ceasefire

The Syrian army has deployed to the northeastern city of Hasakah, previously controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), implementing the first phase of a United States-backed ceasefire agreement.

A large convoy of military trucks entered Hasakah on Monday, hours after the SDF imposed a curfew. Syrian forces arrived as part of the newly brokered agreement between Damascus and the SDF announced last Friday.

The agreement aims to solidify the ceasefire that halted weeks of conflict during which the SDF lost substantial territory in northeastern Syria.

It establishes a framework for incorporating SDF fighters into Syria’s national army and police forces, while integrating civilian institutions controlled by the group into the central government structure.

Under the terms of the agreement, government forces will avoid entering Kurdish-majority areas. However, small Interior Ministry security units will take control of state institutions in Hasakah and Qamishli, including civil registries, passport offices and the airport.

Kurdish local police will continue security operations in both cities before eventually merging with the Interior Ministry.

The government forces’ entry into Hasakah occurred without incident and as scheduled.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – whose government has long viewed the SDF as an extension of the Kurdish-led armed rebellion in Turkiye – issued a stern warning to Kurdish forces.

“With the latest agreements, a new page has now been opened before the Syrian people,” Erdogan said in a televised address. “Whoever attempts to sabotage this, I say clearly and openly, will be crushed under it.”

Friday’s agreement includes provisions for establishing a military division incorporating three SDF brigades, plus an additional brigade for forces in the group-held town of Ain al-Arab, also known by its Kurdish name Kobane, which will operate under the state-controlled Aleppo governorate.

The arrangement also provides for the integration of governing bodies in SDF-held territories with state institutions.

According to Syria’s state news agency SANA, Interior Ministry forces began deploying in rural areas near Kobane on Monday.

Since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad 14 months ago, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s efforts to unify the fractured nation under central authority have been hampered by deadly clashes with the SDF and other groups.

Syrian forces move into the northeastern city, which was previously under the control of the Kurdish-led SDF.

The Syrian army has moved into the northeastern city of Hasakah, which was formerly under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a first step towards implementing a US-backed ceasefire deal.

A large convoy of trucks was seen entering the city on Monday hours after the SDF declared a curfew there.

Syrian government forces were also expected to enter the cities of Kobane and Qamishli.

The SDF reached a comprehensive agreement with the government on Friday to integrate with the Syrian army, after Kurdish-led forces ceded territory to advancing government troops in recent weeks after months of tensions and sporadic clashes.

Government forces are expected to be stationed in Syrian state buildings in Hasakah’s so-called “security zone”, a Syrian official and a Kurdish security source told the Reuters news agency ahead of the deployment.

“What’s happening here is very significant,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reported just outside of Hasakah, adding that a convoy of 150 personnel from the Syrian military had entered the city.

“Where I’m standing right now, there used to be a checkpoint run by the Kurdish-led SDF, and it is now being manned by soldiers from the Syrian army. This shows just how significant this territory is: an area that has been under the control of the SDF throughout the Syrian civil war,” she said.

The United States has hailed the agreement as a historic milestone towards unity and reconciliation after 14 years of war.

SDF integration

The SDF was ⁠once Washington’s main Syrian ally, playing a vital part in the fight against ISIL (ISIS).

But its status weakened as US President Donald Trump built ties with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa after the fall of former leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

The deal announced on Friday includes the formation of a military division that will include three SDF brigades, in addition to a brigade for forces in the SDF-held town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, which will be affiliated with the state-controlled governorate of Aleppo.

The deal also provides for governing bodies in SDF-held areas to be merged with state institutions.

The ​Syrian state news agency SANA reported that Interior Ministry forces had begun deploying in rural areas near Kobane on ‌Monday.

Since rebels toppled al-Assad 14 months ago, al-Sharaa’s efforts to bring the fractured nation under central rule have been complicated by deadly violence last year involving the Alawite and Druze communities.

