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SYRIA — A Syria war monitor said explosions on Sunday rocked an area near Damascus housing weapons depots used by the toppled government of Bashar Al Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the blasts in the Kisweh area, south of the Syrian capital, may be the result of an Israeli air strike.

The Israeli military, which has struck many military sites in Syria since Assad's fall, told AFP in Jerusalem it did not attack the site.

The Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria, said that "loud blasts resonated in the wider capital area".

The explosions occurred "at ammunition depots of the former regime forces... near the town of Kisweh", sending a thick cloud of smoke billowing over the site, the Observatory said.

An AFP video journalist saw small fires burning in the blackened rubble of a flattened building on the outskirts of the town of Kisweh. Several other one-storey buildings stood undamaged nearby.

The explosions continued into Sunday evening, ringing out across surrounding areas, the journalist said.

Israel, which rarely comments on its actions in neighbouring Syria, has carried out hundreds of air strikes on military sites since Islamist-led forces ousted Assad and seized Damascus last month.

Israel has said it was seeking to prevent weapons from falling into hostile hands.

Most recently, the Observatory said Israeli war planes hit sites of the now defunct Syrian army in the Aleppo area on Friday.

In late December, the Observatory said 11 people died in an explosion at an arms storage facility in the Adra area northeast of Damascus, adding that it was possibly the result of an Israeli strike. Israel denied any involvement.

DAMASCUS — Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria's civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said.

"Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge," ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told AFP in an interview.

The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started in 2011 when president Bashar al-Assad's forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.

Many are believed to have been buried in mass graves after being tortured in Syria's jails during a war that has killed more than half a million people.

Thousands have been released since Islamist-led rebels ousted Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of relatives and friends who went missing.

Spoljaric said the ICRC was working with the caretaker authorities, non-governmental organisations and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data to give families answers as soon as possible.

But "the task is enormous," she said in the interview late Saturday.

"It will take years to get clarity and to be able to inform everybody concerned. And there will be cases we will never (be able) to identify," she added.

"Until recently, we've been following up on 35,000 cases, and since we established a new hotline in December, we are adding another 8,000 requests," Spoljaric said.

"But that is just potentially a portion of the numbers."

Spoljaric said the ICRC was offering the new authorities to "work with us to build the necessary institution and institutional capacities to manage the available data and to protect and gather what... needs to be collected".

Human Rights Watch last month urged the new Syrian authorities to "secure, collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records... that will be vital in future criminal trials".

The rights group also called for cooperation with the ICRC, which could "provide critical expertise" to help safeguard the records and clarify the fate of missing people.

Spoljaric said: "We cannot exclude that data is going to be lost. But we need to work quickly to preserve what exists and to store it centrally to be able to follow up on the individual cases."

More than half a century of brutal rule by the Assad family came to a sudden end in early December after a rapid rebel offensive swept across Syria and took the capital Damascus.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.

GAZA Strip, Palestinian Territories — Rescuers in Gaza said on Saturday that Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory killed at least 26 people, the day after Hamas said peace talks were to resume.

The civil defence agency said a dawn air strike on the home of the Al Ghoula family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.

AFP images from the Gaza City area neighbourhood of Shujaiya showed residents combing through smoking rubble. Bodies including those of small children were lined up on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.

Late on Friday Hamas had said indirect negotiations with Israel were to resume in Qatar that same night for a truce and hostage release deal. There has since been no update.

Hamas said talks would "focus on ensuring the agreement leads to a complete cessation of hostilities [and] the withdrawal of occupation forces".

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged in months of effort that have failed to end nearly 15 months of war.

A key obstacle to a deal has been Israel's reluctance to agree to a lasting ceasefire.

On Thursday, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he had authorised Israeli negotiators to continue talks in Doha.

In December, Qatar expressed optimism that "momentum" was returning to the talks following the US election of Donald Trump, who takes office in 16 days.

But Hamas and Israel then accused each other of setting new conditions and obstacles.

On January 1, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz warned of even more intense retaliatory strikes if rocket fire continued from Gaza and militants did not release hostages they still hold.

Such rocket launches had become rare but have intensified since late December as Israel presses a three-month offensive in the north of the territory.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Ghoula home in Gaza City "was completely destroyed".

"It was a two-storey building and several people are still under the rubble," he said, adding Israeli drones had "also fired on ambulance staff".

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the strike.

 'Everything was shaking'

"A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking," said neighbour Ahmed Mussa.

"It was home to children, women. There wasn't anyone wanted or who posed a threat."

Elsewhere, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike killed five security officers tasked with accompanying aid convoys as they drove through the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Bassal accused Israel of having "deliberately targeted" them to "affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering" of the population.

The army has not yet responded to the accusation.

United Nations rights experts said on Monday that the north Gaza "siege" appears to be part of an effort "to permanently displace the local population as a precursor to Gaza's annexation".

Rescuers said strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed 10 other people, including a child and two other members of the same family, when their house was bombed in Khan Yunis.

AFP images showed Palestine Red Crescent paramedics in Gaza City moving the body of one of their colleagues, his green jacket laid over the blanket that covered his corpse.

