File image.
There will be no “cross-border humanitarian corridor” to al-Suwayda, a Syrian official told the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on August 20, effectively denying recent reports of a plan to ship aid directly from Israel to Druze in the southern Syrian governorate.
Israel intervened in al-Suwayda last month, stopping an attack on the governorate by the forces of Syria’s Islamist-led interim government and affiliated Bedouin tribes.
The intervention, which granted Druze de-facto control over much of the governorate, was justified by Israel’s historic relationship with its own Druze community.
Since then, the government put al-Suwayda under siege, allowing the entry of limited supplies each day. Reports later revealed a plan backed by the United States, which brokered a ceasefire in the governorate, to open an aid corridor from Israel to al-Suwayda.
“There will be no cross-border humanitarian corridor, and humanitarian aid will be provided exclusively in direct coordination with state institutions in the capital, Damascus, to ensure safe and orderly access to all those in need, including al-Suwayda governorate and other areas,” the official told SANA.
“The Syrian government has granted relevant UN organizations the necessary facilities and approvals to carry out their humanitarian missions. Syrian national and relief convoys continue their regular work, reflecting the Syrian Arab Republic’s commitment to meeting humanitarian needs in cooperation with its international partners,” the source added.
The statement came just hours after SANA confirmed that the country’s foreign minister held a rare meeting with an Israeli delegation in the French capital, Paris, a day earlier.
According to the news agency, Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani met with Israeli officials to discuss “de-escalation and non-interference in Syria’s internal affairs, reaching understandings that support stability in the region, monitoring the ceasefire in al-Suwayda governorate, and reactivating the 1974 agreement.”
Also during the day, a force from the UN Disengagement Observer Force, which is tasked with monitoring the 1974 agreement between Syria and Israel, was spotted near al-Suwayda.
It was later announced that government forces withdrew, temporarily, from the town of al-Sweimra to allow the Red Crescent to recover the bodies of slain Druze fighters and civilians from there. Multiple bodies in advanced stages of decomposition.
Consequently, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, updated the toll from the battle of al-Suwayda to 1,779. The figure includes 554 civilians, mostly Druze, who were executed by government forces and Bedouin fighters.
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All in all, the situation in al-Suwayda remains tense. While the Syrian government is attempting to portray the latest meeting in Paris as a success, there has been no acknowledgment of this from the Israeli side. More escalation in the governorate is to be expected.
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stop calling that bunch of western backed animals the government.
al-qaeda/isis have free hands, cia moves them from afghanistan to syria and back. these two countries are now controlled by terrorists. central asian terrorist groups are allies of both regimes, taliban and hts. read front page article: http://www.north-afghanistan.blogspot.com
why did russia recognize the taliban government even though it forbade girls from learning to read and write?
why did the us spend years supporting islamists fighting against the russians and the afghan government when girls could be educated and there were even women doctors and teachers? or there wouldn’t be a taliban now, can you answer that clown?
i hope that the russians will be angered and demand that putin remove the bases from syria.
russia is a criminal enemy of women.
humanitarian aid is now an israeli weapon of war. don’t ask them why they do this. the answer you get will be repulsive .
sana has always been a bunch of lies and sana will always be a bunch of lies. and what would you do? let even sweida die of hunger or hts?
i hope the chinese (or india) drop one big, nice, fat atomic bomb on sana.
hate to admit it but i’m actually honestly hoping israel supports & supplies the druze in syria against savages. sunni bedouin tribes of are extremist jihadis & radical muslims who supported & made up a large percentage of the isis terrorist caliphate. sharaa army of islamic jihadists & barbaric terrorists need just 1 or 2 more embarrassing defeats, more public outrage & international condemnations & he’ll be ousted or killed. deemed weak and ineffective leader.
zionists and wahhabis are both subhumans, preferring one over the other is like preferring beheading to hanging
“subhuman”? 😂 i did say they were savages didn’t i?! and though it is as literal as it is figurative & expressional. but no yu misunderstand. insimply said “i hate to admit it” but i “kind of” hope israelis support the druze against the sunni bedouin tribes and the regimes jihadist wahhabi forces. i didn’t ever anywhere near say i prefer one over the other.
director of the syrian observatory: the mere fact that the paris meeting was held to discuss the fate of sweida is a disgrace to damascus. how can it meet with an israeli minister to determine the status of sweida, a syrian territory whose sovereignty is supposed to be protected? this is a disgrace to syrian diplomacy, not a victory for it.
brigadier general asaad al-zoubi appeared on a satellite channel to deny that the people of sweida were killed by the military operations command.
does this guy want to lead syria? or does he like female kurdish soldiers?
he’s not as crazy as puter, who doesn’t mind that his beloved al sharaa is now killing over a hundred a day.
if sharaa didn’t let his undisciplined forces misbehave & slaughter & kidnap innocent people in suwayda & the march coastal massacre of alawites he could have saved the country. but now he only caused divisions, sectarian strife & separatism to take hold. kurds will not disarm & integrate willfully & understandably so. the druze also would be dumb to do so. he should’ve just been a little more patient & strategical about it.
he should’ve waited, used diplomacy, negotiations & politics with sdf, druze, israel, tribes & let turkey create a few thousand highly trained & disciplined, motivated, well prepared capable brigades of soldiers. & few thousand troops to jordan/turkey to be train security, policing & law enforcement & newly formed criminal detective, investigative & crime prevention units. & then keep routine training regiment regularly rotating in new units & recruits.