Beirut, Lebanon – Before Israel’s war on Lebanon, Ali (full name withheld for safety reasons) lived in Haddatha, a village in the Bint Jbeil district in the south, about 12km (7.5 miles) from the border with Israel, surrounded by nature where agriculture was intrinsic to life.

Then came Israel’s “hellfire”.

At least nine people were killed and some 3,000 injured, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, when thousands of pagers exploded, nearly simultaneously, overwhelming hospitals on September 17, 2024.

Six days later, Israel escalated its attacks across the south, killing nearly 600 people, in what was the country’s deadliest day since the country’s ruinous civil war ended in 1990, and displacing more than one million people.

“Our house was destroyed,” he told Al Jazeera. Ali took refuge in a town about 20km (12.5 miles) north of Haddatha, called Burj Qalaway.

But more than a year later, he is yet to return home despite a ceasefire. He is one of tens of thousands who are still displaced from their homes around Lebanon and who say that what little they have received in support from the Lebanese state or Hezbollah is not enough to rebuild their lives or homes destroyed during the war.

South ‘not safe’

On November 27, 2024, a ceasefire came into effect between Hezbollah and Israel. The agreement brought to an end more than a year of cross-border attacks and a two-month-long Israeli intensification that killed thousands in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and devastated civilian infrastructure.

Under the ceasefire, cross-border attacks were supposed to stop, Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River, which runs across south Lebanon, and Israel was to withdraw troops that had invaded south Lebanon in October.

Israel, however, never stopped attacking. Its army still occupies five points in southern Lebanon, and during the ceasefire, it razed several villages to the ground.

An estimated 1.2 million people, more than a quarter of the Lebanese population, had been displaced during the war. On the morning of November 27, hundreds of thousands of people streamed south to their villages to return home. But tens of thousands more have been left behind and are still unable to go home.

“The south is not safe,” Ali said. “I am afraid that I might be walking somewhere and a raid will attack a car next to me.”

Israeli attacks continue across the south and the Bekaa Valley in the east on a near-daily basis, with the Lebanese government counting more than 2,000 Israeli violations of the 2024 ceasefire deal in the last three months of 2025.

Ali is not alone. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 64,000 people are still internally displaced in Lebanon, according to figures compiled in October 2025.

Entire villages ‘razed’

Some of the 64,000 cannot return to their homes along the border region with Israel. Israeli soldiers still hold five points on Lebanese territory, managing large swaths of south Lebanon through violence and technology: using drones, air raids, shelling or gunfire. Since the ceasefire, Israel has killed more than 330 people in Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians.

Melina*, from Odaisseh, a village on the southern border, lived most of her life in Nabatieh. During the war, she was displaced to Sidon, a southern city about 44km (27 miles) south of Beirut.

“I haven’t been able to visit my village,” she told Al Jazeera. “Psychologically, I can’t bear to see our house, which was completely destroyed, and the entire village was razed to the ground.”

“The security situation remains extremely dangerous,” she said. “You could be shot at by the Israeli side at any moment, and it’s unsafe to travel without a Lebanese army escort.”

Ali runs a market in Burj Qalaway, but he says the income is not enough to rebuild his home. There are also other concerns. Israel has attacked reconstruction equipment in southern Lebanon, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

“Amid the ceasefire, Israeli forces have carried out attacks that unlawfully target reconstruction-related equipment and facilities,” Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a December 2025 report. “After reducing many of Lebanon’s southern border towns to rubble, the Israeli military is now making it much more difficult for tens of thousands of residents to rebuild their destroyed homes and return to their towns.”

Some Lebanese also fear a renewed Israeli offensive similar to the one in 2024.

‘Couldn’t see 2cm in front of me’

On July 30, 2024, at about 7:40pm, Ramez* was sitting in his bedroom at home in Haret Hreik, a neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs referred to locally as Dahiyeh, an area often targeted in the past by Israel for the Hezbollah presence there.

His cats were roaming around the room, and he was busy on his phone when he heard loud explosions.

