Report: 10,000 Iranian Militants Killed in Syria

The ongoing military operations in Syria have resulted in extensive damage to the infrastructure (AP)
The ongoing military operations in Syria have resulted in extensive damage to the infrastructure (AP)
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Report: 10,000 Iranian Militants Killed in Syria

The ongoing military operations in Syria have resulted in extensive damage to the infrastructure (AP)
The ongoing military operations in Syria have resulted in extensive damage to the infrastructure (AP)

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) documented the death of 499,657 people since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising.

The Observatory also announced that the death toll included 1,712 Lebanese Hezbollah members and 8,628 others from non-Syrian militiamen backed by Iran and Russia.

Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Office announced that it compiled a list of 350,209 identified individuals killed in the conflict in Syria between March 2011 to March 2021.

In March 2011, the Observatory announced that 494,438 people had been killed since the start of the conflict in Syria when protests turned into an armed conflict.

The Observatory said that the civilian deaths are 160,681, including 120,158 men, 15,237 women, and 25,286 children in its new report.

It detailed the deaths as follows: 49,359 civilians died under torture in regime prisons, 52,508 were killed in shelling and gunfire by regime forces, and 26,403 in airstrikes by the regime’s air force.

In addition, 8,683 civilians were killed by Russian bombardments, and 2,504 others were killed in airstrikes, the source of which was not confirmed.

SOHR also reported that factions killed 2,320 civilians, militants killed 900 civilians, while 1,692 civilians died in various attacks. Up to 919 civilians died of poor living conditions, and the International Coalitions killed 2,676 civilians.

The non-civilian deaths amounted to 338,976 and were distributed as follows: 91,267 from the regime forces, 67,242 from militias loyal to the regime, Iran and Russia, 1,712 from the Lebanese Hezbollah, and 8,628 from non-Syrian militiamen backed by Iran and Russia.

The list also included 8,017 dead during the fighting and militant factions, 3,588 dissidents from the regime forces, 10,886 of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), 3,228 Kurdish fighters, and 41,101 ISIS terrorists.

The Observatory added that the figures do not include more than 55,000 citizens killed under torture in the regime’s prisons.

The report also does not account for over 3,200 Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters who were killed during their fight alongside the SDF.

Furthermore, the Observatory could not verify the status of over 3,200 civilians and fighters abducted in ISIS prisons and more than 4,100 prisoners and missing members of the regime forces and loyal militiamen.

The Observatory said that over 1,800 persons were kidnapped by militant factions, ISIS, and Fateh al-Sham Front (former Jabhat Al-Nusra) on charges of “loyalty to the regime.”

The ongoing military operations, shelling, bombardment, and various explosions have injured more than 2.1 million civilians and displaced about 13,000,000 other civilians, including hundreds of thousands of children and women.

Meanwhile, the US State Department said that Washington does not support efforts to normalize relations with the Assad regime and will not normalize relations until there is irreversible progress towards a political solution.

“We will not normalize relations with Assad until and unless there is irreversible progress towards that political solution. The Syrian people deserve nothing less after more than a decade of war,” said spokesman Ned Price.”



Deif’s Assassination Attempt in Gaza Took Weeks of Close Surveillance

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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Deif’s Assassination Attempt in Gaza Took Weeks of Close Surveillance

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

For weeks, Israel kept watch on a palm-tree-dotted villa in southern Gaza where it believed a top Hamas lieutenant was staying with his family, but it held off on a strike, according to three senior Israeli defense officials.

The Israelis had a bigger target in mind: Muhammad Deif, the elusive leader of Hamas’s military wing, according to a report published by The New York Times on Monday.

The officials said that on Saturday, after learning that Deif appeared to be at the villa, the Israeli government sent in fighter jets that devastated the compound and killed dozens of Palestinians in the area around it.

The Israeli army and the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, said on Sunday that the strike had killed the lieutenant, Rafa Salameh.

But the fate of Deif, who is second in command of Hamas and considered an architect of its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, remained unclear.

The Israeli government also defended the decision to order the strike — which the officials said used at least five US-made precision-guided bombs — in an area Israel itself has designated a humanitarian zone for Palestinians driven from their homes by the war between Israel and Hamas.

The strike was authorized after prolonged observation of the villa, one of Salameh’s secret command posts, according to the three senior Israeli officials.

The villa is in an area known as Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis near the Mediterranean Sea.

It belonged to Salameh’s family, two of the officials said, and Salameh began spending more time there in recent months after Israeli forces overran many of his other strongholds in Khan Younis, both above and below ground, according to two of the officials.

Salameh still spent much of his time in Hamas’s underground tunnel network, but he also stayed regularly at the villa, along with his family and other militants, to escape the stifling conditions in the tunnels, the officials said.

Officers from an Israeli unit that oversees the identification of high-value targets, staffed by operatives from military intelligence and the Shin Bet, detected Salameh’s presence several weeks ago, the officials said.

But, they added, Israeli leaders decided to delay any attempts to kill him to see if he would be joined at some point by Deif.

Earlier assassination attempts against Deif are believed to have left him disabled, and he may be missing an eye and limbs. The Israeli military believes that he has developed health problems that force him to spend more time than other Hamas leaders do above ground, outside the tunnel network, the officials said.

On Friday, Israeli intelligence officers received information suggesting that Deif had appeared at the villa, the officials said. The news was sent up the chain of command to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who signed off on the strike, he said.

When the military received further indications of Deif’s presence after 10 a.m. on Saturday, it sent in the jets. It also launched an additional airstrike near emergency responders, videos and photographs reviewed by The New York Times show.

At least 90 people were killed, about half of them women and children, and 300 were wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Reports from the Gaza Strip described hospitals overwhelmed by injured Palestinians.

A Hamas official suggested on Sunday that Deif remained very much alive.

Netanyahu himself, in a televised news conference on Saturday night, said there was still no “absolute certainty” that Deif had been killed.