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    Syria’s Interim President Calls for Unity Amid Fresh Fighting

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    More than 1,000 people have been killed in clashes in the coastal provinces of Syria, according to one war monitoring group.Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, appealed on Sunday for calm and for unity as he moved to reassure the nation after days of clashes that a monitoring group said had killed hundreds of people.“We must preserve national unity and civil peace,” he said from a mosque in Damascus, according to video that circulated online. “We call on Syrians to be reassured because the country has the fundamentals for survival.”The violence erupted last week between fighters affiliated with Syria’s new government, headed by Mr. al-Shara, and those loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad. Scores of civilians have been killed, according to two war monitoring groups, along with combatants on both sides of the conflict.Mr. al-Shara’s remarks on Sunday came as fresh fighting was reported in the countryside of the coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces. A spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani, told state media that government forces were combing the countryside for armed fighters loyal to the deposed Assad regime.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said that government forces were attacking with drones, tanks and artillery on Sunday. In other areas, it said, government forces were searching for armed groups affiliated with the deposed regime’s military.Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, called on Sunday for unity.Khalil Ashawi/ReutersThe clashes have centered in the coastal provinces, where much of the country’s Alawite religious minority — which dominated the ruling class and upper ranks of the military under the Assad government, and included the Assad family itself — live. That has raised fears of a renewed sectarian conflict in the country.More than 1,000 people have been killed in Tartus and Latakia provinces since the fighting erupted last week, the observatory said early on Sunday. About 700 civilians were included in that figure, most killed by government forces, it said. The information could not be independently verified.Another monitoring group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, reported earlier that government security forces had killed some 125 civilians. The group had not yet updated its casualty figures on Sunday. It said that men of all ages were among the casualties and that the forces did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.The violence has been the worst since the Assad government was ousted in early December by rebels who became the country’s new leaders. It presents a major test of the new government’s authority and ability to unify the country, which has deep sectarian divisions after more than 13 years of civil war. More

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      Hegseth Fires Military’s Top JAG Lawyers in Pursuit of ‘Warrior Ethos’

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      The defense secretary has repeatedly derided the military lawyers for war crime prosecutions and battlefield rules of engagement.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force represents an opening salvo in his push to remake the military into a force that is more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.Mr. Hegseth, in the Pentagon and during his meetings with troops last week in Europe, has spoken repeatedly about the need to restore a “warrior ethos” to a military that he insists has become soft, social-justice obsessed and more bureaucratic over the past two decades.His decision to replace the military’s judge advocate generals — typically three-star military officers — offers a sense of how he defines the ethos that he has vowed to instill.The dismissals came as part of a broader push by Mr. Hegseth and President Trump, who late Friday also fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the country’s top military officer, as well as the first woman to lead the Navy and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force.By comparison, the three fired judge advocate generals, also known as “JAGs,” are far less prominent. Inside the Pentagon and on battlefields around the world, military lawyers aren’t decision makers. Their job is to provide independent legal advice to senior military officers so that they do not run afoul of U.S. law or the laws of armed conflict.Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Hegseth has had no contact with any of the three fired uniform military lawyers since taking office. None of the three — Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and Rear Adm. Lia M. Reynolds — were even named in the Pentagon statement announcing their dismissal from decades of military service.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hamas Failed to Return the Body of a Hostage. What Now?

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      The Palestinian armed group said it had handed over the remains of Shiri Bibas along with her two young children and another man. Israel said forensic testing found that it wasn’t her.Israel said on Friday that one of the bodies Hamas handed over as part of the cease-fire deal did not belong to an Israeli woman taken hostage in 2023, as the Palestinian militant group had claimed.The revelation prompted further alarm over the future of the brittle truce and hostage-for-prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel. Here’s what we know so far.Who were the hostages?Hamas said on Thursday that it had handed over the remains of four hostages: Shiri Bibas, 32; her two children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir Bibas, less than a year old; and Oded Lifshitz, 83. All four were kidnapped from Nir Oz, a village near Gaza that was devastated in Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.For many Israelis, the Bibas family had become emblematic of the brutality of the Hamas attack. Footage of a terrified Ms. Bibas clutching her two children while being led away by Palestinian gunmen has been seared into the Israeli public consciousness.Hamas claimed that all four hostages were killed in Israeli airstrikes. But Israel said that three of the four returned on Thursday — which were identified through DNA testing as belonging to Mr. Lifshitz and the two Bibas children — had been murdered by their captors.What happened on Thursday?Hamas handed four coffins to the International Committee of the Red Cross in a televised ceremony. Each coffin bore the photo of a captive whose body was supposed to be turned over to Israel, including Ms. Bibas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sexual Violence Against Children Soars in Congo, U.N. Group Says

