Syria’s Assad blames ‘terrorism’ for regime collapse in first statement since defeat
(LONDON) — Former Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday made his first official statement since being topped by a rebel offensive and fleeing the country for Russia, declaring that he left Syria after a Russian request to do so.
“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur in the final hours of the battles,” Assad said in a statement posted to the presidency’s official Telegram channel.
“As terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus, I moved to Latakia in coordination with our Russian allies to oversee combat operations,” Assad said.
“Upon arrival at the Khmeimim air base that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen,” the statement continued.
“As the field situation in the area continued to deteriorate, the Russian military base itself came under intensified attack by drone strikes. With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia.”
“This took place a day after the fall of Damascus, following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all state institutions,” Assad said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — The Israel Defense Forces continued its intense airstrike and ground campaigns in Gaza and in Lebanon, with Israeli attacks on targets nationwide including in the capital Beirut.
The strikes continue despite a cease-fire push fronted by President Joe Biden’s White House as it prepares to hand power to President-elect Donald Trump.
Tensions also remain high between Israel and Iran after tit-for-tat long-range strikes in recent months and threats of further military action from both sides.
Lebanon death toll rises ahead of possible cease-fire
Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said Tuesday that the death toll from Israel’s military operations in the country had risen to 3,768 people as of Sunday.
Another 15,699 people have been wounded since renewed fighting between the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah began on Oct. 8, 2023, the ministry said.
Israel continued airstrikes on Monday night and Tuesday morning even amid reports of an imminent cease-fire deal. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported six people killed in multiple attacks in the southern Nabatieh Governorate.
IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee also issued fresh evacuation warnings for Beirut’s southern Dahiya area on Tuesday morning ahead of planned airstrikes there.
-ABC News’ Ghazi Balkiz
Details of Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire deal emerge
A cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah would begin soon after its announcement, with the aim of achieving a permanent cease-fire after 60 days, according to an Israeli source with knowledge of the potential deal.
The U.S. will head a committee, joined by French and Arab partners, to monitor and verify the implementation of the ceasefire, the source said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a security cabinet meeting Tuesday to discuss the deal and hold a cabinet vote, Israeli officials said.
There is almost unanimous support in the cabinet for the U.S.-brokered cease-fire deal, and it is expected to be approved. Far-right leader Ben Gvir is expected to vote against it.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller
‘We don’t believe we have an agreement yet’: State Department
The U.S. is hopeful that Israel and Hezbollah are close to a cease-fire deal, but striking a pact “is up to the parties, not to us,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing Monday.
“We don’t believe we have an agreement yet. We believe we’re close to an agreement. We believe that we have narrowed the gap significantly, but there are still steps that we need to see taken, but we hope — we hope that we can get there,” Miller said.
Echoing comments earlier Monday by White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby, Miller emphasized that “nothing’s final until everything’s final.”
“Oftentimes the very last stages of an agreement are the most difficult, because the hardest issues are left to the end,” Miller said.
-ABC News’ Chris Boccia
Israeli strikes kill 31, injure at least 62 people in Lebanon
Israeli forces conducted strikes Monday in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital Beirut and in southern Lebanon as talks of a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel continued on both sides.
At least 31 people were killed and 62 others injured in the strikes on southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said in a post on X.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller
No indication Netanyahu will call in cabinet and vote to approve Lebanon cease-fire
There are no indications that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to call in his cabinet and vote to approve the Lebanon cease-fire Monday night, Israeli officials told ABC News.
Netanyahu is planning a series of meetings Tuesday to discuss the Lebanon cease-fire deal, including talks with his minister of strategic affairs, former American ambassador Ron Dermer, along with his most senior defense officials.
Later in the afternoon, Netanyahu will hold a larger cabinet meeting that includes the far-right. That meeting may lead to a final vote to approve a deal, though that remains unclear. A deal can pass even if one of the two far-right leaders opposes it.
The cease-fire would last for 60 days, but would not require the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw right away.
-ABC News’ Joe Simonetti and Jordana Miller
White House says deal is close but nothing is final
A cease-fire deal between Israel and Hezbollah was close, White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby reiterated in a briefing Tuesday, but he would not give details about the deal or specific timing, saying he had to be careful not to get in the way of the tenuous diplomacy.
“We believe that the trajectory of this is going in a very positive direction. But again, nothing is done until everything is done. Nothing’s all negotiated till everything is negotiated. And you know, we need to keep at the work to see it through so that we can actually get the ceasefire for which we’ve been working for for so long and so hard,” Kirby said.
Kirby declined to say if any announcement from President Joe Biden and French President Emanuel Macron should be expected over the next few days.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Far-right Israeli minister says Lebanon cease-fire would be a ‘big mistake’
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Monday that a potential cease-fire agreement to end the fighting in Lebanon would be “a big mistake.”
