As Israeli aggression in Gaza, Lebanon, and Post-Assad Syria deepens human suffering and regional instability, and amid growing international calls for ceasefires and de-escalation, Ahram Online covered the latest developments in the Middle East as they unfolded on Friday, 27 December.
19:00 Dozens of relatives of missing Syrians gathered in Damascus to demand answers about the fate of their loved ones, as many Syrians have been missing for years, some disappearing after being detained by the now-toppled government of Bashar Assad.
The gathering comes nearly three weeks after insurgents freed dozens of people from Syrian prisons following the fall of Assad’s government. Since then, no additional detainees have been found, leaving thousands of families still in anguish over the fate of their missing relatives.
Relatives have been travelling across Syria in search of information.
“We accept nothing less than knowing all details related to what happened to them,” said Wafa Mustafa, whose father, Ali Mustafa, has been missing for over a decade.
“Who is responsible for their detention? Who tortured them? If they were killed, who killed them? Where were they buried?” Mustafa said, speaking at the gathering held at Al-Hijaz Station in Damascus.
In 2023, the United Nations established an independent body to investigate the fate of more than 130,000 people missing during the Syrian conflict.
Marah Allawi, whose son Huzaifa was detained in 2012 at the age of 18, said she saw “how they tortured young men, how they put them in cages and tortured them.”
She called on the international community to act. “I call on the whole world to know where our sons are.”
People hold portraits of missing relatives during a protest outside the Hijaz train station in the capital Damascus. AFP
18:30 Yemeni officials said the international airport in Yemen’s capital Sanaa and the Red Sea port of Hodeida resumed operations, a day after being struck by Israeli missiles.
Deputy Transport Minister Yahya al-Sayani told a press conference that the Israeli airstrikes at Sanaa International Airport hit the control tower, navigation systems and the departures terminal. He said flights resumed on Friday as scheduled.
The strikes Thursday afternoon at the airport and the Hodeida seaport killed six people and wounded 40 others, according to the Health Ministry. The airport’s director, Khaled al-Shaif, said travellers were in the airport at the time of the strike.
Israel said its strikes targeted the infrastructure of Yemen’s Houthi rebels in retaliation for repeated volleys of missiles fired by the rebels toward central Israel in recent days.
The strikes at the airport came as the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was preparing to board a plane nearby. Ghebreyesus said Friday on X that a U.N. colleague wounded in the strike underwent surgery and was in stable condition, but has not yet been evacuated from Yemen.
18:00 A Saudi official said the Gulf kingdom will give war-riven Yemen's internationally recognized government $500 million to pay salaries and other expenses.
The sum is part of the $1.2 billion approved last year to prop up Yemen's government, which was forced out of the capital, Sanaa, by the Yemeni Houthi rebels in 2014.
The money was allocated "to address the Yemeni government's budget deficit", the official told AFP. Saudi Arabia also made payments of $250 million in February and August last year.
"The funds aim to support salaries, operational expenses, enhance food security and assist economic reforms, reflecting (Saudi Arabia's) commitment to Yemen's security, stability and prosperity," the official said.
Neighbouring oil-rich Saudi Arabia launched a military campaign at the head of a multinational coalition in 2015, hoping to dislodge the Houthis.
The ensuing war has cost hundreds of thousands of lives through fighting or indirect causes such as hunger and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Meanwhile, the ousted, Saudi-backed government -- now based in Aden in Yemen's south -- has long struggled to finance basic services.
Although a UN-brokered ceasefire has sharply curtailed fighting since April 2022, the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country remains volatile.
17:30 Turkey's interior minister reported that nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad, with the figure rising by about 5,000 in just three days.
"The number of people who went back is 30,663," Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told TGRT news channel, saying "30 percent" of them had been born in Turkey.
Turkey is home to nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011, with the fall of Bashar al-Assad raising hopes many would go back.
On Tuesday, Yerlikaya said more than 25,000 Syrians had returned in remarks to state news agency Anadolu, saying they would be allowed to leave and re-enter Turkey three times in the first half of 2025.
People cross into Syria from Turkey through the Kassab crossing. AFP
Ankara would also open "a migration management office" in Aleppo, Syria's second city, where most of the refugees living in Turkey are from, he said Friday, without giving further details.
Turkey was also to reopen its consulate general in Aleppo "in a few days", he added, echoing remarks earlier this week by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
17:00 Gaza's health ministry reported that Israeli troops, after storming Kamal Adwan hospital, set fires in several parts of the hospital, including the lab and surgery department.