The war had been raging in the south, but attacks on Beirut and its suburbs were not yet as common. “I heard more than nine bangs,” Ramez said. He ran out of his bedroom to help his family evacuate. He left his door open, he said, so his cats could escape. While telling his mother to grab her things, he heard the loudest bang.

“The whole neighbouring building just collapsed and fell on us,” he said. Israel had just levelled the building next to his, killing Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander.

“I couldn’t see 2cm in front of me because of the fog and the dust.”

Ramez’s family escaped unscathed, though their house was badly damaged and his sister’s car was destroyed. His cats also survived. He found them the next day.

“I always wondered how people just go through something like this and just move on, saying, OK, Alhamdulillah, everyone is alive,” he says, though, “at that point I kind of understood it”.

Since the end of the war, he has been able to return to his family home in Haret Hreik. But his family had to pay for most of the reconstruction themselves, with little help from the government or any group.

They registered with the government for assistance but said they received only a one-time payment of 30 million Lebanese pounds (a little more than $330).

Hezbollah also sent engineers to assess the damage. In December 2024, the Reuters news agency reported that Hezbollah would pay about $77m and rent to families affected by war. Some locals said payments from the group helped a bit, but others said it had stopped paying nonmembers or tried to undervalue their losses.

“They were very stingy with payments,” Ramez said. “They tried to make us accept low payments, but my mom stood her ground and said it is enough.”

Other people who were displaced by the war told Al Jazeera that the aid provided by the state and Hezbollah was very limited.

War is ‘most terrible’

Reports are mixed over Hezbollah’s financial capability, and it is difficult to determine how badly they have been hit financially after the group’s political and military leadership was devastated by 2024’s war and suffered several Israeli assassinations, including their longtime charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria also dealt Hezbollah a serious blow, disrupting the land route to its main benefactor, Iran – itself now reeling from deadly protests and bracing for a possible US attack. The group is under immense pressure from the Lebanese government to disarm, with the United States and Israel applying pressure.

Further compounding the crisis is the fact that Lebanon is now almost seven years into one of the worst economic crises in more than 150 years, according to the World Bank. This has hit locals hard, with many having their bank accounts frozen and the currency devaluing by more than 90 percent.

This has left many of the displaced feeling abandoned and unsure of how to continue.

There were violent Israeli air raids in the south on Saturday, which continued on Sunday. In the meantime, people like Ali have to continue figuring out ways to survive as their displacement carries on well past the one-year mark.

“We love life, but the situation is not good. Wars break your back,” Ali said. “War is the most terrible thing in the world.”

*Real names withheld for safety reasons.

Joao Sousa contributed to this report.

Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians since agreeing to end its genocidal war under a US-brokered ‘ceasefire’, which has been a truce in name only. Here are some of their stories.

Two people are reported killed in a drone strike at Maghazi camp in central Gaza while three others die in Rafah.

Israeli shelling and drone strikes across Gaza have killed at least five people and injured 11 others, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

The deadly strikes on Friday in central Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp and the southern city of Rafah came as Israel carried out continued targeted operations in the besieged territory, despite the ongoing ceasefire.

Two Palestinian men were killed in Maghazi after they were targeted in a drone strike, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

In Rafah, Israeli forces said in a statement that the air force had killed three “terrorists” as a group of eight had emerged from an underground location.

They said that further strikes were launched and that “soldiers continue to conduct searches in the area in order to locate and eliminate” the remaining people

Also in Rafah, Israeli naval gunboats pursued fishing boats and opened heavy machinegun fire on fishermen off the coast, according to Wafa. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Rafah is the location of a strategic border crossing to Egypt. It is the only passage between the Gaza Strip and the outside world that does not lead to Israel, and is a vital conduit for humanitarian aid.

Palestinian authorities have demanded the immediate reopening of the Rafah crossing, a stipulation of the second phase of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, saying the continued blockade has prevented the entry of necessary supplies for the tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians in the area.

Elsewhere in southern Gaza, six Palestinians were injured after Israeli forces shelled a tent sheltering displaced people in the al-Mawasi area, just west of Khan Younis, sources from al-Helal field hospital and Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Hani al-Shaer.

