War and Armed Conflicts

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      Israel Says It Will Keep Troops ‘Temporarily’ in 5 Points in Lebanon

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      The announcement raised the specter of renewed fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia.The Israeli military said on Monday that it will keep forces in five locations in southern Lebanon after a deadline for its full withdrawal lapses on Tuesday. The announcement raised fears of a resurgence in violence in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. After more than a year of war, the two sides reached a cease-fire in late November that was contingent on both Israel and Hezbollah ceding control of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese military by the end of January. Hezbollah had long dominated the region, while Israel had captured large parts of it after invading Lebanon in September.In late January, mediators announced a three-week extension to that agreement, giving Israel more time to complete its withdrawal. The truce has frequently been punctured by bursts of violence — including an Israeli airstrike on Monday that killed a Hamas leader in southern Lebanon — but neither side has reverted to full-scale war.Now, the specter of renewed conflict looms once more after the Israeli military announced that it will keep some troops in Lebanon beyond the Feb. 18 deadline, potentially preventing some Lebanese civilians from returning home.“We will leave small amounts of troops deployed temporarily in five strategic points along the border in Lebanon so we can continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman, in a briefing for reporters on Monday afternoon.Colonel Shoshani named several locations spread along most of the length of the 75-mile border, including places across the border from Israeli villages that were badly damaged by Hezbollah rocket fire during the war. He said that Hezbollah had not lived up to its own side of the November agreement and still posed a threat to Israeli residents in those areas. He declined to say how long the occupation would last. It is unclear to what extent Hezbollah has a presence in those areas.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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      M23 Rebels in Congo Say They Have Entered Bukavu

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      Last month, M23 rebels backed by Rwanda took the city of Goma in a bloody battle. This weekend, the group entered the gold-trading center of Bukavu in eastern Congo after government soldiers fled.Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday entered the vital trading hub of Bukavu in the east of the country, according to the fighters and videos circulated by local residents. If confirmed, Bukavu would be the latest city to fall in a sweeping offensive that has revealed the weakness of the crumbling Congolese army.The M23 rebels — who are supported and directed by Rwanda, Congo’s much smaller neighbor — appeared to meet no resistance, residents said, as they marched into Bukavu, a provincial capital that is a major center for gold trading and smuggling.“We’re there, we’re there in Bukavu,” said Willy Ngoma, a M23 spokesman reached by telephone.On Sunday, the rebels addressed a crowd of people in Bukavu’s main square after they entered the city in long, silent columns, according to three eyewitnesses and videos shared on social media and verified by the Times. The eyewitnesses requested anonymity for fear of retribution from the armed group.Days earlier, Congolese soldiers had fled the city in similar columns, according to a dozen other residents, leaving Bukavu under no clear leadership and in the hands of looters who broke into warehouses and shops. The Congolese government has not spoken publicly about the situation in the city Sunday, and the capture of Bukavu has not been independently confirmed.The apparent fall of Bukavu would stand in sharp contrast to the protracted battle for the key city of Goma last month, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed, according to the United Nations.With the capture of Bukavu, a city of more than a million people that sits on the edge of a crystalline lake, the M23 rebels would now control the two largest trading hubs in Congo’s mineral-rich east.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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      Israel Carries Out Heavy Strikes on Syria’s Coast, Monitor Says

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      Israel carried out a heavy wave of airstrikes overnight on Syria’s coastal region, a war monitor said early on Monday, as the Israeli military continued to pound Syria in a bid to destroy the country’s military assets after rebels seized power.The overnight strikes targeted former Syrian Army positions including air defense sites and missile warehouses, according to the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization based in Britain that has long tracked the conflict in Syria. Earlier in the day, an Israeli airstrike also targeted radars in Deir al-Zour’s military airport in the country’s east, the Observatory said.The “successive strikes” along the Syrian coast — home to Russian naval bases — amounted to “the most violent strikes in the area” since 2012, according to the Observatory. It said there were 18 airstrikes, which were particularly powerful because they were consecutive and detonated missiles in warehouses, leading to secondary explosions.The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes. Israeli officials have previously said that the campaign in Syria is an effort to keep military equipment out of the hands of “extremists,” after an alliance of rebel groups ousted the Assad regime earlier this month. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the latest strikes, the Observatory said.Israel has struck Syria more than 450 times since the collapse of the Assad government, according to the Observatory, destroying Syria’s navy and dozens of air bases, ammunition depots and other military equipment.Israel’s military has also seized and occupied an expanse of territory in Syria over the de facto border between the two countries, including on the Syrian side of the strategic Mt. Hermon. Israel has given no timeline for its departure, apart from saying that it would stay until its security demands were met.On Sunday, the Israeli government unanimously approved plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand settlements in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, part of an $11 million scheme to double the population in the area. The move was necessary, the prime minister’s office said, because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad government.Israel seized the Golan Heights during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and it is considered illegally occupied under international law.The head of the group leading the rebel coalition that now governs Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, said in an interview on Saturday with Syria TV, a pro-opposition channel, that Israel was using pretexts to justify “unwarranted” territorial seizures in Syria.Still, he said, Syria could not afford any further conflict and was instead focused on diplomatic solutions.“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” Mr. al-Shara said. “The priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”Gabby Sobelman More

