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‘I’m Destroyed’: UN Envoys Meet Victims of Gaza War

A delegation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) arrives at El-Arish airport in North Sinai, Egypt, 11 December 2023. (EPA)
A delegation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) arrives at El-Arish airport in North Sinai, Egypt, 11 December 2023. (EPA)
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‘I’m Destroyed’: UN Envoys Meet Victims of Gaza War

A delegation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) arrives at El-Arish airport in North Sinai, Egypt, 11 December 2023. (EPA)
A delegation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) arrives at El-Arish airport in North Sinai, Egypt, 11 December 2023. (EPA)

UN Security Council ambassadors traveled to Egypt Monday to meet Gazan victims of the war between Israel and Hamas, days after the United States blocked a ceasefire resolution.

The informal one-day trip organized by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt came amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza, described as a "graveyard" by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Around a dozen ambassadors took part from countries including Russia and Britain.

But the US, which vetoed the Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire on Friday, did not send a representative and neither did France.

The envoys visited a hospital in El-Arish near the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, treating people who had been evacuated from the conflict.

Among the people they met was Wafaa Asaad, a 27-year-old from Gaza who was heavily pregnant when her house was hit by an Israeli strike, killing her husband and injuring her two daughters.

She was evacuated to Egypt for medical treatment and had an arm and leg amputated, but miraculously managed to give birth just hours after crossing the border, her sister Alaa told AFP.

"Our message to the UN is we want the war to stop," Alaa said, her newborn niece laying on a bed beside her.

Ecuador's envoy Jose de la Gasca told AFP he was "destroyed" by the visit to the hospital.

"I just met a young mother who lost a kid and has another little girl who is wounded," he said.

"I don't ever want to see again what I have just seen. It's horrible."

The diplomats were later due to visit the Rafah crossing, the only gateway into Gaza.

Departures via the crossing are tightly controlled, with only foreign nationals and severely wounded people allowed to leave Gaza in most circumstances.

'Lack absolutely everything'

Speaking at the start of the trip, UAE envoy Lana Nusseibeh said the trip was not official Security Council work, and members were taking part on their own "national and personal" initiatives.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, briefed the envoys on the humanitarian situation before he headed to Gaza for his third visit since the start of the war in October.

There is "deep frustration, disappointment and some outrage... (that) we can't even reach a consensus for a ceasefire," Lazzarini said.

"There is no real safe place in the Gaza Strip. Even the UN premises currently hosting more than one million people have been hit," he added.

"Hunger is prevailing in Gaza. More and more people haven't eaten for one day, two days, three days... people lack absolutely everything."

The war was triggered when Hamas, the Palestinian group that runs Gaza, carried out the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures, and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza.

Israel has responded with a military offensive that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 17,997 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

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Arab World

Iraq’s Newly Elected Parliament Holds First Session

A view of the Iraqi Parliament building in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (AP)
A view of the Iraqi Parliament building in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (AP)
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Iraq’s Newly Elected Parliament Holds First Session

A view of the Iraqi Parliament building in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (AP)
A view of the Iraqi Parliament building in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (AP)

Iraq's newly elected parliament convened ​on Monday for its first session since the November national election, opening the ‌way for ‌lawmakers ‌to begin ⁠the ​process ‌of forming a new government.

Parliament is due to elect a speaker and ⁠two deputies ‌during its first meeting. ‍

Lawmakers ‍must then ‍choose a new president by within 30 days of ​the first session.

The president will subsequently ⁠ask the largest bloc in parliament to form a government, a process that in Iraq typically drags on for ‌months.

Arab World

Death Toll in Attack in Syria's Latakia Rises to 4, 108 Injured

Syrian security forces are deployed in the city of Latakia, Syria, 28 December 2025. (EPA)
Syrian security forces are deployed in the city of Latakia, Syria, 28 December 2025. (EPA)
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Death Toll in Attack in Syria's Latakia Rises to 4, 108 Injured

Syrian security forces are deployed in the city of Latakia, Syria, 28 December 2025. (EPA)
Syrian security forces are deployed in the city of Latakia, Syria, 28 December 2025. (EPA)

Authorities in Syria's Latakia province announced on Monday that the death toll has risen to four from the armed attack carried out by remnants of the ousted regime on Sunday.

It added that 108 people were injured in the violence.

The Syrian Defense Ministry announced on Sunday the deployment of military forces in the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartus in wake of the attack against security forces and civilians during protests.

State television said a member of the security forces was killed and others were injured while they were protecting protests in Latakia.

Head of the security forces in the Latakia province Abdulaziz al-Ahmed said the attack was carried out by terrorist members of the former regime.

Al-Ahmed added that masked gunmen were spotted at the protests and they were identified as members of Coastal Shield Brigade and Al-Jawad Brigade terrorist groups, reported the official SANA news agency.

