Assad says Syria in ‘hands of terrorism’ in first statement since fall of regime

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Syria's Jolani says 'contract' between state and all religions needed for 'social justice

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group that toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, said Monday that a "social contract" between the state and all religions in the country was needed to ensure "social justice".

"Syria must remain united, and there must be a social contract between the state and all religions to guarantee social justice," said Jolani, who now goes by his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Telegram. 

UN chief welcomes aid commitments by new Syrian authorities

United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher met with the commander of Syria's new administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and newly appointed Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir on Monday to discuss scaling up humanitarian assistance in the country.

Following Fletcher's meeting, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that he welcomed the caretaker government's commitment to protect civilians, including humanitarian workers.

"I also welcome their agreement to grant full humanitarian access through all border crossings; cut through bureaucracy over permits and visas for humanitarian workers; ensure the continuity of essential government services, including health and education; and engage in genuine and practical dialogue with

the wider humanitarian community," Guterres said.

Syria's Jolani says rebel factions to be 'disbanded', fighters to join army

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group that toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, said Monday that rebel factions in the war-torn country would be disbanded and their fighters would join regular army units.

"The factions will be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry, and all will be subject to the law," Jolani, who now uses his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said on Telegram.

Russia says Syrians must decide future of their country

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday it was up to Syrians to determine their own future and called for an “inclusive” government taking account of the country’s diverse ethnic and religious interests.

A ministry statement said Moscow was closely watching the situation more than a week after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, long backed by Moscow, and as power becomes consolidated under commander Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“We believe that the path to a sustainable normalisation of the situation in Syria lies in creating an inclusive dialogue among Syrians based on achieving national accord and moving forward with the complex process of a political settlement,” the statement said.

“For Russia, it is important that the future of Syria be set out by Syrians themselves. We believe that the relations of friendship and mutual respect between the peoples of our countries for decades will continue to develop constructively.”

‘Massive flow of support’ needed in Syria, UN aid chief says

The United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said Monday that huge amounts of aid were needed in war-ravaged Syria following the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad, saying the world body was ready to “go big”.

“The situation is very dramatic,” Fletcher told journalists in Damascus. “Things are moving very, very fast.”

“The key thing is that the Syrian people are in charge of their own destiny now, but the international community has a responsibility to be at their side,” he added, pointing out that “seven in 10 Syrians are needing help right now.”

Fletcher stressed that the UN wanted “to get a massive flow of support into Syria, really scale up fast”.

“Food, medicine, shelter, but also the funds to redevelop the Syria that people can believe in again,” he said.

Former Assad officers fear HTS retribution after regime falls

For those serving Assad’s regime, and for his religious community, the fall of the dictator has been a shock that puts them in a difficult and dangerous position.

They fear retribution from all those who were oppressed during his rule.

FRANCE 24’s reporters James André, Julie Dungelhoeff and Sofia Amara managed to enter the compound were officers of the infamous 4th division of the regime’s army had their staff quarters.

It's a complex where families await their fate in fear, guarded by HTS fighters.

Syrian democratic forces says US-brokered mediation failed to reach permanent ceasefire with rebels in Manbij

Syrian US-backed Kurdish Syrian forces (SDF) said US-brokered mediation efforts failed to reach a permanent ceasefire with Syria’s Turkey-backed rebels in the northern cities of Manbij and Kobani, according to the head of the SDF’s media center Farhad Shami on Monday.

Shami blamed the collapse of the mediation to “Turkey’s approach in dealing with the mediation efforts and its evasion to accept key points”.

UK sends senior officials to meet ‘interim Syrian authorities’

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Monday that the UK has sent senior officials to meet with Syria’s new leadership.

“I can confirm today that we have sent a delegation of senior UK officials to Damascus this week for meetings with the new Syrian interim authorities and members of civil society groups in Syria,” he said, adding that the team would reiterate Britain’s “support for the principles that have been set out -- an inclusive transitional political process that is Syria-led and Syria-owned”.

The UK’s top diplomat said sending the delegation “underlines our commitment to Syria”.

Lammy also noted a weekend announcement of £50 million in humanitarian aid for Syria, alongside funding to “help secure chemical weapons stockpiles” in the war-ravaged country.

American strikes kill 12 Islamic State group militants in Syria, says US military

American forces carried out air strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria on Monday, killing a dozen of its fighters, the US military said.

“The strikes against the ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps were conducted as part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade and defeat ISIS,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on social media, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

Trump calls rebellion in Syria ‘unfriendly takeover’ by Turkey

US President-elect Donald Trump characterised the rebel ouster of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad by Ankara-backed Islamist rebels as an “unfriendly takeover” by US ally Turkey as he addressed the conflict at a news conference Monday.

“I think Turkey is very smart... Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children...” Trump told reporters at his residence in Florida.

Israel working with Russian mediators to locate spy Eli Cohen's remains in Syria, Palestinian sources say

Two Palestinian officials told AFP on Monday that Israel, via Russian mediators, was seeking to locate in Syria the remains of famous Israeli spy Eli Cohen and a missing soldier.

Israel for years has been trying to find and repatriate the body of Cohen, and in 2021 a war monitor said Russian forces had been searching the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus for his remains, along with those of two Israeli soldiers.

