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 Saturday, 21 December.
DPA reported that the General Command in Syria announced today, Saturday, the appointment of Marhaf Abu Qasra, known as Abu al-Hassan al-Hamawi, as Minister of Defense in the Syrian Interim Government.
Abu Qasra was assigned following a meeting between the Commander-in-Chief of Operations, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and the leaders of the armed factions.
Abu Qasra was born in the Hama countryside in Halfaya. He holds a bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering and is a prominent leader in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The General Command said that Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed the form of the new military institution in his meeting with the Syrian army factions.
Al-Sharaa stated that the new army's military factions will be merged into one institution under the management of the Ministry of Defense.
The news has not been announced yet by the Syrian News Agency.
21:15 Four Palestinians were killed, and several others were injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, on Saturday evening.
WAFA correspondent reported that Israeli fighter jets struck the home of the Kabaja family, causing the murder of four civilians and injuring others. The attack also caused damage to neighbouring homes.
Earlier in the day, another Israeli airstrike on Al-Mansoura Street in the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City resulted in the killing of four more individuals and left others injured.
18:45 A mother and her three daughters were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday evening in northern Gaza. The attack targeted the Felfel family home near Sheikh Zayed Mosque in the region, according to local sources.
The bombing resulted in the killing of the mother, along with her three children, as their house was destroyed in the strike.
A Palestinian man is helped to put a shrouded body into the ground during a funeral of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike the previous night in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip. AFP
18:30 Gaza's Health Ministry issued an urgent appeal for medical and food supplies to be delivered to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in largely isolated northern Gaza. At the same time, the hospital director described conditions as dire as Israel's military presses its latest offensive.
The ministry reported continuous gunfire and Israeli shelling near the hospital, saying "shells have struck the third floor and the hospital's entrances, creating a state of panic."
Hospital director Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh said the facility faced "severe shortages" and asserted that requests for essential medical supplies and ways to maintain oxygen, water and electricity systems "have largely gone unmet."
He said 72 wounded people were being treated at the hospital.
"Food is very scarce, and we cannot provide meals for the wounded," Safiyeh added. "We are urgently calling on anyone who can provide supplies to help us."
Aid groups have said Israeli military operations and armed gangs have hindered their ability to distribute aid.
18:05 Iran said unknown gunmen had killed a local staffer of the Iranian Embassy in Syria in Damascus, the official IRNA news agency said.
Its report quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei as saying "terrorists" opened fire on Davood Bitaraf's car last Sunday. It did not say what he did with the embassy.
Baghaei said Iran considers Syria's interim government responsible for finding and prosecuting those behind the killing. Iran had been a key ally of recently ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
17:00 A drone attack on a car in northeastern Syria attributed to the Turkish military has killed three civilians, a media report and Kurdish security forces said on Saturday.
The strike came after two journalists from Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast were killed, reportedly by a Turkish drone, while covering clashes between an Ankara-backed militia and US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria.
15:30 Hamas said in a statement that reaching a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Israel "has become closer than ever before" only if Tel Aviv refrains from imposing new conditions.
The Palestinian movement said it held a meeting in Cairo on the ongoing negotiation efforts with representatives of the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Hamas deputy head Khalil al-Hayya and Islamic Jihad Movement Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah attended the meeting.
Efforts to strike a Gaza truce and captive release deal between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly failed over key stumbling blocks, but recent negotiations have raised hope of an agreement.
A man inspects the damage following an Israeli strike on a home belonging to the al-Zaytouniyah family in the al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City, in the central Gaza Strip. AFP
14:30 Israel has used civilian contractors to demolish buildings and construct military infrastructure in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, The Guardian reported, citing an article from the Israeli news site Walla.
The report, written by a journalist embedded with the Israeli army, details military operations in the Shaboura neighbourhood on the outskirts of the Rafah refugee camp.
The Israeli military's tasks in the area include exploring, securing, and opening roads, as well as locating and destroying infrastructure both above and below ground.
A report by the New York Times earlier this month revealed that the Israeli army has demolished over 600 buildings to create buffer zones and expanded a network of military bases.
The so-called Netzarim corridor, initially a four-mile road, has expanded into an 18-square-mile area controlled by Israeli forces, which now bisects the Palestinian territory and keeps many displaced Palestinians from returning north.
The New York Times report confirmed earlier findings by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which showed the Israeli army is widening roads, building outposts, and installing long-term infrastructure for a prolonged military presence in Gaza.
This territorial expansion has fueled speculation about Israel's long-term intentions for Gaza. Israeli leaders have vowed to maintain security control even after the war without providing much detail.
A senior Israeli officer serving in Gaza told Haaretz that "the Israeli army won't withdraw before 2026." Still, some ministers have suggested military control could lead to a renewed Israeli settlement in Gaza.
Israel's relentless bombardment has already reduced much of Gaza to rubble, displaced 1.9 million people (at least once), and enabled Israel to occupy 26 percent of the territory, with settlers eyeing further expansion.
According to Haaretz, Israeli sources have admitted that the army is actively clearing Palestinian villages and cities in northern Gaza as part of a plan dubbed the "Generals' Plan," transforming the area into a military enclave.
13:30 The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 45,227 people have been killed during more than 14 months of Israeli war on Gaza.