Arab World

Syria Secures Assad-Era Mass Grave Revealed by Reuters and Opens Criminal Investigation

A drone view of the mass grave site in the desert near the eastern Syrian town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. (Reuters)
A drone view of the mass grave site in the desert near the eastern Syrian town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. (Reuters)
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Syria Secures Assad-Era Mass Grave Revealed by Reuters and Opens Criminal Investigation

A drone view of the mass grave site in the desert near the eastern Syrian town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. (Reuters)
A drone view of the mass grave site in the desert near the eastern Syrian town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. (Reuters)

Syria’s government has ordered soldiers to guard a mass grave created to conceal atrocities under Bashar al-Assad and has opened a criminal investigation, following a Reuters report that revealed a yearslong conspiracy by the fallen dictatorship to hide thousands of bodies on the remote ​desert site.

The site, in the Dhumair desert east of Damascus, was used during Assad’s rule as a military weapons depot, according to a former Syrian army officer with knowledge of the operation.

It was later emptied of personnel in 2018 to ensure secrecy for a plot that involved unearthing the bodies of thousands of victims of the dictatorship buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus and trucking them an hour’s drive away to Dhumair.

The plot, orchestrated by the dictator’s inner circle, was called “Operation Move Earth.”

Soldiers are stationed at the Dhumair site again, this time by the government that overthrew Assad.

The Dhumair military installation was also reactivated as a barracks and arms depot in November, after seven years of disuse, according to an army officer posted there in early December, a military official and Sheikh Abu Omar Tawwaq, who is the security chief of Dhumair.

The Dhumair site ‌was completely unprotected over ‌the summer, when Reuters journalists made repeated visits after discovering the existence of a mass grave ‌there.

Within ⁠weeks ​of the ‌report in October, the new government created a checkpoint at the entrance to the military installation where the site lies, according to a soldier stationed there who spoke to Reuters in mid-December. Visitors to the site now need access permits from the Defense Ministry.

Satellite images reviewed by Reuters since late November show new vehicle activity around the main base area.

The military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the reactivation of the base is part of efforts to “secure control over the country and prevent hostile parties from exploiting this open strategic area.” The road through the desert connects one of ISIS’ remaining Syrian strongholds with Damascus.

POLICE INVESTIGATION

In November, police opened an investigation into the grave, photographing it, carrying out land surveys and interviewing witnesses, according to Jalal Tabash, head of the ⁠al-Dhumair police station. Among those interviewed by police was Ahmed Ghazal, a key source for the Reuters investigation that exposed the mass grave.

“I told them all the details I told you about the ‌operation and what I witnessed during those years,” said Ghazal, a mechanic who repaired trucks ‍carrying bodies that broke down at the Dhumair grave site.

Ghazal confirmed ‍that during the time of “Operation Move Earth,” the military installation appeared vacant except for the soldiers involved in accompanying the convoys.

Syria’s Information Ministry ‍did not respond to requests for comment about the re-activation of the base or the investigation into the mass grave.

The National Commission for Missing Persons, which was established after Assad’s ouster to investigate the fate of tens of thousands of Syrians who vanished under his rule, told Reuters it is in the process of training personnel and creating laboratories in order to meet international standards for mass grave exhumations.

Exhumations at Syria’s many Assad-era mass graves, including the site at Dhumair, are scheduled for ​2027, the commission told Reuters.

The police have referred their report on Dhumair to the Adra district attorney, Judge Zaman al-Abdullah.

Al-Abdullah told Reuters that information about Assad-era suspects involved in the Dhumair operation, both inside and outside Syria, is being cross-referenced ⁠with documents obtained by security branches after the dictator’s fall in December 2024. He would not describe the suspects, citing the ongoing investigation.

According to military documents reviewed by Reuters and testimony from civilian and military sources, logistics for “Operation Move Earth” were handled by a key man, Col. Mazen Ismander.

Contacted through an intermediary, Ismander declined to comment on the initial Reuters report or the new investigation into the mass grave.

When the conspiracy was hatched in 2018, Assad was verging on victory in the civil war and hoped to reclaim legitimacy in the international community after years of sanctions and allegations of brutality.

He had been accused of detaining and killing Syrians by the thousands, and the location of a mass grave in the Town of Qutayfah, outside Damascus, had been reported by local human rights activists.

So an order came from the presidential palace: Excavate Qutayfah and hide the bodies on the military installation in the Dhumair desert.

For four nights a week for nearly two years, from 2019 to 2021, Ismander oversaw the operation, Reuters found . Trucks hauled corpses and dirt from the exposed mass grave to the vacated military installation in the desert, where trenches were filled with bodies as the Qutayfah site was excavated.

In revealing the conspiracy, Reuters spoke to 13 people with direct ‌knowledge of the two-year effort and analyzed more than 500 satellite images of both mass graves.

Under the guidance of forensic geologists, Reuters used aerial drone photography to create high-resolution composite images that helped corroborate the transfer of bodies by showing
color changes in the disturbed soil around Dhumair’s burial trenches.