There are protests in Syria. Assad supporters have apparently attacked Syrian security forces. All developments in the news blog.
1.12 a.m.: Israel’s military says it has once again attacked terrorists from the Islamist Hamas in the north of the embattled Gaza Strip. It was said that Hamas fighters had planned an imminent drone attack against Israeli troops in the area of the city of Gaza in the north of the sealed-off coastal area. Before the “precise attack” by the Israeli air force and artillery, numerous measures were taken to reduce the danger to civilians. The army did not provide any information about possible victims. Their information could not be independently verified.
1.10 a.m.: According to activists, 17 security forces from the interim government were killed in a suspected attack by supporters of deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. As the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported last night, local security forces wanted to arrest the former director of Assad’s military justice administration at his home in the western town of Tartus when young gunmen opened fire on them.
Three of the perpetrators were also killed in the attack by Assad supporters. The Interior Ministry of the interim government had previously warned against attempts by remaining Assad supporters to destabilize the country.
8:51 p.m.: Thousands of people protested in Damascus and other Syrian cities after the destruction of a shrine. This was reported by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Accordingly, the shrine of a Muslim sheikh, who is revered by Alawites, was set on fire in the northwestern province of Aleppo.
The Alawites are a religious minority with Muslim-Shiite roots who now primarily live in Syria. The family of the deposed long-term ruler Bashar al-Assad also belongs to the Alawites.
The demonstrators reportedly demanded that those responsible for the crime be held accountable. According to the interim interior ministry, the shrine was already vandalized by unknown groups last month when the rebel offensive on Aleppo began.
4:42 p.m.: The rebel group Hajat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria has burned large quantities of confiscated drugs, including around a million pills of the stimulant Captagon. A video journalist from the AFP news agency observed drugs being set on fire in the courtyard of a building belonging to the former Syrian security apparatus in the capital Damascus. “We found a large amount of Captagon, about a million pills,” said a representative of the new rulers.
The drug discovery was a warehouse containing, among other things, cannabis, the painkiller Tramadol and around 50 bags of pink Captagon pills, as the AFP journalist noted.
Another member of the newly installed security forces said the cache of drugs and alcohol was discovered during an inspection of the neighborhood where deposed leader Bashar al-Assad’s security apparatus had its offices. The drugs and alcohol were destroyed in order to “protect Syrian society” and cut off smuggling routes that were used for the Assad family’s business activities.
The same security force official also said it was not the first time that seized drug supplies had been destroyed. The new security forces discovered drug warehouses and laboratories in other places and “destroyed them in an appropriate manner.”
The booming trade in the amphetamine-like Captagon had made Syria the largest drug state in the world under Assad, who was overthrown on December 8th. Captagon was by far Syria’s most important export, dwarfing all legal exports, AFP research based on official 2022 data showed. The driving force behind the Captagon trade was military commander Maher al-Assad, brother of the former head of state.
