Syria updates: Israel plans to double Golan population

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that a special Russian air force flight from the Khmeimim air base in Syria transported some Russian personnel as well as diplomats from Belarus and North Korea out of Syria. 

"The work of the Russian Embassy in Damascus continues," however, the crisis situation department of the ministry said on its Telegram messaging channel. 

Russian state media RIA reported, citing the Belarussian Foreign Ministry, that all of Minsk's diplomats had left the country.

Ukraine is ready to provide humanitarian aid to Syria, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

According to Zelenskyy, food from the "Grain from Ukraine" program could be used to help the Syrian population.

"Now, we have the opportunity to support Syrians with Ukrainian wheat, flour, and oil — our products that contribute globally to ensuring food security," he wrote on X.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is coordinating with partners and the Syrian side to decide on logistics. 

"We will certainly support this region so that stability there can become a foundation for our movement toward real peace," he added.

The "Grain from Ukraine" humanitarian program, launched in 2022, provides for donor countries and other organizations to purchase agricultural products directly from Ukrainian producers and send them to countries in need, mainly in Africa and Asia.

Qatar will reopen its embassy in Syria on Tuesday after more than 13 years of closure, the Gulf state's foreign ministry said.

The ministry added in a statement that the return after a 13-year hiatus was "an expression of the State of Qatar's principled stand with the Syrian people's revolution."

Qatar's embassy in Damascus has been closed since July 2011, when it withdrew its ambassador from Damascus following a series of deadly crackdowns by Bashar Assad's regime on street protesters that led to the 13-year civil war.

The United Kingdom has announced 50 million pounds (€60.1 million or $63.1 million) in humanitarian aid for vulnerable Syrians across the Middle East following the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The emergency aid will be delivered through the United Nations and non-governmental organizations to people in Syria as well as refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, the Foreign Office said.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Britain has had diplomatic contact with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, which ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power last week.

"HTS remains a proscribed organisation, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact as you would expect," Lammy told broadcasters.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had been in direct contact with HTS.

The European Union will not lift sanctions on Syria until its new rulers ensure that minorities are not persecuted and women's rights are protected under a unified government that rejects religious extremism, Kaja Kallas, the EU's new foreign policy chief, said in an interview.

"One of the questions is whether we are able to, in the future, look at the adaptation of the sanctions regime. But this clearly is not the question of today, but rather in the future where we have seen that the steps go in the right direction," Kallas told Reuters.

She added that a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, where Syria is on the agenda, would not discuss expanding financial aid to the country beyond what the EU already provides through United Nations agencies.

According to Kallas, the EU is already the largest donor of humanitarian aid to Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz says the threat to Israel from Syria remain despite the moderate tone of rebel leaders who ousted President Bashar Assad. 

"The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the latest developments in Syria increase the strength of the threat — despite the moderate image that the rebel leaders claim to present," Katz told officials examining the country's defense budget.

The minister's comments came amid military moves by Israel that it says are to counter such threats.

Since the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group swept Assad from power last Sunday, Israel has moved into a demilitarised zone inside Syria that was created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. 

The area includes the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus. Israel's forces took over an abandoned Syrian military post.

Israel says it does not intend to stay, calling the incursion into Syrian territory a limited and temporary measure to ensure security at the border.

The Israeli government has approved a plan to invest more than $11 million (€10.5 million) in the occupied Golan Heights and double the population in the region.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan is a response to the "new front" with Syria, his office said in a statement.

"Strengthening the Golan means strengthening Israel, and it is particularly important at this time," Netanyahu said. The area would be "held on to, made to flourish and settled in," he added.

Israel deployed troops to a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border after the fall of Bashar Assad's regime. 

More than 50,000 people currently live on the rocky plateau, just over half of them Jewish Israelis and the rest from the Druze and Alawite religious minorities.

The Golan Heights were captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981. Under international law, the area is considered Syrian territory occupied by Israel.

Students in Syria have returned to their classrooms after the country's new rulers ordered schools to reopen in a powerful sign of a return to normality. 

Most schools were said to be opening around the country on Sunday — the first day of the working week in most Arab countries.

Amid some uncertainty about the stability of the situation, some parents were not sending their children to class.

The Associated Press reported that, at the Nahla Zaidan school in the capital's Mezzah neighborhood, teachers had raised the three-starred revolutionary flag in place of the former government's two-starred flag.

