Israeli strikes killed at least six people in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials said Monday, while also hitting suspected chemical and long-range weapons sites in Syria to keep them from rebels who seized Damascus.
The U.N. Security Council plans to hold emergency closed consultations on Syria later Monday at the request of Russia, which on Monday said it granted asylum to its longtime ally Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
Russian President Vladimir Putin personally made the decision to offer asylum to Assad, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Peskov wouldn’t comment on Assad’s specific whereabouts and said that Putin wasn’t planning to meet with him.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 44,500 Palestinians in the Gaza since the start of the war, according to local health authorities. They say most of the dead are women and children but do not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250, including older adults and children. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
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BERLIN — Germany’s migration authority is suspending decisions on pending asylum applications from Syrian nationals because of the unclear situation following the fall of Bashar Assad.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said Monday that more than 47,000 applications are currently pending, German news agency dpa reported.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Sonja Kock noted that asylum decisions take account of the circumstances of each individual case, and that involves assessing the situation in the applicant’s country. She said the migration authority has the option of prioritizing cases from other places if a situation is unclear, as it currently is in Syria.
More broadly, German officials said it’s too early to speculate on what the fall of Assad will ultimately mean for the many Syrians who sought refuge in Germany in recent years, particularly in the mid-2010s. They noted that the situation in Syria remains unclear and complex.
The Interior Ministry said that, as of Oct. 31, there were 974,136 Syrian nationals in the country, the majority of whom had some kind of refugee or other protected status.
In neighboring Austria, Chancellor Karl Nehammer also tasked his interior minister with suspending decisions on current asylum applications by Syrians, the Austria Press Agency reported.
GENEVA — The public sector in Syria has come to an abrupt halt after rebels seized power as state employees ignore calls to return to their jobs, causing troubles in places like airports, borders and at the Foreign Ministry, and impeding the flow of humanitarian aid, a U.N. official said.
U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria Adam Abdelmoula suggested that armed groups could “limit the number of people who are with guns were outside roaming the streets” and “bring back the regular police and the regular law enforcement organs. That could assure the population.”
The public sector, he added, “has just come to a complete an abrupt halt, with people not knowing what their future will look like.”
“This is a country that has had one government for 53 years and then suddenly all of those who have been demonized by the public media are now in charge in the nation’s capital,” Abdelmoula told media, alluding to insurgents who seized the capital as longtime President Bashar Assad fled.
“To see in the streets that used to be safe … being occupied by armed people, it is frightening for the population.”
He said was told by “every interlocutor from the armed groups that I spoke to informally that they are prioritizing the restoration of law and order and basic services.”
U.N. emergency workers are trying to get into Syria, but a lack of border patrol officers or staffing at the Foreign Ministry — which issues visas — have held up entry, he said.
He said that the civil aviation employees also abandoned their jobs. “We have a shortage — acute shortage — of medical supplies, and we wanted, through WHO, to get at least one plane, cargo plane, to deliver some much needed medical supplies,” Abdelmoula said. “But again, that’s on hold for now because of the absence of civil aviation officials.”
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