The health ministry in Gaza said a total of 136 people had been killed over the previous 48 hours.

Israel's military campaign has killed at least 45,717 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian Authority has ordered the suspension of broadcasts by Qatar-based Al Jazeera and on Thursday accused it of incitement, which the news channel compared to Israeli practices.

Al Jazeera is already banned from broadcasting from Israel amid a long-running feud with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

In September, armed and masked Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah also raided the Al Jazeera office, saying it was "used to incite terror".

The military issued an initial 45-day closure order, prompting the Palestinian foreign ministry at the time to condemn "a flagrant violation" of press freedom.

On Thursday, the PA insisted its own suspension measure was "temporary", adding its decision followed a complaint from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate concerning the network's coverage.

"These measures shall be applied until Al Jazeera chooses to act in accordance with basic media ethics, including its duty to prevent deliberate disinformation, ban the glorification of violence, and end the incitement to armed mutiny," the PA said.

The syndicate, which represents about 3,000 Palestinian journalists, said several had filed complaints against Al Jazeera for "biased media coverage on its platforms, including incitement, misleading reports, and content that stirs internal discord".

The PA's decision includes "temporarily freezing the work of all journalists, employees, crews and affiliated channels until their legal status is rectified due to Al Jazeera's violations of the laws and regulations in force in Palestine", the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported late Wednesday.

The channel aired images of what appeared to be Palestinian security officers entering the network's office in Ramallah and handing over the suspension orders.

Al Jazeera condemned the decision, saying it "aligns with Israeli occupation practices targeting its media teams".

It accused the PA, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank, of "attempting to deter Al Jazeera from covering escalating events in the occupied Palestinian territories" including in Jenin and its refugee camp.

The PA's security forces have been engaged in weeks of deadly clashes with armed militants in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

Tensions over coverage 

Hamas, rivals of Fateh which dominates the PA, condemned the decision to ban the network.

"This decision aligns with a series of recent arbitrary actions taken by the Authority to curtail public rights and freedoms, and to reinforce its security grip on the Palestinian people," Hamas said in a statement.

"We call on the Palestinian Authority to immediately reverse this decision ... It is crucial to ensure the continuation of media coverage that exposes the occupation and supports the steadfastness of our people."

Islamic Jihad, allied with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, also criticised the decision.

"We condemn the authority's decision to close Al Jazeera's office in Palestine when our people and our cause are in dire need to convey their suffering to the world," the group said in a statement.

Tensions between the network and the Fateh movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas have risen in recent weeks following the channel's coverage of the clashes in Jenin.

In late December, the channel condemned what it said was an "incitement campaign" by Fateh against the network in some areas of the occupied West Bank.

"This campaign follows the network's coverage of clashes between Palestinian security forces and resistance fighters in Jenin," it said in a statement at the time.

The security forces of the PA have been engaged in deadly clashes with gunmen since early December, triggered by the arrests of several fighters.

They are fighting members of the Jenin Battalion, most of whom are affiliated with either Islamic Jihad or Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.

Fateh's rivals have accused PA forces of aiding Israel.

Al Jazeera continues to work in Gaza, where Hamas seized control in 2007.

The violence in Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold of armed groups and a frequent target of Israeli military raids, has killed 11 people including PA security personnel, militants and civilians.

GENEVA — UN experts on Thursday decried Israel's raid on an embattled hospital in northern Gaza, demanding an end to the "blatant assault" on health rights in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Reiterating charges that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza -- something the Israeli government strongly denies -- two independent United Nations rights experts said they were "horrified" by the raid last Friday on Kamal Adwan, northern Gaza's last functioning major hospital.

"For well over a year into the genocide, Israel's blatant assault on the right to health in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory is plumbing new depths of impunity," the experts said in a statement.

"We are horrified and concerned by reports from northern Gaza."

Israel's military, which did not offer an immediate response to the comments, has said it killed more than 20 suspected militants and detained more than 240, including the hospital's director, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, describing him as a suspected Hamas militant.

Francesca Albanese, the outspoken and controversial independent UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, and Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health, said they were "gravely concerned" at Safiyeh's detention and demanded his "immediate release".

"Yet, another doctor to be harassed, kidnapped and arbitrarily detained by the occupation forces, in his case for defying evacuation orders to leave his patients and colleagues behind," they said.

"This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realisation of the right to health in Gaza."

UN special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the world body.

The experts also highlighted "disturbing reports" that Israeli forces allegedly carried out extrajudicial executions of some people near the hospitals, including a Palestinian man reportedly holding a white flag.

They pointed to figures provided by the health ministry in Hamas-led Gaza indicating that at least 1,057 Palestinian health and medical professionals have been killed since the war erupted following the Palestinian group's October 7, 2023 attack inside Israel.

"Under occupation, intentional assaults on healthcare facilities have the potential to expose individuals to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and may constitute a war crime," the experts said.

"In Gaza, this is clearly part of a well-established pattern of genocide, for which Israeli leaders will have to be held accountable."

RIYADh, Saudi Arabia — Ministers from Syria's transitional government held talks in Saudi Arabia on Thursday on their first foreign visit since they toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad last month.