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      UNICEF accused “armed men” of raping scores of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been ravaged by conflict recently.Sexual violence against children in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has soared in recent weeks, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Thursday, as ethnic tensions and disputes over land and mineral resources fuel fighting in the country. The organization, known as UNICEF, reported that health care facilities in Goma and the surrounding areas had documented 170 cases of children having been raped in a single week, between Jan. 27 and Feb. 2.The health facilities reported 572 cases of rape that week, compared to an average of 95 cases in the prior weeks, said Lianne Gutcher, UNICEF’s communication chief for Congo. She added that the violence was being perpetrated by “armed men” belonging to all parties in the conflict.The aid group Save the Children reported similar trends of children being victimized across eastern Congo.Rebels, said to be backed by Rwanda, have been seizing huge tracts of the Democratic Republic of Congo at lightning speed. In a month, they have routed Congo’s underequipped army several times and caused more than half a million people to flee. In late January, they rebels captured Goma, a Congolese city of three million people along the Rwandan border.Rwanda’s president has denied that his country is arming the rebels or that his troops are in Congo.The rebels, known as M23, say they are protecting ethnic Tutsis, the minority group massacred in a 1994 genocide, some of whom also live in Congo. Experts, however, say the group is after Congo’s rare minerals.Captured soldiers of the Democratic Republic of Congo aboard vehicles outside the city of Goma last month as armed rebel soldiers walk by.Guerchom Ndebo for The New York Times“In North and South Kivu provinces, we are receiving horrific reports of grave violations against children by parties to the conflict, including rape and other forms of sexual violence at levels surpassing anything we have seen in recent years,” UNICEF’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said in a statement. She added that medical workers were running out of drugs used to reduce the risk HIV infection after an assault.Save the Children said it had evidence that 18 girls were sexually violated in South Kivu Province, and that a 16-year-old girl was killed resisting armed men.“One mother recounted to our staff how her six daughters, the youngest just 12 years old, were systematically raped by armed men while searching for food,” she said.The rebel group’s leaders have vowed to bring order and security to the areas it controls.Elian Peltier More

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      Dozens of Maoist Guerrillas Killed in Central India, Officials Say

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      Rebels known as Naxalites have waged an insurgency that has ebbed and flowed over decades, but government operations have given them less space to maneuver.Dozens of Maoist guerrillas were killed in central India by government forces on Sunday, one of the deadliest operations in recent years against leftist rebels who have waged an insurgency that has ebbed and flowed over several decades.The operation, in the forested Bijapur area in the state of Chhattisgarh, was carried out against the so-called Naxalite movement, and left 31 rebels dead, along with two members of the police forces, according to the area’s police chief, Jitendra Kumar Yadav.Chief Yadav said the authorities had also recovered a number of AK-47 assault weapons and several other automatic rifles after the clashes.“We will completely eradicate Naxalism from the country, so that no citizen of the country has to lose his life because of it,” said Amit Shah, India’s home minister, referring to the left-wing insurgency.The Maoist insurgency began in eastern India in the 1960s and spread widely in central and southern parts of the country.The violence peaked in 2010, when more than 600 civilians and over 250 security forces were killed in the conflict.In recent years, civilian deaths have dwindled, after government operations shrunk the space for the insurgents to operate. The insurgency’s leadership has also struggled, analysts say, in the face of targeted operations, old age and illness.The Home Ministry told Parliament last year that the threat of leftist extremism had dropped significantly in recent years, in terms of the number of deaths as well as the amount of affected territory.Deaths of civilians and security forces related to the insurgency in 2023 were 86 percent lower than at their peak in 2010, the ministry said, adding that the number of districts affected by the violence had shrunk to 38 from 126.Niranjan Sahoo, who studies left-wing extremism at the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, said the Maoists were struggling to recruit members, among other problems.He also said they were concentrating their activities in several districts around the Abujhmad forest, including Bijapur, after suffering losses over the years.“The Maoists are at their weakest point, largely because they have lost a lot of their territory,” he said. More

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      Lebanese Residents of Baalbek Return to a Bombed-Out City