It said that Israeli troops forced medical personnel and patients to assemble in the yard and remove their clothes. Some were led to an unknown location, while some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which was knocked out of operation after an Israel raid this week.
The ministry added that 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital out of 75 patients and 180 staff who had been there.
“Fire is ablaze everywhere in the hospital,” an unidentified member of the staff said in an audio message posted on the social media accounts of hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya. The staffer said some evacuated patients had been unhooked from oxygen. “There are currently patients who could die at any moment,” she said.
The Israeli rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel this week petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking a halt to military attacks on Kamal Adwan. It warned that forcibly evacuating the hospital would “abandon thousands of residents in northern Gaza.” Before the latest deaths Thursday, the group documented five other staffers killed by Israeli fire since October.
Israel’s nearly 15-month-old war on Gaza has devastated the territory’s health sector. A year ago, it carried out raids on hospitals in northern Gaza, including Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and al-Awda Hospital, claiming they served as bases for Hamas. However, it has consistently failed to provide any evidence to support these claims.
15:40 Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of only three medical facilities in northern Gaza, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound, the Guardian reported, citing officials.
The Guardian quoted the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza as saying contact with staff inside the facility had been lost after weeks of heavy pressure from Israeli forces.
Munir Al-Bursh, director of Gaza's health ministry, said in a statement: "The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it."
15:00 A UN health official told AFP that some 50 tonnes of EU-funded medical supplies flown to Turkey from Dubai are expected to enter Syria on December 31.
The supplies, which were sent from a European Union stockpile in Dubai, landed in Istanbul early on Thursday and were to be driven to the border in the coming days.
"The supplies are still in Istanbul and going through the customs process," Mrinalini Santhanam from the World Health Organization's Gaziantep office in southern Turkey told AFP, saying they would be driven south and likely cross the border into Syria "on December 31."
The aim is to support Syria's overstretched healthcare system battered by years of war under former president Bashar al-Assad, who militants ousted on 8 December.
The shipment includes 8,000 emergency surgical kits, anaesthetic supplies, IV fluids, sterilisation materials, and medications to prevent disease outbreaks. The EU said it would be sent to support "healthcare systems in Idlib and northern Aleppo."
"The supplies are mainly trauma and surgical kits that will enable doctors in Syria to deliver thousands of surgical operations and to care (for) injured patients," WHO planning analyst Lorenzo Dal Monte told AFP when the shipment landed at Istanbul airport early Thursday.
The civil war, which broke out in 2011, had "devastated the country and the healthcare system. Almost half of the hospitals in Syria are not functional," he said.
It was the first part of an EU humanitarian bridge announced by Brussels on December 13, with a second 46-tonne delivery to follow from Denmark.
14:30 Iran's top diplomat warned against "destructive interference" in Syria's future and said decisions should lie solely with the country's people, writing in Chinese state media as he visited Beijing.
Iranian state media reported that Abbas Araghchi touched down in the Chinese capital on Friday afternoon to begin his first official visit to the country since being appointed foreign minister.
Iran "considers the decision-making about the future of Syria to be the sole responsibility of the people... without destructive interference or foreign imposition," Araghchi wrote in a Chinese-language article in People's Daily published on Friday.
He also emphasized Iran's respect for Syria's "unity, national sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Iran's supreme leader -- a key backer of Assad's administration -- predicted on Sunday "the emergence of a strong, honourable group" that would stand against "insecurity" in Syria.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Syria's young men would "stand with strength and determination against those who have designed this insecurity and those who have implemented it, and God willing, he will overcome them."
Araghchi's two-day visit will include talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, according to Iran's foreign ministry. In People's Daily, he said supporting the Syrian people was a "definite principle (that) should be taken into consideration by all the actors."
China has affirmed its support for the Syrian people and has expressed opposition to terrorist forces taking advantage of the situation to create chaos.
In his editorial, Araghchi wrote that Iran and China shared the "common view" that calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was the biggest priority in the Middle East.
13:30 The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the Israeli military has demanded medical staff and patients leave the Kamal Adwan hospital to make room for their forces ahead of a raid.
Kamal Adwan is one of the three main hospitals in northern Gaza that have been repeatedly attacked by Israel since the deadly assault on the north began on 6 October.
On Thursday, five hospital staff members were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting Kamal Adwan. Around 90 patients are estimated to still be inside the hospital.
Hossam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, said that "an Israeli strike resulted in five martyrs among the hospital staff"—a paediatrician, a lab technician, two ambulance workers, and a maintenance staff member.