he even said they were “followers of al-hijri,” while we documented with audio and video the murderers who carried out the executions, and he refuses to acknowledge this massacre.
un forces entered sweida accompanied by a un delegation. forces from sweida also entered a village from which fighters loyal to damascus had withdrawn following yesterday’s events.
how long will the un believe this war criminal? is a terrorist attack in beijing or shanghai really necessary?
the syrian authorities do not want to be frank with their public about what was agreed upon in paris, nor what the fate of sweida will be, nor where the corridor to reach it will come from—through damascus or across the syrian-jordanian border?
details of the victims, according to documentation by the syrian observatory for human rights:
members of the syrian ministry of defense and public security, along with bedouin gunmen, executed 104 civilians, including five children, during their control of the city of sweida. four of them were in the village of sweimera.one person was killed by gunfire during an armed robbery by unknown gunmen riding a motorcycle on the al-haram money transfer and exchange office in the city of al-tall in the damascus countryside.
an alawite man and his young son were killed when their home was targeted by unknown gunmen in the village of musa al-houla in the western hama countryside. the attackers fled to an unknown location.
a former commander in the 25th division during the regime’s rule and his young son were killed after being directly targeted by gunfire in the town of qamhana, north of hama.
a 23-year-old man from afrin was killed after being lured into an armed ambush in the zabadani area of the damascus countryside. the victim was working on a public transport bus.
a young man shot and killed his twenty-year-old sister inside the family home in a village in the city of afrin, allegedly for honor killing.
a former medical official in aleppo was killed in a new assassination attempt after being shot by unknown gunmen inside his clinic in the bustan al-qasr neighborhood.
an alawite man was killed in the western hama countryside after being shot by unknown gunmen while on his way to work near the village of kafrbo in the hama countryside.
security forces found nine bodies of several people inside a villa in the village of bustan al-basha in the jableh countryside. these bodies belonged to victims who had gone missing during the massacres on the syrian coast that occurred last march.
an isis leader was killed during an airdrop by international coalition helicopters, targeting a house where the leader was hiding in the atmeh camps, north of idlib.
locals found the body of a young man who had been missing since the events of march 7th in the woods near the muzayri’a bridge in the latakia countryside. he had been killed during the events that took place in latakia city in march.
a man and his wife were killed in the village of al-buwaider, east of the town of abu dhuhur in the eastern idlib countryside, by gunfire from his wife’s brother following a family dispute between the two parties.
i hope you know that israelis are not as smart as arabs are stupid.sana’a was already a hotbed of lies under assad, but now the lies are so stupid that i’m surprised that even arabs and monkeys believe this nonsense.
all us inferior americunts pay to lick jew peniz
i’m surprised that you support the genocidal hts, which is systematically destroying syria.
as his forces particularly his loyalist forces are to stretched thin thru out syria especially in coastal region & along frontline area blockade of suwayda & along contact line with kurdish led forces in the northeast. he’s also still prioritizing nation building, diplomatic outreach & political engagement with neighboring countries to fast track improving economic conditions, foreign trade and investment, partnership’s & agreements.
& also securing funding from allies to support government continuity, employee pay, handling of immediate security & military needs & threat management. he also has rival competition, political opponents that want power or influence. & he has his own support base, other political entities, military leaders & commanders, fighters, armed groups & multinational or foreign interests, large multicultural & diverse religious & ethnic minority communities to consider. .
so in the midst of all that due to his undisciplined forces & lack of disciplining them, he’s lost control of the situation due to his own incompetence. economic crisis compounded by anarchy, nonexistent law enforcement or crime fighting, israeli attacks, lawlessness, ethnic conflicts, revenge killings, vigilantism, terrorism, islamic extremism, rampant crime, corruption, violence & abject poverty & armed conflict in south, north & insurgency on the coast.
the united nations are useless and shouldn’t have any role in any individual governance of any nation.
the un has no role as they lack power and they know it. all it does is warning. the un security council is something different though, as it consists of the 5 states: usa, france, uk, china, russia.
i fear that the syrian nation never existed, and there will be no solution until the uyghurs in syria are taught enough to commit a large enough terrorist act in china.
if you look into the root of the circumstances that led to the recent escalation, you will find that the druze were fooled by israhell to rebel. they gathered the local sunni syrians in hospital and burned them alive. there are plenty of witnesses. the bedouins are not stupid and definitely no push-overs. they took revenge. tits for tats. do your own research. don’t live on lies.
druze will suffer the same fate as all minorities in syria. all idiots who thought that by opposing assad would give them self-determination and ‘freedom!’ now they pay the same price as all deluded idiots who put their trust in usrael and the ‘liberal’ west. druze and kurds are fucked! ha-ha!
not if trump has a heart attack. he’s old, he’s fat, and vance and hegseth respect the kurdish peshmerga.
i hope that the uyghurs will be given syrian citizenship. then they will be traveling around the world and smuggled weapons into china. for time, china will destroy syria more than milosevic did vukovar. maybe uyghurs with syrian citizenship will make china drop atomic bombs on damascus.
under assad, the lies of the sana media house were at least logical. now they are as stupid as if the worst psychopaths in a psychiatry ward were writing articles and news in a padded room. such nonsense cannot be believed.
arabs doing what they do best killing each other for the entertainment of crusaders and zionists
syria gives citizenships to uighur terrorists. if, for example, uighur terrorists kill xi jinping, i think that would bring a solution. perhaps then the crusaders and zionists would no longer have anyone to lie to and deceive. but they should extract their own oil from radioactive syria.
are people really that stupid to believe him?