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      Tens of thousands of people who had fled the city of Baalbek returned to bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings and many of the dead still buried under the rubble.Hammers clanged against brick and metal as the residents of Baalbek set to work repairing their homes, desperate to restart their lives again.A day after a cease-fire ended Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades, tens of thousands of people who fled the violence had already returned on Thursday to the hard-hit city in the country’s east.Teenage girls snapped selfies in front of the ancient Roman temples. Excited young men on motorcycles performed doughnuts in the street, their back tires spinning up dust and shards of glass.But after weeks of pounding Israeli airstrikes, the scars were not easy to ignore: bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings, trees snapped like twigs. And many of the dead were still buried under the rubble, residents said.“I’m an old woman. I’m not affiliated with anyone. What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Amar, 79, as she swept debris from the front of her house, one of the few still standing on her street.“I’ve been crying all day,” she said.“What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Ammar, 79, at her home in Baalbek.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Israel-Hezbollah Cease-Fire: What to Know

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      Under the agreement, Israel will gradually withdraw its forces from Lebanon over the next 60 days, and Hezbollah will not entrench itself near the Israeli border.A cease-fire meant to end the deadliest war in decades between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah officially took effect early Wednesday, less than a day after President Biden announced the deal and Israel approved its terms.Thousands of Lebanese began to return to their homes in the first hours of the cease-fire. The fighting has killed thousands in Lebanon and around 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers. The conflict has also displaced about one million people in Lebanon, in addition to doing vast physical damage there, and about 60,000 people in Israel.Lebanon’s government agreed on Wednesday morning to the deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed it on Tuesday night and argued that a truce would allow Israel to rebuild its weapon stockpiles while it works to isolate Hamas, the Hezbollah ally that Israel is fighting in Gaza.Here’s what you need to know:A 60-day truceHow will it be enforced?What are the obstacles to a permanent deal?Why did the sides agree to stop fighting?How did we get here?A 60-day truceThe agreement, mediated by American and French diplomats, calls for Israel and Hezbollah to observe a 60-day truce.During that period, Israel would withdraw its forces gradually from southern Lebanon.Hezbollah forces would move north away from the Israeli border and the Lebanese military will send more troops to Lebanon’s south.The withdrawals would effectively create a buffer zone between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, along the Israeli border.If the truce holds though the 60-day period, negotiators hope the agreement will become permanent.How will it be enforced?Under the terms of the deal, a U.N. peacekeeping force, along with the Lebanese Army, will keep the peace in the border zone, as envisioned in a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution that ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war but that was never fully carried out.The cease-fire will be overseen by several countries, including the United States and France, as well as by the United Nations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. to Keep Sending Arms to Israel Despite Dire Conditions in Gaza

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      The State Department said Israel needs to take more steps to improve the situation among Palestinians. The United States had given the country 30 days to meet aid criteria.The State Department said on Tuesday that it did not plan to decrease weapons aid to Israel, as a 30-day deadline set by the Biden administration passed without the country substantially improving the humanitarian situation in war-devastated Gaza.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had warned in a letter dated Oct. 13 that the United States would reassess its military aid to Israel if it failed to increase the amount of aid allowed to enter Gaza within 30 days.The letter said that the humanitarian situation for the two million residents of Gaza was “increasingly dire” and that the amount of aid entering Gaza had fallen by 50 percent since April.By law, the U.S. government cannot give aid to foreign military forces deemed by the State Department to be committing “gross violations of human rights.”U.N. officials have said Israel’s continued blocking of humanitarian aid and targeting of humanitarian workers constitute violations of international law and could amount to war crimes.Food insecurity experts working on an initiative controlled by U.N. bodies and major relief agencies said last week that famine was imminent or most likely already occurring in northern Gaza. U.N. officials say the entire population of Gaza is facing food insecurity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gazan Rescue Service Has Stopped Operating in the North

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      Residents had to dig through rubble in search of their neighbors after the main emergency service in Gaza said it had stopped operations in the north because it had come under Israeli attacks.When an Israeli airstrike hit a home in northern Gaza early Thursday, residents said, there were no paramedics or first responders around to help pull out people trapped in the rubble.Instead, Mazen Ahmed, said he and other neighbors in Beit Lahia had to dig through the debris by themselves. They found at least one body.“We went out to try to rescue on our own to the extent of our abilities,” Mr. Ahmed said on Thursday, speaking by voice message from a cemetery where those killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes were being buried. “There were no stretchers, there were no rescuers, there were no emergency responders.”More than two weeks ago, Gaza’s Civil Defense, the main emergency service in the Palestinian territory, said it was forced to cease rescue operations in the north because of attacks by the Israeli military on its members and destruction of its equipment.Israel stepped up a military offensive in northern Gaza over the last month and ordered widespread evacuations of the area, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence there. Troops, tanks and armed drones have bombarded the area almost daily, sending tens of thousands of residents fleeing.On Thursday, the Israeli military said it was operating against what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Beit Lahia, an agricultural and residential area on the Israeli border where the Israeli military has been fighting for the last four weeks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More