Ending the war would be a “missed opportunity” to “eradicate Hezbollah,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X.
Ben-Gvir has previously pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject any cease-fire deal in Gaza, where fighting continues with Hamas and other militant groups.
“We must continue until the absolute victory,” Ben-Gvir said of both the Gaza and Lebanon fronts.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller
Khamenei calls for ‘death sentence’ for Netanyahu, Israeli leaders
In an address to thousands of Basij militia members on Monday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued last week for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were insufficient.
“What [they have] done in Gaza and Lebanon is not a victory, it is a war crime,” Khamenei said.
“Now they have issued arrest warrants for them; this is not enough,” he added of the ICC decision. “A death sentence must be issued for Netanyahu and the criminal leaders of this regime.”
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who the Israel Defense Forces claimed to have killed in an airstrike in Gaza in July.
Netanyahu’s office expressed its “disgust” at the decision and dismissed the ICC warrant as “absurd.”
-ABC News’ Somayeh Malekian and Joe Simonetti
Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut suburbs
The Israel Defense Forces said its warplanes “conducted intelligence-based strikes on several Hezbollah command centers” in southern Beirut on Monday.
The strikes again focused on the Dahiya area in the south of the Lebanese capital, which is known as a Hezbollah stronghold.
Monday’s bombings followed an intense day of strikes on Sunday, as diplomats continued to push for a cease-fire agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller and Joe Simonetti
1 hour ago
UAE arrests 3 people accused of rabbi’s killing
The United Arab Emirates’ Interior Ministry said Monday it arrested three Uzbek nationals suspected of the kidnapping and killing of Moldovan-Israeli rabbi Zvi Kogan.
Kogan, 28, was an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Nov. 21. He managed a kosher grocery store in Dubai.
The ministry identified the three detained men as Olimpi Tohirovic, 28, Mahmoud John Abdul Rahim, 28, and Azizi Kamilovic, 33. It did not say whether charges had been filed and did not suggest a motive.
Israeli leaders have framed the killing as an antisemitic terror operation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday his nation would “act by all means” to “bring justice to the murderers and their senders.”
-ABC News’ Joe Simonetti
IDF issues new Beirut airstrike warnings
Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on Monday morning that Israeli warplanes would soon begin new airstrikes in Beirut, following 24 hours of intense bombing of the city’s southern suburbs.
Adraee ordered residents of the Haret Hreik area of the southern Dahiya suburbs — known as a Hezbollah stronghold — to flee their homes and stay at least 500 meters from target buildings identified on an IDF map.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller
More strikes on southern Beirut suburbs
There were more strikes Sunday night in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which have been pounded by dozens of Israeli strikes in the last few days.
The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday night’s strikes in Dahieh were on “12 Hezbollah command centers.”
-ABC News’ Victoria Beaulé
29 dead in central Beirut after Saturday’s airstrike
The death toll from an Israeli strike Saturday in central Beirut has risen to 29, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
The update on casualties came as emergency workers continued to search collapsed buildings for survivors of the strike, an official said.
At least 67 people were also injured in the Israeli strike, according to the Ministry of Health.
-ABC News’ Victoria Beaule
Israeli official confirms Netanyahu holding meeting on Lebanon cease-fire
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was holding a meeting with security officials on Sunday night regarding ongoing Lebanon cease-fire talks, an Israeli official told ABC News.
The development comes after Netanyahu met last week in Israel with U.S. Special Envoy Amos Hochstein and discussed a possible cease-fire in Lebanon. Hochstein also traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, to discuss a cease-deal between Hezbollah and Israel.
(MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA and LONDON) — At least 147 people were killed when a tanker exploded in Nigeria, according to the country’s National Emergency Management Agency.
The petrol tanker exploded after the driver lost control in the town of Majiya, in northwestern Nigeria, late on Tuesday, Shi’isu Adam, a spokesperson for the Jigawa regional police, told reporters on Wednesday.
Distressing videos taken by eyewitnesses at the scene appeared to show large columns of smoke and flames spreading from the overturned vehicle. Eyewitnesses described the scene as that of chaos and despair, with many struggling to rescue the injured amidst the flames.
Jigawa state Gov. Umar Namadi was briefed on the death toll as he visited the scene of the accident in Majiya on Wednesday morning.
A local resident, Sani Umar, who narrowly escaped the inferno, recounted, “It was terrifying. People were running in all directions, screaming for help. The fire spread so quickly that many couldn’t escape.”
The petrol tanker had been heading to Nigeria’s Yobe state before it crashed at around 11:30 p.m. local time after the driver lost control of the vehicle, police said. Soon large crowds began to gather around the tanker at the scene of the accident, with some gathering leaking fuel from the truck when it exploded.
