10 Killed in South Syria Clashes

An SDF fighter near the al-Hol camp. (AFP)
An SDF fighter near the al-Hol camp. (AFP)
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10 Killed in South Syria Clashes

An SDF fighter near the al-Hol camp. (AFP)
An SDF fighter near the al-Hol camp. (AFP)

Gunmen supporting Syria's government and others opposed to Damascus clashed in the southern Syrian province of Sweida Tuesday, killing at least 10 people, a war monitor said.

Six loyalists and four people against the regime lost their lives after the fighting erupted in two villages in the Druze-majority province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Tensions had been rising since Monday, after the abduction of two people critical of the Damascus government, AFP said.

The Druze, who made up less than three percent of Syria's pre-war population, have largely kept out of the country's civil war since it started in 2011.

Sweida has been spared most of the fighting, though local forces had to repel limited rebel attacks in 2013 and 2015, and an extremist rampage in 2018 killed more than 250 people.

Government institutions and security forces are present in the province, while Syrian troops are deployed not far from its provincial borders.



Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
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Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)

Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of the month.

They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu's meeting next week with US President Donald Trump, where discussions are expected to center on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

There was no immediate response from the prime minister's office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.

"We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria," they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Their petition cited Israel's recent achievements against both Iran and Iran's allies and the opportunity afforded by the strategic partnership with the US and support of Trump.

It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel.

"The task must be completed, the existential threat removed from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country must be prevented," the petition stated.

Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank, many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another, as a violation of international law.

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.

Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond.