The new Syrian leadership appoints two ministers. The Israeli government criticizes Pope Francis. All developments in the news blog.
6:28 p.m.: The new de facto ruler in Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, says he will not tolerate the possession of weapons outside of state control in his country. At the same time, he announced that he would announce the new structure of the Syrian armed forces in the next few days.
4:35 p.m.: According to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, there will be no place in Syria in the future for the Kurdish militia PKK-YPG. During a visit to Damascus, Fidan said the militants were illegally occupying Syrian territory. At the same time, Fidan is in favor of ending all the sanctions imposed against the Assad regime in order to be able to rebuild Syria. After a meeting with the HTS leadership, Fidan also emphasized that the international community must interact with the new government in Damascus.
11:02 a.m.: Turkish occupation troops are said to have used a drone to fire on a vehicle in Hassake province in Syria, killing three civilians. This is reported by the Kurdish news agency Hawar. Two injured people, including a woman, later succumbed to their serious injuries, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. This means the number of deaths has risen to five.
The Kurdish security forces in the region spoke of a “crime in a series of blatant violations of international law and human rights.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday that it was “time to wipe out the terrorist groups that exist in Syria” – and in this context specifically named the IS militia and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and their “allies”. Ankara views the Kurdish YPG units as dominant within the SDF as such.
10:59 a.m.: The rebel-led interim government in Syria has appointed a foreign minister and a defense minister, according to official sources. Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani is taking over the Foreign Ministry, reports the former state agency Sana on Telegram. According to the interim government, the new defense minister will be agricultural engineer Marhaf Abu Kasra.
Al-Shaibani has been active in the opposition since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in spring 2011. Syria was deeply divided during the civil war. Ruler Bashar al-Assad took brutal action against any opposition forces and controlled around two-thirds of the country until his fall. In the northwest, the Islamist group Haiat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) founded a parallel administration in 2017.
Shaibani had set up the political affairs department there. He is said to have worked in the humanitarian sector and for foreign affairs. According to informed circles, he has established good connections with the United Nations, among others. Abu Kasra was born in the town of Halfaja in the outskirts of Hama. He is one of the most famous leaders of the HTS.
8.10 a.m.: Israel has rejected criticism from Pope Francis of its military actions in the Gaza Strip. The Pope’s comments are “particularly disappointing” because they have nothing to do with Israel’s “real” fight “against jihadist terrorism,” explains the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The Pope should stop “using double standards and holding the Jewish state and its people solely responsible.”
The Pope spoke at an audience on Saturday about an Israeli airstrike in the north of the Gaza Strip in which, according to the Hamas-controlled Civil Defense, ten members of a family were killed on Friday, including seven children. Israel’s army rejected the claims and said it hit “several terrorists operating in a military structure of the Hamas terrorist organization” in the attack.
The Pope said at the audience: “Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, not an act of war.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded in response to the actions of the radical Islamic group Hamas: “Cruelty is when terrorists hide behind children when they try to murder Israeli children; cruelty is when terrorists hold 100 hostages, including a baby and children, for 442 days and abuse.” Unfortunately, the Pope decided to “ignore all of this.”