Anadolu news agency reported that a pregnant woman was among those injured in the attack.

Israeli strikes and operations have killed at least 492 Palestinians and injured 1,356 since the ceasefire came into force in October, according to Palestinian authorities in Gaza.

The US-brokered ceasefire, which sought to halt the fighting between Israel and Hamas since October 7, 2023, has been in place for more than three months. Both sides accuse each other of repeated violations.

Earlier in January, Washington announced that the ceasefire had progressed to its second phase, intended to bring a definitive end to the war. However, signs of progress on the ground remain scant.

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the need to fully implement the ceasefire agreement, including the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

However, the Israeli military has said its forces “remain deployed in accordance with the ceasefire agreement and will continue to operate to remove any immediate threat”.

As the US moves to launch phase two of the Gaza ceasefire, we look at how Israel has fallen short on phase one – and why the deal is advancing anyway.

Aaron David Miller, former US senior adviser on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, says Benjamin Netanyahu’s emphasis on Hamas’s demilitarisation will be a challenge for the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire.

“The next phase is not reconstruction.” After the return of the last Israeli captive held in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said the next phase of the ceasefire will be “disarming Hamas and demilitarising the Gaza Strip.”

Lebanese government says it documented 2,036 Israeli breaches of Lebanon’s sovereignty in the last three months of 2025.

Lebanon has filed a complaint with the United Nations about repeated Israeli violations of a November 2024 ceasefire, calling on the Security Council to push Israel to end its attacks and fully withdraw from the country.

The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants said the complaint, sent on Monday, stressed that Israeli abuses are a “clear” violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

The ministry said it called on the 15-member body to compel Israel to “completely withdraw to beyond the internationally recognised borders”, end its repeated violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty and release Lebanese prisoners it is holding.

“The complaint included three tables detailing Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty on a daily basis during the months of October, November and December 2025. The number of these violations amounted to 542, 691 and 803 respectively, totaling 2,036 violations,” it added.

The complaint was made a day after Israel launched a wave of air strikes across Lebanon, killing at least two people.

Despite the 2024 ceasefire, the Israeli military has been launching near-daily attacks in Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people. In November last year, the UN put the number of civilians killed in Israeli attacks at at least 127.

Israel also continues to occupy five points within Lebanese territory as it blocks the reconstruction of several border villages that it levelled to the ground, preventing tens of thousands of displaced people from returning to their homes.

Meanwhile, Israel is estimated to be holding more than a dozen Lebanese prisoners, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians who were taken from border villages in 2024. Israel has resisted calls to submit a list of the Lebanese citizens it is holding, leaving the fate of many missing people in southern Lebanon in limbo.

Israeli forces have also repeatedly opened fire at peacekeepers in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon.

The Foreign Ministry in Beirut said on Monday that “it called for pressure to be exerted on Israel to stop its attacks on UNIFIL, which continues to make the ultimate sacrifices to bring security and stability to the region.”

Lebanon has filed similar complaints to the UN in the past, but Israeli attacks have not relented.

On Monday, Israeli drones dropped two stun grenades in the southern village of Odaisseh, Lebanese news outlets reported.

Israel had severely weakened Hezbollah in an all-out war late in 2024, killing most of the group’s military and political leaders. Israel’s campaign has helped it establish a new balance of power and allowed it to launch regular assaults in Lebanon without a response.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has been pushing to disarm Hezbollah.

This month, Beirut said it had completed the removal of the group’s weapons south of the Litani River, 28km (17 miles) from the Israeli border.

Despite that announcement, Israeli air strikes have continued both south and north of the Litani.

Hezbollah has tacitly agreed to disarmament south of the Litani in accordance with UN Resolution 1701, but it has warned that it will not completely give up its weapons, arguing that they are necessary to stop Israel’s expansionism.

The next phase of the Lebanese government’s plan to remove Hezbollah’s weapons will target the region about 40km (25 miles) north of the Litani River to the Awali River.