Russian Forces Kill 34 Fighters in Syria’s Idlib 

26 October 2023, Syria, Idlib: People walk next to a destroyed vehicle after a missile strike that targeted the city of Idlib by the Syrian regime. (dpa)
26 October 2023, Syria, Idlib: People walk next to a destroyed vehicle after a missile strike that targeted the city of Idlib by the Syrian regime. (dpa)
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Russian Forces Kill 34 Fighters in Syria’s Idlib 

26 October 2023, Syria, Idlib: People walk next to a destroyed vehicle after a missile strike that targeted the city of Idlib by the Syrian regime. (dpa)
26 October 2023, Syria, Idlib: People walk next to a destroyed vehicle after a missile strike that targeted the city of Idlib by the Syrian regime. (dpa)

Russian forces have killed 34 fighters and wounded more than 60 in air strikes on targets in Syria's Idlib governorate, Russia's Interfax reported late on Sunday, citing the deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria.

"The Russian Aerospace Forces carried out air strikes in the province of Idlib on targets of illegal armed groups involved in shelling the positions of Syrian government troops," Interax cited Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit as saying of the Saturday attack.

Kulit said that in 24 hours, positions of Syrian government troops were attacked seven times.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the Russian report.

The Syrian army has blamed opposition factions, who it says are extremists, for attacks on government-held areas in Idlib and Aleppo provinces and denies indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas under opposition control.

Opposition officials say both Moscow and Damascus are taking advantage of the world's preoccupation with the Gaza conflict to escalate pounding of a region where more than three million inhabitants refuse to live under the authoritarian rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Kulit also reiterated frequent Russian accusations of aircraft violation in Syria's airspace by the US-led coalition saying that a number of jet and drone flights were not coordinated with the Russian side.

Earlier, a source told Reuters that the United States has carried out two air strikes against Iran-aligned groups in Syria.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".