The toll includes 21 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 107,573 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli war began.
12:30 The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that an Israeli strike targeting a gathering of people in Al-Shati Camp, west of Gaza City, killed at least three and wounded many others.
On Friday, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 Palestinians, including eight in an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, and 10 others, including seven children, in a separate strike on a home in Jabalia, northern Gaza, Reuters reported, citing medics.
Commenting on the Jabalia strike, Gaza Civil Defence Agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP, "There are 10 martyrs... all targeted by an airstrike on their home in Jabalia al-Nazla, southwest of Jabalia. All of the martyrs are from the same family, including seven children, the oldest aged six."
Bassal added that the strike injured 15 other people.
Gaza's health ministry says Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 45,206 people, the majority of whom are women and children, and injured 107,512 others. The UN Rights Office confirms the figures are reliable and that most of the dead are women and children.
12:00 The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution extending the UN peacekeeping force on the Israel-Syria border and underscoring that there should be no military activities in the demilitarized buffer zone.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israeli troops will occupy the buffer zone for the foreseeable future. Israel seized the buffer zone in a land grab shortly after the collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.
The resolution adopted Friday stressed that both countries are obligated "to scrupulously and fully respect" the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement that ended the 1973 war between Syria and Israel and established the buffer zone. The resolution was co-sponsored by the United States and Russia.
The Security Council extended the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force monitoring the border area, known as UNDOF, until 30 June 2025 and called for a halt to all military actions throughout the country, including in UNDOF's area of operations.
The resolution expresses concern that ongoing military activities in the area of separation have the potential to escalate Israeli-Syrian tensions and jeopardize the 1974 ceasefire. It also expresses alarm that violence in Syria "risks a serious conflagration of the conflict in the region."
11:00 Pope Francis condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as "cruelty," a day after an Israeli airstrike killed seven children from one family.
"Yesterday, children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war. I want to say it because it touches my heart," he told an audience of Holy See government members.
The Gaza Strip is now considered the deadliest place in the world for children. About 30 percent of the 11,300 identified children killed in Gaza were younger than five, and Gaza currently has the highest rates of child malnutrition globally, according to the NGO Save the Children.
Palestinian women mourn a dead child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as the Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City. AFP
9:00 The Israeli military says a rocket fired from Yemen hit an area of Tel Aviv overnight, leaving 16 people slightly injured by shattered glass from nearby windows.
A further 14 people sustained minor injuries as they rushed to shelters when air raid sirens sounded before the projectile hit just before 4 a.m. Saturday, the military said.
Israel's military said it had failed to intercept the projectile, which struck a district of Tel Aviv municipality, forcing many residents to leave their homes.
Yemen's Houthi rebels later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it used a ballistic missile and was directed at "a military target of the Israeli enemy".
The attack comes less than two days after a series of Israeli airstrikes on Yemen's Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, and the port city of Hodeida killed at least nine people.
The Israeli strikes were in response to a Houthi attack in which a long-range missile hit an Israeli school building. The Houthis also claimed a drone strike targeting an unspecified military target in central Israel on Thursday.
The Israeli military says the Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and drones during the Israeli war on Gaza. The Houthis have also been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — attacks they say won't stop until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli strikes Thursday caused "considerable damage" to the Houthi-controlled Red Sea ports "that will lead to the immediate and significant reduction in port capacity," United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The port at Hodeida has been key for food shipments into Yemen in its decade-long civil war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said both sides' attacks risk further escalation in the region and undermine UN mediation efforts.
This picture shows debris in a bedroom in Tel Aviv after a projectile fired from Yemen landed near the building. AFP
8:30 The Biden administration said Friday it has decided not to pursue a $10 million reward it had offered for the capture of Syrian militant leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, whose group led insurgents that ousted President Bashar Assad earlier this month.
The announcement followed a meeting in Damascus between Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaida, and the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, who led the first U.S. diplomatic delegation into Syria since Assad's ouster.
Al-Sharaa's group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, remains designated a foreign terrorist organization. Leaf would not say if sanctions stemming from that designation would be eased. However, she told reporters that Sharaa had committed to renouncing terrorism, and as a result, the U.S. would no longer offer the reward.
Leaf said the U.S. would make policy decisions based on actions, not words.
Ahmad al-Sharaa aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. AFP
8:00 The Israeli military said its soldiers shot and wounded a protester Friday in the Syrian village of Maariyah.
Since the fall of Bashar Assad's government in Syria, Israel's military has occupied several locations in the country along the border with Israel.
During a protest Friday by dozens of Syrians against the Israeli presence in Maariyah, soldiers shot at one man who the military said had approached their position, wounding him in the leg.
Residents in the area previously told The Associated Press that Israeli forces were preventing farmers from reaching their fields.
A villager from Maariya told AFP that Israeli soldiers had been entering his village and other nearby villages in recent days.
"When the Israelis entered ... they sowed fear and horror among the people, the children, the women," Ali al-Khalaf, 52, told AFP.
"So much so that some people fled to other nearby villages. They (Israeli troops) entered the villages of Maariya, Aabdyn and Jamlah," he added.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled zone.
During the visit, his office said Netanyahu reviewed the army's deployment in the area.
Israeli leaders say they will remain in the area indefinitely.
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