“We are worried that in spite of police warning people to stay clear from scenes of accidents involving fuel tankers, they still engage in such acts,” Adam told reporters on Wednesday. “People gathered around the accident scene; that is the reason for the mass casualties.”
“Numerous” injured individuals were transported to hospitals for treatment, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said.
The area remained cordoned off on Wednesday as police continue investigations.
AT Abdullahi, the commissioner of police in Jigawa state, expressed on Wednesday his condolences to the families of the deceased and the entire people of Jigawa.
“This is a heartbreaking moment for us all,” Abdullahi said. “We share in the pain and sorrow of the families affected. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the bereaved.”
A mass burial for the victims is due to take place on Wednesday.
The remains of exploded pagers are seen in Beirut’s southern suburbs Sept 18, 2024, after hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on Sept. 17, 2024, killing at least nine people. (AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The unassuming pager took its place in the annals of Israeli covert operations history in September, when thousands of the credit card-sized devices served as tiny Trojan horses for explosive charges as they were held by likely Hezbollah operatives.
The pager detonations in Lebanon and Syria on Sept. 17 were followed by the explosion — around 24 hours later — of walkie-talkies, used by Hezbollah as a communications network after its beepers were compromised.
The attacks, which killed 37 people and wounded 2,931 according to Lebanese authorities, were several years in the making, a source told ABC News.
“The disruption and damage they wrought was unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah — himself killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Sept. 27 — said.
Sources confirmed to ABC News that Israel was responsible for the pager explosions.
Israel — which rarely confirms or denies responsibility for covert operations or attacks on foreign soil — offered no confirmation of responsibility for the attacks. President Isaac Herzog even told Sky News he “rejects out of hand any connection to this or that source of operation.”
Orna Mizrahi of the Institute for National Security Studies think tank in Israel told ABC News that the communication devices operations stand out due to “the amount of people that were eliminated.”
“We don’t call it assassination; we call it elimination,” said Mizrahi, who previously served in the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Research Division and in the prime minister’s office as deputy national security adviser for foreign policy.
The attacks represent a world-first, Mizrahi said.
“It’s a real invention,” she said.
As to the criticism of the mass detonation of the devices, Mizrahi responded: “The terrorists are the only ones that used them. So, it is like a bullet in the hand of your enemy. But it wasn’t a bullet. It was something that was exploding in their hands.”
The operation drew on a long history of audacious — though not always successful or discriminate — covert Israeli targeted killings all over the Middle East. Though Israel generally does not confirm involvement in such operations, top Israeli officials have made clear their position against what they deem to be threats to national security.
As Israel’s outgoing spy chief Yossi Cohen said in 2021 regarding reported targeted killings in Iran: “If the man constitutes a capability that endangers the citizens of Israel, he must stop existing.”
Mizrahi said those conducting such “elimination” operations usually do so based on one or more of three criteria. The target might be a “very important terrorist” with significant influence and capabilities, she said.
The target may be a long-standing one, with plans put in place and those executing them waiting for the right moment to strike, Mizrahi added.
Or, the eventual target may be identified as part of an imminent attack “and you want to intercept it and to stop it,” she added.
“It’s always people that are from what we understand is a terror organization, that are threatening Israel or in the midst of launching some kind of attack against Israel,” Mizrahi said.
“We don’t eliminate people just like that,” she added, noting that Israeli forces will “usually” want to ensure “there is very little collateral damage, not too many civilians.”
Past operations have been abandoned due to the likelihood of civilian casualties, Mizrahi said.
“When you are in a war, you cannot be so cautious,” she added.
A bloody history
Within years of the country’s bloody, but ultimately successful, War of Independence in 1948, Israel’s clandestine services were waging assassination campaigns against the many surrounding forces and states deemed threats to the young nation’s survival.
Its military and intelligence services were staffed by many who participated in the Jewish insurgency against the entity known as Mandatory Palestine, the British-run territory designated by the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1956, for example, parcel bombs were used to kill Egyptian military officials Col. Mustafa Hafez and Lt. Col. Salah Mustafa in Egypt and Jordan, respectively, both of whom organized Palestinian militant raids into Israel.
As Israeli identity and policy were forged in the crucible of war, insurgency and terrorism, the country’s clandestine operations took on greater ingenuity and complexity — though direct methods of killing have remained in regular use through the nation’s 76 years, spanning the technological spectrum from shootings to airstrikes.
September’s explosions in Lebanon will go down as one of the most unusual attacks in Israeli — or wider international covert operations — history, given the delivery method of the explosives, the number of those killed or wounded and the intimate access to Hezbollah it demonstrated.