"Syria is trying to build up this country with these children who came. Although I think some of them are afraid, they came to build Syria and to live the victories of this country," said Maysoun Al- Ali, director of the school.

More than 7,600 Syrian migrants crossed the Turkish border back into their homeland in the five days since the fall of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, according to Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.

In a statement on social media, Yerlikaya listed the total number of Syrians "who returned voluntarily from Turkey" each day between December 9 and 13.

The five-day figure totaled 7,621 people. 

Nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011 made Turkey their home.

Many hundreds of refugees were seen massing on Monday at the Cilvegozu border crossing some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Aleppo, Syria's second city. 

Interior Ministry figures showed 1,259 crossed that day alone.

Yerlikaya said earlier this week that, within 48 hours of Assad's fall, Turkey had increased its daily crossing capacity from 3,000 to between 15,000 to 20,000. 

With anti-Syrian sentiment high in Turkey, Ankara is keen to see as many refugees as possible return home. 

Turkey shares a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Syria with five operational crossings. Ankara also said it would open a sixth in the far west to "ease the traffic."

The United Nations envoy for Syria has arrived in the country's capital Damascus, a week after the fall of the country's ruler Bashar Assad to Islamist-led rebels.

Special envoy Geir Pedersen said he hoped for a swift end to the sanctions to help facilitate economic recovery.

"We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria," Pedersen said as he arrived to meet Syria's caretaker government and other officials.

Turkey has said it is ready to provide military support to Syria's new government should this be required.

In comments reported by Turkish media, Defence Minister Yasar Guler said the new government, headed up by the Islamist-led rebels, should be given an opportunity to prove itself.

"We have military training and cooperation agreements with many countries. We are ready to provide the necessary support if the new administration requests it," Guler said.

He did not specify what support might be provided.

"In their first statement, the new administration that toppled Assad announced that it would respect all government institutions, the United Nations, and other international organizations," Guler told reporters in Ankara in comments authorized for publication on Sunday.

"We think that we need to see what the new administration will do and to give them a chance."

Asked whether Ankara was considering military cooperation with the new Syrian government, Guler said Turkey already had military cooperation and training accords with many countries.

Guler also said he saw no sign of a complete withdraw of Russian forces.

"I don't think the Russians are going to leave. They'll do everything they can to stay," he said.

The president of the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) has dismissed calls within Germany for the repatriation of  Syrians after the fall of Assad.

The comments come amid a crisis faced by railway operator Deutsche Bahn in particular, which is grappling with frequent delays, ageing infrastructure, underinvestment and strikes.

In response to a query from the DPA news agency, VDV chief Ingo Wortmann said Syrian workers were vital to keeping the country's trains and buses running.

"We harm Germany as a business location if people who want to work here cannot stay with us," said Wortmann.

He dismissed a demand from Jens Spahn, a top conservative Christian Democratic Union politician in favor of repatriation as "political grandstanding." 

"We cannot do without them in many areas," said Wortmann adding that, in public transport alone, around 2,000 Syrians work nationwide in driving services.

A landmine-clearing group says the extent of unexploded ordnance across Syria is "massive" and poses a particular threat to children returning to the country. 

Since the fall of Assad last weekend, UK-based charity the Halo Trust has seen a 10-fold increase in emergency calls from Syrians worried about landmines and other dormant bombs.

The group has produced an estimated "heat map" of the areas thought to be contaminated with millions of cluster munitions, landmines and unexploded weapons.

Callum Peebles, who oversees the Halo Trust's work in the Middle East, encouraged returnees to former combat areas to take extra care.

"It's very easy to say but hard to do — but if you have young children in a post-conflict environment, it's really important that you try and limit their movement, because children are inquisitive," he said. "And so often they're the ones that get injured or killed."

Germany's foreign minister has warned that anyone involved in atrocities for the ousted Syrian government who seeks refuge in her country will face "the full force of the law."

"To any of [former President Bashar] Assad's torturers who might be considering fleeing to Germany now, I can only say clearly: We will bring all the regime's henchmen to account for their terrible crimes with the full force of the law," Annalena Baerbock told the Bild am Sonntag tabloid.

Since 2021, former Syrian secret police officers have already been convicted in Germany for overseeing or facilitating the abuse of detainees.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany is "extremely vigilant" and that "no one who participated in atrocities is safe from prosecution here."

Feaser said that sentences already handed down show that Germany pursues such crimes rigorously.

She said this should act as a deterrent against people involved in war crimes from going there.

zc/rc (Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)