on board, officials said. The second helicopter landed safely.

Five of the victims died at the site of the accident while a sixth died of his injuries at a hospital, the defense ministry said.

The crash occurred in the southwestern province of Isparta during regular training flights, according to the region’s governor, Abdullah Erin.

A brigadier general who was in charge of the military aviation school was among the victims, he said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the two helicopters to come into contact. Erin said an investigation has been launched.

The private DHA news agency said the UH-1 utility helicopter crashed into a field and split in two. The second helicopter landed some 400 meters (yards) away.

AN-AP

ROME — Two people were found dead and eight were injured after a massive explosion at Eni fuel spot near central Italy’s Florence on Monday, according to Italy’s media Corriere della Sera.

Another four remain missing, reported the local media.

XINHUA

THE HAGUE — A sixth body has been recovered from the rubble of the apartment building in The Hague, the Netherlands, that partially collapsed after a powerful explosion on Saturday, Dutch emergency services said Monday.

The explosion and subsequent fire at the apartment building have claimed the lives of six people so far. Emergency services continue to search for additional victims, with a small section of the disaster site still to be examined.

Police have identified four of the six victims, including a child. Authorities noted that the identification process has been challenging due to the intense fire that burned in the rubble for hours after the explosion.

Five people were rescued from the rubble, with four of them hospitalized.

Efforts to determine the cause of the explosion are ongoing. Local authorities have announced the launch of a criminal investigation.

The blast, which occurred in the northeastern Mariahoeve district, caused a partial collapse of the apartment building on Tarwekamp Street.

XINHUA

JERUSALEM — A drone, likely launched from Yemen, exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israeli city of Yavne on Monday, causing no injuries, the Israeli army and emergency services said.

“Following the initial report, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that likely originated in Yemen impacted in the area of Yavne,” the army said.

A spokesperson for Israeli emergency service MDA said reports were received of “an explosion on the 15th floor balcony” of the building in Yavne, and that after a search, no injuries were reported.

Houthi rebels in Yemen, supported by Iran, have launched several attacks against Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been at war with militant group Hamas for over a year.

In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

AN-AFP