Bashar al-Assad

Nov. 28 (UPI) — The Israeli Defense Forces launched an attack on Beit Jinn in southern Syria, which killed 13 residents, including two children, and seriously wounded some Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli military described the event as an “exchange of fire” in Beit Jinn, where three of its soldiers were seriously injured. It also said it arrested three people associated with Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanon-based militant group.

The Washington Post reported that, according to their families, there were two girls, ages 4 and 17, and a 10-year-old boy killed.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called it a “criminal attack carried out by an Israeli occupation army patrol in Beit Jinn. The occupation forces’ targeting of the town of Beit Jinn with brutal and deliberate shelling, following their failed incursion, constitutes a full-fledged war crime,” Al Jazeera reported.

Syrian civil defense said they weren’t able to enter the city to rescue the wounded because the IDF continues to target any movement.

Since the civil war in Syria overturned the Bashar al-Assad regime, the Israeli military seized a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and in Syria. It has also launched hundreds of air strikes across Syria, including in Damascus. Human Rights Watch has declared some operations war crimes.

Earlier this month, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with President Donald Trump in the White House, and Trump paused all sanctions against the country for six months. But so far, Al-Sharaa has refused to normalize relations with Israel.

The attacks in March killed thousands, many from the Alawite religious minority.

Syria has launched the trial of the first of hundreds of suspects for their role in deadly clashes earlier this year that killed hundreds in the country’s coastal provinces.

Syrian state media reported on Tuesday that 14 people were brought before Aleppo’s Palace of Justice following a months-long, government-led investigation.

Hundreds of people from the Alawite religious minority, to which ousted President Bashar al-Assad belonged, were killed in the massacres in March.

The violence erupted after attacks on the new government’s security forces by armed groups aligned with the deposed autocrat. Counterattacks soon spiralled out of control to target civilians in the coastal regions that host the Alawite population.

Seven of the defendants in the court on Tuesday were al-Assad loyalists, while the other seven were members of the new government’s security forces.

Charges against the suspects could include sedition, inciting civil war, attacking security forces, murder, looting and leading armed gangs, according to state media.

The seven accused from government forces are being prosecuted for “premeditated murder”.

The public and the international community have put pressure on the country’s new rulers to commit to judicial reform.

“The court is sovereign and independent,” said Judge Zakaria Bakkar as the trial opened.

The proceedings are important for President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of forces that formerly had links to al-Qaeda, who since coming to power in December has scrambled to step out from diplomatic isolation. He is working to convince the United States to drop more of its crippling sanctions against Syria and to boost trade to rebuild the war-torn country.

However, despite initial reports by the state media that charges could quickly be brought against the defendants, the judge adjourned the session and rescheduled the next hearing for December.

The National Commission of Inquiry said in July that it had verified serious violations leading to the deaths of at least 1,426 people, most of them civilians, and identified 298 suspects.

It claimed 238 members of the security forces and army had been killed in attacks attributed to al-Assad’s supporters. The authorities then sent reinforcements to the region, with the commission estimating their number at 200,000 fighters.

The commission said there was no evidence that Syria’s new military leaders had ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

A United Nations probe, however, found that violence targeting civilians by government-aligned factions had been “widespread and systematic.”

A UN commission said that during the violence, homes in Alawite-majority areas were raided and civilians were asked “whether they were Sunni or Alawite.”

It said: ”Alawite men and boys were then taken away to be executed.”

Nov. 10 (UPI) — Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will meet with President Donald Trump Monday in the White House.

Al-Sharaa, who was affiliated with al-Qaida, was labeled an international terrorist by the United States until Friday and had a $10 million bounty on his head.

On Friday, the State Department said that Sharaa and Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab would be removed from the list of terrorists.

“These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” the State Department’s press release said.

“This new Syrian government, led by President al-Sharaa, is working hard to locate missing Americans, fulfill its commitments on countering terrorism and narcotics, eliminating any remnants of chemical weapons, and promoting regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process.”

Sharaa was formerly known by an assumed name, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. He once led the militant group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which cut ties with al-Qaida in 2017.

Sharaa is likely to ask Trump to lift sanctions against the Assad government and to join the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State. Removing the sanctions will allow Syria to get international finance to rebuild after the devastating civil war.

The Syrian leader met Trump in Saudi Arabia in May, and Trump told him he would get the sanctions lifted.

“Tough guy,” Trump said of Sharaa after the meeting. “Very strong past. Fighter.”

Critics of Sharaa’s government have cited recent acts of violence in the country. In July, about 37 people were killed in sectarian violence. A few days later, Israel attacked Damacus and killed about three people and wounded 34 others. Israel claimed it attacked to protect the Druze, a Syrian Arab minority.

In June, a suicide bombing killed 20 people at a Damascus church.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has registered 35,000 cases of people missing in Syria in the past 13 years. Syria’s Network for Human Rights put the number of Syrians “in forced disappearance” at 80,000 to 85,000 killed under torture in Assad’s detention centers.

Only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed from Syria’s prisons since Assad’s ouster, according to the human rights network. American journalist Austin Tice, who was detained by the Assad regime in 2012, has still not been found.