03/05/2025

SATURDAY | MAY 3, 2025

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Air strikes launched in Damascus over Druze violence

Ship carrying activists, aid attacked VALLETTA: A ship carrying humanitarian aid and activists heading for Gaza was bombed by drones while in international waters off Malta on Friday, said international NGO The Freedom Flotilla Coalition. It uploaded video footage showing a fire on one of its ships but did not indicate who could have been responsible for the attack. There was also no immediate indication whether anyone had been hurt. “The drone attack appears to have specifically targeted the ship’s generator and the vessel is at risk of sinking with 30 international human rights activists on board,“ it said in a social media post. The ship issued an SOS distress call after being hit 31.5km east of Malta, to which Cyprus responded by dispatching a vessel, it said. The coalition is campaigning to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Israel’s offensive on the enclave has killed more than 52,000, according to Palestinian health officials. Another coalition ship on a similar mission to Gaza in 2010 was stopped and boarded by Israeli troops, and nine activists died. Other ships have similarly been stopped and boarded, without loss of life. – Reuters

slogan, only leads to further deterioration and division.” Israel sees the new forces in Syria as extremists and has warned them to protect the Druze minority, with Defence Minister Israel Katz saying his country would otherwise respond “with significant force”. Israel carried out strikes near Damascus on Wednesday and has sent troops into the demilitarised buffer zone that used to separate Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights. Two wounded Syrian Druze have been evacuated to northern Israel for treatment, according to the Israeli military. At a meeting of Druze leaders, elders and armed groups in the city of Sweida, the community agreed that it was “an inseparable part of the unified Syrian homeland”, a spokesperson said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting this week involved security forces, allied fighters and local Druze groups. The Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said the 102 death toll included 30 government loyalists, 21 Druze fighters and 10 civilians, including Sahnaya’s former mayor Husam Warwar. In the southern Druze heartland province of Sweida, it said 40 Druze gunmen were killed, including 35 in an “ambush” on the Sweida-Damascus road on Wednesday. The monitor told AFP that the fighters were killed “by forces affiliated with the ministries of interior and defence, and gunmen associated with them”. Truces were reached on Tuesday in Jaramana and a day later in Sahnaya. The Syrian government announced that it was deploying forces in Sahnaya to ensure security and accused “outlaw groups” of instigating clashes. – AFP

prevent the continuation of these crimes”. The Druze killings come after a wave of massacres in March in Syria’s Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast, in which security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly from Assad’s Alawite community, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani on Thursday called for “national unity” as “the solid foundation for any process of stability or revival”. “Any call for external intervention, under any pretext or

o Spiritual leader condemns ‘genocidal campaign’ against community

DAMASCUS: Israel’s military said yesterday it launched air strikes near the presidential palace in Damascus after the country’s defence minister threatened intervention if Syrian authorities failed to protect the Druze minority. Syrian Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri has condemned the “genocidal campaign” against his community. The violence poses a serious

challenge to Islamist authorities in Syria, who ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel has since attacked hundreds of Syrian military sites and yesterday announced that its “fighter jets struck adjacent to the area of the palace” in Damascus. Sheikh Hikmat called on Thursday for immediate intervention by “international forces to maintain peace and

RUBBLE ROMP ... Displaced Palestinian children playing in a damaged lecture hall at the Islamic University campus in Gaza. – AFPPIC

Israel claims missile launched from Yemen intercepted JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said yesterday it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, where Houthi rebels recently claimed responsibility for a missile launch that targeted Israel. Sunday they had launched a “hypersonic missile” at the Nevatim air base in Israel’s Negev desert.

took office in January, the US air campaign has intensified, with almost daily strikes for more than a month. Houthi-controlled media said this week US strikes on the movement’s stronghold of Saada killed at least 68 people, all Africans being held at a “centre for illegal migrants”. – AFP

They have launched repeated missile and drone attacks on Israel and merchant shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, prompting retaliatory air strikes by Israel, Britain and the United States against Houthi targets. Since US President Donald Trump

The Houthis are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, portraying themselves as defenders of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have not claimed responsibility for the launch yesterday but said on

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