"Through this first visit in the history of free Syria, we aspire to open a new, bright page in Syrian-Saudi relations that befits the long shared history between the two countries," interim Foreign Minister Assaad Al Shibani posted on social media after arriving in Riyadh late on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia severed ties with Assad's government in 2012 and backed Syrian rebels seeking to overthrow him early in the country's civil war.

But last year, Riyadh restored ties with Assad's government and was instrumental in Syria's return to the Arab League, ending its regional isolation.

Now Syria's new leadership is eager for Saudi investment to help rebuild the country's infrastructure, which has been shattered by more than a decade of war.

Shibani was accompanied by Defence Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra and General Intelligence Service chief Anas Khattab, and the three men held talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan and Defence Minister Prince Khalid Bin Salman, Saudi state television reported.

Last month, a Saudi delegation met Syria's new leader Ahmed Al Sharaa in Damascus, a source close to the Saudi government told AFP at the time.

Sharaa heads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al Sham group that led the rebel offensive that ousted Assad on December 8.

Last week, in an interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television, Sharaa said Saudi Arabia "will certainly have a large role in Syria's future", pointing to "a big investment opportunity for all neighbouring countries".

TEHRAN — Iran held rallies in its major cities on Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike in neighbouring Iraq.

Demonstrators in Tehran chanted "Down with America" and "Down with Israel" as they held up photographs of the slain general.

Commemorations were also held in other cities, including Soleimani's hometown Kerman, state television images showed.

Soleimani was seen as the key sponsor of the so-called "axis of resistance", an alliance of Middle East militant groups that Iran supported to counter Israel and its US ally but which suffered heavy blows last year.

He was killed in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020 on orders from then-president Donald Trump, who is about to return to office for a second term.

Soleimani was a popular figure in Iran and foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei called him "commander of hearts" in a post on social media platform X.

"Great commanders are not conquerors of known territories in geography, they are conquerors of hearts, and that is why their conquests remain forever," Baqaei said.

The "axis of resistance" fostered by Soleimani took heavy blows during 2024.

The rule of the Assad clan in Syria, Iran allies for nearly 45 years, collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels, while both Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Israeli military.

A memorial service for Soleimani in Kerman in January 2024 was the scene of Iran's deadliest attack since 1978. Twin bombs claimed by the Daesh  group killed more than 90 people and wounded hundreds.

SANAA — Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels said Tuesday that they had fired two missiles at Israel, hours after the Israeli military said it had intercepted a projectile launched from the country.

"The first [attack] targeted Ben Gurion Airport" in Tel Aviv, and the second was fired at a power station south of Jerusalem, a Huthi military statement said.

The rebels also said they had attacked the American aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. There was no immediate comment from the US military.

Late on Monday, the Israeli military said it had shot down a missile launched from Yemen before it crossed into Israeli territory.

The Huthis, who control much of war-torn Yemen, have been firing missiles and drones at Israel, and at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Last week, Israeli fighter jets carried out retaliatory strikes that killed four people at Sanaa international airport, where the World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was waiting for a flight.

DAMASCUS — About half of school-age children in Syria are missing out on education after nearly 14 years of civil war, Save the Children told AFP on Monday, calling for "immediate action".

The overwhelming majority of Syrian children are also in need of immediate humanitarian assistance including food, the charity said, with at least half of them requiring psychological help to overcome war trauma.

"Around 3.7 million children are out of school and they require immediate action to reintegrate them in school," Rasha Muhrez, the charity's Syria director, told AFP in an interview from the capital Damascus, adding "this is more than half of the children at school age".

While Syrians have endured more than a decade of conflict, the rapid rebel offensive that toppled president Bashar al-Assad on December 8 caused further disruption, with the UN reporting more than 700,000 people newly displaced.

"Some of the schools were used as shelters again due to the new wave of displaced people," Muhrez told AFP.

The war, which began in 2011 after Assad's brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters, has devastated Syria's economy and public infrastructure leaving many children vulnerable.

Muhrez said "about 7.5 million children are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance".

"We need to make sure the children can come back to education, to make sure that they have access again to health, to food and that they are protected," Muhrez said.

"Children were deprived of their basic rights including access to education, to healthcare, to protection, to shelter," by the civil war, but also natural disasters and economic crises, she said.

 'Trauma' 

Syria's war spiralled rapidly from 2011 into a major civil conflict that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

More than one in four Syrians now live in extreme poverty according to the World Bank, with the deadly February 2023 earthquake bringing more misery.

Many children who grew up during the war have been traumatised by the violence, said Muhrez.

"This had a huge impact, a huge traumatic impact on them, for various reasons, for losses: a parent, a sibling, a friend, a house," she said.

According to Save the Children, around 6.4 million children are in need of psychological help.

Muhrez also warned that "continued coercive measures and sanctions on Syria have the largest impact on the Syrian people themselves".

Syria has been under strict Western sanctions aimed at Assad's government, including from the United States and European Union, since early in the war.

On Sunday, Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa expressed hope that the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump would lift sanctions.

"It's very difficult for us to continue responding to the needs and to reach people in need with limited resources with these restrictive measures," she said.