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Palestinian Faction Chiefs Supported by Iran Quit Damascus

A boy walks under Palestinian and Syrian flags hanging outside buildings damaged during Syria's 14-year civil war in the Yarmuk refugee camp in southern Damascus. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
A boy walks under Palestinian and Syrian flags hanging outside buildings damaged during Syria's 14-year civil war in the Yarmuk refugee camp in southern Damascus. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
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Palestinian Faction Chiefs Supported by Iran Quit Damascus

A boy walks under Palestinian and Syrian flags hanging outside buildings damaged during Syria's 14-year civil war in the Yarmuk refugee camp in southern Damascus. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
A boy walks under Palestinian and Syrian flags hanging outside buildings damaged during Syria's 14-year civil war in the Yarmuk refugee camp in southern Damascus. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

The leaders of pro-Iran Palestinian factions close to former ruler Bashar al-Assad have left Syria under pressure from the new authorities, Palestinian sources said Friday, a key US demand for lifting sanctions.
A pro-Iran Palestinian faction leader who left Syria after Assad's December overthrow said on condition of anonymity that "most of the Palestinian factional leadership that received support from Tehran has left Damascus" to countries including Lebanon, while another still based there confirmed the development.

"The factions have fully handed over weapons in their headquarters or with their cadres" to the authorities, who also received "lists of names of faction members possessing individual weapons" and demanded that those arms be handed over, the first added.

A third Palestinian faction source in Damascus said that after Assad's overthrow, "we gathered our members' weapons ourselves and handed them over, but we have kept individual light weapons for protection... with the (authorities') authorization".

In the Yarmuk Palestinian camp in the Damascus suburbs which was devastated during the war, factional banners usually at the entrance were gone and party buildings were closed and unguarded, AFP photographers said. Factional premises elsewhere in Damascus also appeared closed.

'No cooperation'
Many Palestinians fled to Syria in 1948 following the creation of Israel, and from the mid-1960s Syria began hosting the leadership of Palestinian factions.

Pro-Iran Palestinian factions had enjoyed considerable freedom of movement under Assad.

Washington last week announced it was lifting sanctions on Syria after earlier saying Damascus needed to respond to demands including suppressing "terrorism" and preventing "Iran and its proxies from exploiting Syrian territory".

According to the White House, during a meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, US President Donald Trump gave new Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa a list of demands that included deporting Palestinian factions.

The factions along with groups from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen are part of the Iran-backed "axis of resistance" against Israel, some of which fought alongside Assad's forces after civil war erupted in 2011.

In neighboring Lebanon, a government official told AFP that the disarmament of Palestinian camps, where factions usually handle security, would begin next month based on an accord with visiting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Sharaa's opposition group led the offensive that ousted Assad, a close ally of Iran.

Last month, Sharaa met Abbas on a visit to Damascus.

The factions "did not receive any official request from the authorities to leave Syrian territory" but instead faced restrictions, the first Palestinian factional leader said, noting that some factions "were de facto prohibited from operating" or their members were arrested.

'Unwelcome'
The new authorities have seized property from "private homes, offices, vehicles and military training camps in the Damascus countryside and other provinces", he said.

The Syrian authorities did not immediately provide comment to AFP when asked about the matter.

Earlier this month, officials from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said Syrian authorities briefly detained factional chief Talal Naji.

In April, the Al-Quds Brigades said Islamic Jihad's Syria official Khaled Khaled and organizing committee member Yasser al-Zafri had been detained "without explanation".

The second Palestinian official, from a group that has remained in Damascus with limited representation, said there was "no cooperation between most of the Palestinian factions and the new Syrian administration".

"The response to our contact is mostly cold or delayed. We feel like unwelcome guests, though they don't say that clearly," he added, also requesting anonymity.

The Fatah movement and militant group Hamas appear to be unaffected.

A Hamas official in Gaza told AFP that it had "channels of communication with our brothers in Syria".

Hamas left after the civil war began as ties with the government deteriorated amid the Palestinian group's support for opposition demands, and has minimal representation there.

Yarmuk camp resident Marwan Mnawar, a retiree, said that "nobody knows what happened to the factional leadership", adding that "people just want to live, they are exhausted" by the conflict and factional infighting.

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Arab World

UN Warns Clock Ticking for Sudan's Children

Sudanese children play on a street in Tokar, in Red Sea State, following heavy flooding in October, 2024 © AFP/File
Sudanese children play on a street in Tokar, in Red Sea State, following heavy flooding in October, 2024 © AFP/File
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UN Warns Clock Ticking for Sudan's Children

Sudanese children play on a street in Tokar, in Red Sea State, following heavy flooding in October, 2024 © AFP/File
Sudanese children play on a street in Tokar, in Red Sea State, following heavy flooding in October, 2024 © AFP/File

The United Nations warned Tuesday that time was running out for malnourished children in Sudan and urged the world to "stop looking away".

Famine is spreading in Sudan's western Darfur region, UN-backed experts warned last week, with the grinding war between the army and RSF leaving millions hungry, displaced and cut off from aid.

Global food security experts say famine thresholds for acute malnutrition have been surpassed in North Darfur's contested areas of Um Baru and Kernoi, AFP reported.

Ricardo Pires, spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF, said the situation was getting worse for children by the day, warning: "They are running out of time".

In parts of North Darfur, more than half of all children are acutely malnourished, he told a press conference in Geneva.

"Extreme hunger and malnutrition come to children first: the youngest, the smallest, the most vulnerable, and in Sudan it's spreading," he said.

Fever, diarrhoea, respiratory infections, low vaccination coverage, unsafe water and collapsing health systems are turning treatable illnesses "into death sentences for already malnourished children", he warned.

"Access is shrinking, funding is desperately short and the fighting is intensifying.

