Live Blog Update| Syria War
This is an entry from: Live: Over 100,000 bodies found in mass grave near Damascus

Evening update

15 December 2024 23:54 GMT

Good evening, Middle East Eye readers,

It is 3AM in Damascus, and here are some of the latest developments unfolding in Syria:

  • Israel has launched air strikes targeting missile launchers and weaponry in Syria’s Tartus region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is reporting. Israeli forces launched 800 strikes in a week on the territory.

  • The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have condemned Israeli  plans to expand its settlements in the occupied Golan Heights

  • US officials informed Turkey earlier this month that Israel did not want Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed from power, even after the rebel offensive that seized cities such as Aleppo and Hama, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan revealed in an interview on Sunday.

  • Qatar is preparing to reopen its embassy in Damascus after a 13-year hiatus. The Gulf country withdrew its ambassador and closed the embassy in July 2011 following a series of deadly crackdown by Bashar al-Assad on street protesters.

  • The interim government reopened schools and universities, and Syrian Christians attended regular Sunday services for the first time since Bashar’s fall.

  • UK foreign secretary David Lammy confirmed that the British government has established diplomatic contact with HTS. He added that the group remains “a proscribed terrorist organisation, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact, as you would expect”.