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US Will Not Back Efforts to Normalize ‘Dictator’ Assad after UAE FM Meets Syrian President

State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a media briefing at the State Department, Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP)
State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a media briefing at the State Department, Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP)
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US Will Not Back Efforts to Normalize ‘Dictator’ Assad after UAE FM Meets Syrian President

State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a media briefing at the State Department, Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP)
State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a media briefing at the State Department, Wednesday, July 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP)

The United States is concerned by a meeting between the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, urging states in the region to carefully consider “atrocities” perpetrated by Assad.

The meeting was a sign of improving ties between Assad and the UAE.

“We are concerned by reports of this meeting and the signal it sends,” Price said at a regular press briefing.

“As we’ve said before, this administration will not express any support for efforts to normalize or to rehabilitate Bashar al-Assad who is a brutal dictator.”

Assad received UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Damascus on Tuesday.

A presidency statement said Sheikh Abdullah led a delegation of senior Emirati officials that discussed bilateral relations and cooperation in a meeting with Syrian counterparts.

The participants discussed exploring “new horizons for this cooperation, especially in vital sectors in order to strengthen investment partnerships in these sectors,” the statement said.

Sheikh Abdullah is the most senior Emirati dignitary to visit Syria in the decade since the eruption of the country’s war.

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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday.
The Oct. 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago.
Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel - and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the Oct. 25 attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit.
The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military´s repeated "unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.
The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV.
Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor.
"Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel," said Richard Weir, the senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Weir added that "the Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media."
Human Rights Watch said that it found remnants at the site and reviewed photographs of pieces collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.

The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters, the group said.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike at their reporting spot. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and seriously wounded other journalists from France´s international news agency Agence France-Presse and Qatar´s Al-Jazeera TV on a hilltop not far from the Israeli border.