A Palestinian official in Damascus on Monday said “contact was established with us via mediators in order for us to help find the remains of an Israeli soldier who has been missing since 1982”, without identifying the missing soldier.

“Contacts are also underway to determine the location where the remains of the Israeli agent known as Eli Cohen are buried,” the source added, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive.

Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government. The information Cohen obtained was seen as having played a key role in Israel’s conquest of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

This picture taken on January 25, 2000 shows a close-up of a postage stamp commemorating Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who was executed by Syria in Damascus in 1965. (Courtesy: Menahem Kahana, AFP)

Syria’s Islamists say under orders to stay away from Russian forces

Troops loyal to Syria’s new interim government, led by the opposition faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have told AFP they were under orders not to approach Russian forces, whose flag still flies over a military enclave in the terminal that has been controlled by Moscow since the Soviet era.

 “We’ve been given orders to stay away from them for now,” one fighter told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The Russian troops were loading a truck at the entrance to the port they control in the Syrian city of Tartus on Monday, while Islamist fighters manned a nearby checkpoint.

Further away, a queue of more than a dozen trucks and armoured vehicles in Russian colours lined a wharf.

The HTS fighters said that two days ago a four-person senior delegation from the new government, accompanied by a translator and an Assad-era port official had met the Russians. But when a group of local troops had approached them on Sunday the Russians appeared to ready their weapons, without raising them aggressively.

Russia, Iran have no place in Syria’s future, says EU’s Kallas

Extremism, Russia and Iran should not have a place in Syria’s future, EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on Monday after meeting with European foreign ministers.

“Many foreign ministers emphasised that it should be a condition for the new leadership to eliminate Russian influence (in Syria),” Kallas said.

The EU will “raise this issue” of Russia’s military bases with Syria's new leadership, said Kallas.

Four Syrian official told Reuters on Saturday that while Russia is pulling back its military from the front lines in northern Syria and from posts in the Alawite Mountains, Moscow is not leaving its two main bases in the country after Bashar al-Assad's ouster.

Israeli strikes leave Syrian ammo dump a smoking ruin

A Syrian bunker complex outside the port of Tartus was ablaze and rocked by explosions Monday just hours after what a war monitor and locals said was an intense wave of Israeli air strikes.

Even after the strikes ended, blasts continued to erupt in a valley outside the village of Bmalkah, a Christian community in the hills behind the city, which is home to Russia’s naval base in Syria.

Coming just over a week after Bashar al-Assad’s regime was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive, the raids targeted strategic sites and air defences along Syria’s western coast.

“It was like an earthquake. All the windows in my house were blown out,” said 28-year-old Ibrahim Ahmed, an employee in a legal office who had come to a roadside viewpoint to look down on devastation.

Lebanon’s prime minister orders reopening of country’s embassy in Syria

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has ordered the reopening of Lebanon’s embassy in

Damascus after it shut down during the latest events, his office said in a post on X on Monday.

EU seeks assurances from Syria’s new leaders in exchange for dropping sanctions

European Union nations on Monday set out conditions for lifting sanctions on Syria and kick-starting aid to the conflict-ravaged country amid uncertainty about its new leaders’ intentions just over a week after they seized power.

At a meeting in Brussels, the EU’s top diplomats said they want guarantees from members of Syria’s interim government that they are preparing for a peaceful political future involving all minority groups, one in which extremism and former allies Russia and Iran have no place.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc wants a “stable, peaceful and all-comprising government in place,” but that it will probably take weeks, if not months, for Syria’s new path to be clear.

“Syria faces an optimistic, positive, but rather uncertain future, and we have to make sure that this goes to the right direction,” she told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers. “For us, it’s not only the words, but we want to see the deeds.”

‘Syria is one of the most underfunded humanitarian catastrophes in years,’ says NRC spokesperson

The EU’s envoy to Syria headed to Damascus on Monday to hold talks with the country’s new Islamist rulers, just a week after president Bashar al-Assad’s ouster ended decades of brutal rule and civil war.

The move from Brussels came after the United States and Britain said they had made contact with the new authorities in the Syrian capital.

For a deeper perspective on the harrowing plight of civilians in war-torn Syria, FRANCE 24’s Eve Irvine talked to Ahmed Bayram, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the Middle East, who said that “Syria is one of the most underfunded humanitarian catastrophes in the last few years.”

Assad denies ‘planned’ departure from Syria

Bashar al-Assad said Monday his departure from Syria was not planned and that Moscow requested his evacuation from a military base that was under attack, in the former president's first statement since his ouster.

“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles,” said a statement on the ousted presidency’s Telegram channel, adding “Moscow requested ... an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday December 8” after he moved to Latakia early that day.

“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose,” the statement added.

Assad says he left Hmeimim base in Syria on December 8 for Moscow

Syria's Bashar al-Assad said on Monday he was evacuated to Russia from the Hmeimim base in Syria on the evening of December 8 as it came under drone attacks, after leaving Damascus that morning with opposition fighters closing in.

The comment, in a statement that was published on the Syrian presidency's Telegram channel and dated December 16 from Moscow, was Assad's first in public since he was toppled more than a week ago by a rebel offensive.

FRANCE 24’s Clemence Waller reports.