"Humanitarian access must be granted and the world must stop looking away from Sudan's children."

Since April 2023, the conflict between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and triggered what the UN calls one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Shible Sahbani, the World Health Organization's representative in Sudan, said the country was "facing multiple disease outbreaks: including cholera, malaria, dengue, measles, in addition to malnutrition".

At the same time, health workers and health infrastructure are increasingly in the crosshairs, he told reporters.

Since the war began, the WHO has verified 205 attacks on healthcare, leading to 1,924 deaths.

And the attacks are growing deadlier by the year.

In 2025, 65 attacks caused 1,620 deaths, and in the first 40 days of this year, four attacks led to 66 deaths.

Fighting has intensified in the southern Kordofan region.

"We have to be proactive and to pre-position supplies, to deploy our teams on the ground to be prepared for any situation," Sahbani said.

"But all this contingency planning... it's a small drop in the sea."

Arab World

Israeli Minister Calls West Bank Measures ‘De Facto Sovereignty,’ Says No Future Palestinian State

Palestinian boys look out over the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron from a rooftop on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian boys look out over the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron from a rooftop on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
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Israeli Minister Calls West Bank Measures ‘De Facto Sovereignty,’ Says No Future Palestinian State

Palestinian boys look out over the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron from a rooftop on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian boys look out over the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron from a rooftop on February 9, 2026. (AFP)

A top Israeli official said Tuesday that measures adopted by the government that deepen Israeli control in the occupied West Bank amounted to implementing “de facto sovereignty,” using language that mirrors critics' warnings about the intent behind the moves.

The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio.

Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves announced Sunday an annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.

Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz.

The moves — and Israeli officials’ own descriptions of them — put the country at odds with both regional allies and previous statements from US President Donald Trump. Netanyahu has traveled to Washington to meet with him later this week.

Last year, Trump said he won’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

Widespread condemnation

The measures further erode the Palestinian Authority’s limited powers, and it’s unclear the extent to which it can oppose them.

Still, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy president, said on Tuesday "the Palestinian leadership called on all civil and security institutions in the State of Palestine" to reject them.

In a post on X on Tuesday, he said the Israeli steps “contradict international law and the agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization."

A group of eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries expressed their “absolute rejection” of the measures, calling them in a joint statement Monday illegal and warning they would “fuel violence and conflict in the region.”

Israel’s pledge not to annex the West Bank is embedded in its diplomatic agreements with some of those countries.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by the measures.

“They are driving us further and further away from a two-State solution and from the ability of the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian people to control their own destiny," his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday.

What the measures mean

The measures, approved by Netanyahu's Security Cabinet on Sunday, expand Israel’s enforcement authority over land use and planning in areas run by the Palestinian Authority, making it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land.

Smotrich and Katz on Sunday said they would lift long-standing restrictions on land sales to Israeli Jews in the West Bank, shift some control over sensitive holy sites — including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs — and declassify land registry records to ease property acquisitions.

They also revive a government committee empowered to make what officials described as “proactive” land purchases in the territory, a step intended to reserve land for future settlement expansion.

Taken together, the moves add an official stamp to Israel’s accelerating expansion and would override parts of decades-old agreements that split the West Bank between areas under Israeli control and areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy.

Israel has increasingly legalized settler outposts built on land Palestinians say documents show they have long owned, evicted Palestinian communities from areas declared “military zones” and villages near archaeological sites it has reclassified as “national parks.”

More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians are not permitted to sell land privately to Israelis. Settlers can buy homes on land controlled by Israel’s government.

The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

“These decisions constitute a direct violation of the international agreements to which Israel is committed and are steps toward the annexation of Areas A and B,” anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now said on Sunday, referring to parts of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority exercised some autonomy.

Arab World

Over 4,500 ISIS Detainees Brought to Iraq from Syria, Says Official

Vehicles transporting ISIS detainees by the US military, according to a security source from the Syrian Democratic Forces, head from Syria towards Iraq, in Qamishli, Syria, February 8, 2026. (Reuters)
Vehicles transporting ISIS detainees by the US military, according to a security source from the Syrian Democratic Forces, head from Syria towards Iraq, in Qamishli, Syria, February 8, 2026. (Reuters)
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Over 4,500 ISIS Detainees Brought to Iraq from Syria, Says Official

Vehicles transporting ISIS detainees by the US military, according to a security source from the Syrian Democratic Forces, head from Syria towards Iraq, in Qamishli, Syria, February 8, 2026. (Reuters)
Vehicles transporting ISIS detainees by the US military, according to a security source from the Syrian Democratic Forces, head from Syria towards Iraq, in Qamishli, Syria, February 8, 2026. (Reuters)

More than 4,500 suspected extremists have been transferred from Syria to Iraq as part of a US operation to relocate ISIS group detainees, an Iraqi official told AFP on Tuesday.

The detainees are among around 7,000 suspects the US military began transferring last month after Syrian government forces captured Kurdish-held territory where they had been held by Kurdish fighters.

They include Syrians, Iraqis and Europeans, among other nationalities.

Saad Maan, a spokesperson for the Iraqi government's security information unit, told AFP that 4,583 detainees had been brought to Iraq so far.

ISIS swept across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014 where it committed massacres. Backed by US-led forces, Iraq proclaimed the defeat of ISIS in 2017, while in neighboring Syria the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces ultimately beat back the group two years later.

The SDF went on to jail thousands of suspected extremists and detain tens of thousands of their relatives in camps.

In Iraq, where many prisons are packed with ISIS suspects, courts have handed down hundreds of death sentences and life terms to those convicted of terrorism offences, including many foreign fighters.

This month Iraq's judiciary said it had begun investigations into detainees transferred from Syria.