But it was not the first time Israel sought to turn everyday items into weapons. In 1972, for example, Palestine Liberation Organization cadre Bassam Abu Sharif — a former senior advisor to PLO chief Yasser Arafat — lost four fingers plus the use of one ear and one eye when a book sent to him by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, exploded in his hands in Beirut. Israel never officially took responsibility.
The killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian Black September militant group set in motion a brutal and sprawling revenge campaign — known as Operation Wrath of God — that would see Mossad operatives turn unassuming items into weapons.
Mossad’s long-established policy of public silence meant it never claimed even the most sophisticated assassinations credited to the agency. But David Kimche, the former deputy head of Mossad, explained of the retaliation campaign: “The aim was not so much revenge but mainly to make them frightened.”
“We wanted to make them look over their shoulders and feel that we are upon them. And therefore, we tried not to do things by just shooting a guy in the street — that’s easy,” he said.
Mahmoud Hamshari — the PLO’s representative in Paris — for example, died of wounds sustained in his Paris apartment in December 1972, when Mossad agents detonated explosives packed into the base of his telephone.
Hussein Al Bashir, a representative of Palestinian group Fatah, was killed the following month in Cyprus by a bomb concealed in his hotel bed.
Death by communication device was a common theme in the years after Hamshari’s killing.
In 1996, for example, internal security agency Shin Bet tricked Yahya Ayyash — an infamous Hamas bombmaker accused of killing dozens of Israelis — into accepting a call using a cellphone given to him by a Palestinian collaborator. The phone detonated as he held it to his head, killing him instantly.
Samih Malabi, a member of Fatah’s Tanzim militant wing, was also killed by an exploding cellphone in 2000.
Another three Palestinians and alleged militants — Osama Fatih al-Jawabra, Iyad Mohammed Hardan and Muhammad Ishteiwi Abayat — were killed by explosions in phone booths in 2001 and 2002.
Among one of the highest profile assassinations was a joint Mossad-CIA operation targeting Imad Mughniyah — Hezbollah’s international operations chief — who was killed in a suburb of Damascus in 2008. Neither Mossad nor the CIA ever took credit publicly.
A bomb concealed in a car’s spare tire exploded as Mughniyah walked past. It was detonated remotely by agents in Tel Aviv, using operatives on the ground in the Syrian capital to guide the plot’s final execution, according to a Washington Post report citing five former U.S. intelligence officials.
In Iran, too, the hand of Israeli intelligence is credited with several high-profile killings. Israel was behind a rash of assassinations of nuclear scientists between 2007 and 2012 — often using magnetic car bombs or via drive-by shootings, according to Iran.
So, too, was it responsible for the killing of the alleged head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, reportedly assassinated on a highway outside Tehran by a remote-controlled machine gun in 2020.
Israel’s highest-profile recent killing — that of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July — reportedly relied not on an innocuous item but on deep penetration of enemy security networks.
Haniyeh was killed by a bomb planted in a guesthouse he often used when visiting the Iranian capital.
The operation bypassed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ protection of the building, emplacing the device two months before Haniyeh’s visit, according to reporting in the The New York Times citing five anonymous Middle Eastern officials.
Blowback and civilian casualties
For all their ingenuity, Israel’s targeted killings also brought civilian casualties, political embarrassment and diplomatic blowback.
It remains unclear how many civilians were among the thousands injured in the recent device explosions in Lebanon and Syria. At least two children were among the dead. Additional civilians were killed in the subsequent Beirut airstrike that assassinated Hezbollah operations chief Ibrahim Aqil and 14 other members, Lebanese authorities said.
Among the most infamous bungled efforts was Israel’s attempted assassination of Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan in 1997. Mossad agents using fake Canadian passports poisoned Mashaal outside of Hamas’ office in the capital Amman by holding a device to his ear.
Several agents were subsequently captured and, as Mashaal’s condition deteriorated, Jordan’s King Hussein — with the backing of then President Bill Clinton — pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into providing the antidote and saving Mashaal’s life.
Israel’s Wrath of God operations from 1972 onwards caused several notable civilian casualties. The commando squads hunting Palestinian militant leaders in Beirut in April 1973 killed two Lebanese police officers and one Italian citizen in their search for targets. Among them was Black September operations leader Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, whose wife was also killed.
In July 1973, Mossad brought chaos to the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer in their search for Black September operations chief Ali Hassan Salameh.
Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter, was shot dead after agents falsely identified him as Salameh. Five Mossad agents were eventually convicted of the killing, and not returned to Israel until 1975.
A follow-up effort took place at a house in the southern Spanish city of Tarifa. Mossad agents reportedly killed a security guard but did not locate Salameh.
Israel finally killed Salameh in Beirut in 1979, detonating a bomb attached to a parked car as his convoy passed. Salameh died shortly after in hospital.
As well as his four bodyguards, the blast killed four bystanders and injured 16 more. Among the dead were a British student and a German nun.