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      How Might the Rebels Govern Syria? Their Ruling History in Idlib Offers Clues

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      The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.Every fall, when farmers across the rolling, red dirt hills of Idlib Province in northern Syria harvest their olive crops, they routinely find at least one representative of the local tax authority stationed at any oil press.The tax collector takes at least 5 percent of the oil, and farmers grouse that there are no exceptions, even in lean harvest years.The collectors work for the civilian government established under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel movement that just spearheaded the swift overthrow of the 54-year Assad dynasty. The Islamist group has administered much of opposition-held Idlib Province since 2017.Measures like the olive oil tax, introduced in 2019, have prompted protests and even occasional armed clashes and arrests.Yet the Syrian Salvation Government, as the Idlib administration was known, persisted. It taxed goods entering its territory and generated revenue by selling fuel and running a telecom company. It also controlled the local economy through licensing regulation programs that looked a lot like a conventional government’s and proved that it was fairly adept at managing those finances to build up its military operations and provide civil services.The portrait of the rebel group detailed in this article was gleaned from interviews with experts, representatives of humanitarian or other organizations working in the territory under its control, local residents and reports by the United Nations or think tanks.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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      With al-Assad Gone, Syrians Search Prisons for Traces of Their Loved Ones

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      Her brother was pulled from his car at a military checkpoint nearly a decade ago, her brother-in-law dragged from his house by the police. Two of her cousins were arrested near the airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus. She said she never had heard from any of them again.So after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Ghusun Juma, 35, began a quest for answers that led her to an underground prison in one of Syria’s most notorious detention centers, a drab collection of buildings in southeastern Damascus.“I am looking to see if there is anything that belonged to my brother, his ID card, or something with his name on it,” she said, guiding herself through a dark, dank cell block with a cellphone flashlight. “I have been looking since the first day, but I haven’t found anything anywhere.”Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, and his troops’ abandonment of their bases as rebels stormed through Damascus, has exposed the black boxes of one of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes. While some Syrians have wandered through his luxurious palace, many more have combed through the vast network of detention centers whose repression helped keep him in power.An untold number of Syrians disappeared into the maw of that security apparatus over the decades. As the rebels broke into prisons and freed prisoners over the last few weeks, many Syrians hoped that their missing relatives would soon return home.Ghusun Juma, 35, right, searching underground cells at Branch 235, which was also known as Palestine Branch.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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      Turkey Emerges as a Big Winner in the Wake of al-Assad’s Ouster

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      In the messy aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, many questions remain about the country’s future, but one thing is clear: Turkey has emerged as a winner, with more influence than ever over the rebels who now control most of Syria.Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had long worked with and supported the Syrian rebels who marched on Damascus this month and forced President Bashar al-Assad to flee.That carefully cultivated relationship opens up “an incredibly big domain for economic and political influence,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington with a particular focus on Turkey.“Syria may not have a smooth transition, and there may be renewed fighting between factions,” she added. “But what is uncontestable is that Turkey’s influence will only grow, economically and politically.”In the process, Turkey appears to have also weakened the regional influence of Russia, which along with Iran was a key backer of the Syrian president, she said. It is unclear whether Russia will be able to retain the military bases it has on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.Initially, Turkey did not say much when the rebels swept across northern Syria, seizing two important cities in a few days. But when Mr. Erdogan finally did speak, he was quietly confident.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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      Israel Strikes Military Assets Across Syria to Keep Them From Rebels

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      The Israeli military appeared to have unleashed more airstrikes across Syria overnight into Tuesday in an attempt to destroy weapons, aircraft and military facilities before the rebels controlling much of the country could take possession of them.Photographs from Syria on Tuesday showed sunken boats at a shipyard, crumbled buildings and the charred remains of a science research center that had been linked to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to the news agencies that distributed the images.It was unclear what had caused the damage in the photographs, but Israeli officials said that their country was striking weapon stockpiles in Syria, including chemical weapons and long-range missiles and rockets, to prevent Syria’s new leaders from potentially attacking Israel in the future.Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, told reporters on Monday that the leaders of Syria’s rebels “are people with an extreme ideology of radical Islam.” Israeli forces are destroying the weapons “in order that they don’t fall in the hands of extremists,” he added.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent group based in Britain that has tracked the civil war in Syria for years, said that it had documented 322 Israeli strikes in Syria since Sunday, when President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It said the strikes had targeted “warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and numerous weapons and ammunition depots,” including some as recently as Tuesday morning.The group also said that Israeli forces had pushed further into Syrian territory, past a buffer zone set up by the United Nations.Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media on Tuesday that Israeli forces “are present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border.” He added that reports that the military was “advancing or approaching Damascus are completely incorrect.”Israeli military vehicles entering the buffer zone with Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday.Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe region between Israel and Syria has been fought over for decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights during a war in 1967 and annexed most of it in 1981. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. Beyond the Golan Heights, into Syrian territory, there is a 155-square-mile demilitarized buffer zone that has been patrolled by U.N. troops since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War.Israeli ground forces advanced into that zone on Saturday, their first overt entry since 1973. They took control of the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria, a strategic point to oversee the region, as well as other important locations to give them control of the area, Israeli officials said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he had ordered the incursion to protect Israeli territory.“For the time being, we are there,” Mr. Saar said. “But we define these steps as limited and temporary.”Aaron Boxerman More