Earlier this week, Gaza’s health ministry reported that Israeli bombing was targeting all departments in Kamal Adwan “around the clock without stopping.”
11:30 Yemen's Houthi rebels said they fired a missile at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport after Israel's military reported a missile had been intercepted.
The attack came a day after Israeli raids pounded Sanaa's international airport along with a power station in Hodeida, among other targets in Yemen.
A Houthi statement said they also launched drones at Tel Aviv and a ship in the Arabian Sea, stating that Israeli "aggression will only increase the determination and resolve of the great Yemeni people to continue supporting the Palestinian people".
Israel's military earlier Friday said: "One missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory."
There was no immediate comment on the other attacks claimed by the Houthis.
On Thursday, Israeli warplanes attacked Sanaa airport where the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was waiting for a flight.
Four people died in the airport attack and around 20 travellers and staff were wounded, a Houthi official said on Friday. The WHO chief said one of his plane's crew was among the injured.
A member of Yemen's security forces walks past a damaged building at Sanaa International Airport. AFP
10:30 An Israeli hospital reported that a woman in her eighties was killed after being stabbed in the coastal city of Herzliya on Friday, while police stated that the suspected attacker had been arrested.
"She was brought to the hospital with multiple stab wounds while undergoing resuscitation efforts, but the hospital staff was forced to pronounce her death upon arrival," Tel Aviv Ichilov Hospital said in a statement.
The incident took place in Herzliya's De Shalit Square, the police said.
"We provided initial treatment, stopped the bleeding and treated her with medication, and evacuated her in critical condition," medic Idan Shina from the National Medical Service Magen David Adom said in a statement, before the hospital announced her death.
In a separate statement, police said the suspected attacker, a 28-year-old "resident of the Palestinian Authority" in the occupied West Bank has been arrested.
"The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation."
Since the Israeli war on Gaza broke out on October 7 last year, there have been several attacks in Israel carried out by Palestinians.
At least 31 people, including Israeli soldiers, have been killed in such attacks in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have conducted regular raids in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli settlers have harassed and attacked Palestinians almost daily since October 2023.
At least 832 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,500 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Israeli forensic police check the scene of a stabbing attack in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. AFP
10:00 The Israeli military reported it conducted air strikes targeting "infrastructure" on the Syrian-Lebanese border near the village of Janta, which it alleged was used to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah.
It did not specify whether the strikes were on the Syrian or Lebanese side, but they came a day after Lebanon's army accused Israel of "violation of the ceasefire agreement by attacking Lebanese sovereignty and destroying southern towns and villages."
The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL, has also expressed concern over the "continuing destruction" caused by Israeli forces in south Lebanon.
9:00 Palestinian sources said that Israeli strikes in Gaza on Thursday killed at least 45 people including hospital workers and journalists for a Palestinian broadcaster.
Five staff at one of northern Gaza's last functioning hospitals were among those killed, the facility's director said, more than two months into an Israeli operation in the area.
Hossam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, said: "An Israeli strike resulted in five martyrs among the hospital staff" -- a paediatrician, a lab technician, two ambulance workers and a member of maintenance staff.
At the other end of the Palestinian territory, the chief paediatric doctor at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said three babies had died from a "severe temperature drop" this week as winter cold set in.
Doctor Ahmed al-Farra said the most recent case was a three-week-old girl who was "brought to the emergency room with a severe temperature drop, which led to her death".
A three-day-old baby and another "less than a month old" died on Tuesday, he said.
The three-week-old girl, Sila al-Faseeh, was living in a tent in Al-Mawasi, an area designated a humanitarian safe zone by the Israeli military that is home to huge numbers of displaced Palestinians.
Sila's father Mahmoud al-Faseeh said it was "extremely cold, and the tent is not suitable for living. The children are always sick."
Meanwhile, in central Gaza, a Palestinian TV channel said five of its journalists were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in Gaza.
Witnesses said a missile struck the van while it was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat.
The station identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu al-Qumsan, Ayman al-Jadi, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed al-Ladaa.
They were killed "while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty", the statement said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists' Middle East arm said in a statement it was "devastated by the reports".
"Journalists are civilians and must always be protected," it added.
Also on Thursday, Gaza's civil defence agency said tens of other people were killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, including 13 in a house that was home to "numerous displaced families" in the west of Gaza City.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said two soldiers aged 27 and 35 were killed in the Gaza Strip. That brought to 391 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of Israel’s ground invasion of the Palestinian territory.
Israel's relentless bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 45,399 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to figures from the territory's health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
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