UN Envoy to Syria Warns that Threat of Terrorism is `Resurging' with Attacks by ISIS Extremists

UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen (AFP)
UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen (AFP)
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UN Envoy to Syria Warns that Threat of Terrorism is `Resurging' with Attacks by ISIS Extremists

UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen (AFP)
UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen (AFP)

The top UN envoy for Syria told the Security Council on Monday that the threat of terrorism is “resurging” with attacks by ISIS extremists set to double this year, endangering civilians already facing a “protracted state of displacement and dire humanitarian conditions.”
UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen said Syria is “riddled with armed actors, listed terrorist groups, foreign armies and front-lines” 13 years after President Bashar Assad’s crackdown on peaceful protests against his government turned to civil war. Nearly a half million people have died in the conflict and half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million has been displaced.
The ISIS group declared a self-styled caliphate in a large swath of territory in Syria and Iraq that it seized in 2014. It was declared defeated in Iraq in 2017 following a three-year battle that killed tens of thousands of people and left cities in ruins, but its sleeper cells remain in both countries.
Pedersen warned the Security Council of Syria’s delicate security situation.
“The threat of regional conflict cascading over Syria has not abated, particularly with an uptick in Israeli strikes on Syria,” Pedersen said.
Israel has attacked targets in Syria linked to Iran for years, but the strikes have escalated over the past five months as the war in Gaza and conflict between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border continue.
US deputy ambassador Robert A. Wood blamed Iran, Assad’s greatest regional supporter, for the violence in Syria.
“Iran and its proxies and partners have only brought death and destruction and do nothing to help the Syrian people,” Wood said, calling on Assad to curb Iran’s influence.
The Syrian, Iranian, and Russian ambassadors to the UN strongly condemned Israel’s strikes on Syria.
Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeed Iravani said the attacks “flagrantly violate international humanitarian law” and are a “serious threat to regional peace and security.” He said Israel’s strikes add to the chaos created by Syria’s civil war.
Over 16 million people in Syria currently need humanitarian assistance and 7.2 million remain displaced in the “worst humanitarian crisis since the start of the conflict,” Ramesh Rajasingham, coordination director in the UN humanitarian office, told the council.
He added that “severely reduced humanitarian funding” exacerbates Syrians’ suffering during months of extreme heat, when rainwater dries up and a lack of basic sanitation infrastructure increases the risk of water-borne diseases.
In opposition-held northwest Syria, over 900,000 people, more than half children, are not receiving “critical water and sanitation support,” Rajasingham said.
Rajasingham and Pedersen called for increased humanitarian access to Syria and international funding. The 2024 UN humanitarian appeal for $4 billion remains only 20% funded, “seriously constraining” humanitarian work, Rajasingham said.
On the political front, Pedersen urged the Security Council to pursue Syrian-led peace negotiations with the involvement of “all major international stakeholders,” in line with a unanimously adopted 2015 resolution by the council.
“The conflict is ultimately a political one that can only be resolved when the Syrian parties are able to realize their legitimate aspirations,” Pedersen said.
Last week, Syria announced that all 185 candidates from Assad’s Baath party won parliamentary seats in the country’s elections, a seven-seat increase to the party’s majority.
Pedersen said the elections are “not a substitute” for the political process outlined in the 2015 Security Council resolution, while Wood called the elections a “sham” and a “rubber stamp on Bashar Al-Assad’s continued dictatorship.”
Wood said the US “will not normalize relations with the Syrian regime or lift sanctions absent an authentic and enduring political solution.”



UN Says 875 Palestinians Have Been Killed Near Gaza Aid Sites

Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip are pictured at sunset from a position across the border in southern Israel on July 15, 2025. (AFP)
Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip are pictured at sunset from a position across the border in southern Israel on July 15, 2025. (AFP)
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UN Says 875 Palestinians Have Been Killed Near Gaza Aid Sites

Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip are pictured at sunset from a position across the border in southern Israel on July 15, 2025. (AFP)
Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip are pictured at sunset from a position across the border in southern Israel on July 15, 2025. (AFP)

The UN rights office said on Tuesday it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and convoys run by other relief groups, including the United Nations.

The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led fighters loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.

The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May after Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade, previously told Reuters that such incidents have not occurred on its sites and accused the UN of misinformation, which it denies.

The GHF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest UN figures.

"The data we have is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical human rights and humanitarian organizations," Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.

The United Nations has called the GHF aid model "inherently unsafe" and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

The GHF said on Tuesday it had delivered more than 75 million meals to Gaza Palestinians since the end of May, and that other humanitarian groups had "nearly all of their aid looted" by Hamas or criminal gangs.

The Israeli army previously told Reuters in a statement that it was reviewing recent mass casualties and that it had sought to minimize friction between Palestinians and the Israeli army by installing fences and signs and opening additional routes.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, and the UN World Food Program said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by "hungry civilian communities".