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Hundreds of Civilians Killed by Government Forces in Syria, War Monitors Say

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Hundreds of Civilians Killed by Government Forces in Syria, War Monitors Say

Three days of clashes between fighters affiliated with Syria’s new leaders and those loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad have left scores of civilians dead, according to two war monitoring groups, who reported on Saturday that many of them had been killed by the government’s forces.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said early Sunday that more than 1,000 people had been killed in the coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia. That figure included about 700 civilians, most killed by government forces. 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. It said that men of all ages were among the casualties and that the forces did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Information Ministry officials, responding to the charges of killing civilians, said they rejected “undocumented allegations accusing government forces of committing violations.” But they also said the government was committed to conducting comprehensive investigations and would hold to account those found to have harmed civilians.

“The Syrian government confirms that its forces operate according to strict standards that respect international humanitarian law and are keen to protect civilians during their operations,” a ministry statement said.

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The Observatory said most of the civilians killed were from the country’s Alawite religious minority, to which Mr. al-Assad belongs, but this could not be independently verified either. The monitoring group said scores of combatants on both sides of the conflict had also been killed.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said the Assad loyalists had killed more than 100 security forces for the new government.

The Defense Ministry told Syrian state media on Saturday afternoon that forces had regained control over most areas that had been taken by the former regime remnants ,and that roads leading to the coastal area had been closed “to regulate violations, prevent transgressions and gradually restore stability to the area.”

The unrest has been the bloodiest outbreak of violence since the Assad regime 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 has raised the specter of a larger sectarian conflict in Syria, where tensions were already high as a result of the civil war.

By Saturday afternoon, the Syrian Red Crescent had been given permission to enter one of the towns to evacuate the injured, said Haidera Younes, a spokesman for the Red Crescent’s branch in Tartus.

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The clashes began on Thursday after Assad loyalists killed 16 government security personnel in Latakia province, in the deadliest attack yet on Syria’s new security forces, according to government officials and the Observatory.

Violence quickly spread across Latakia and Tartus provinces, longtime strongholds of Mr. al-Assad along the Mediterranean coast and home to most of the country’s Alawites. Armed remnants of the ousted regime are believed to be scattered across the two provinces and have presented a challenge to the country’s new leaders as they try to exert their authority and unite a fractured country after more than 13 years of civil war.

The government responded to the initial attack on Thursday by deploying thousands of security forces and soldiers from other parts of the country to the restive coast. The government has sought to present the clashes as a legitimate authority fighting the remnants of a brutal regime.

For the first time, the new government forces deployed helicopters outfitted with machine guns on Thursday around the mountainside of the coastal region, according to a government official on the coast, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. The helicopters were deployed to areas where armed Assad loyalists were stationed, the official added.

A video verified by The New York Times and filmed along the coast west of Latakia airport appears to show government fighters repurposing Russian-made anti-submarine depth charges by dropping them as bombs from the rear of a helicopter. A spokesman for the government in Latakia did not respond to a request for comment about the video. A journalist with Syrian state media, Muhammad al-Othman, said that the munitions were dropped over mountainous areas where old regime remnants remain.

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The Assad regime drew international condemnation for its frequent use of helicopters for indiscriminate bombings, dropping improvised “barrel bombs” onto civilian populations for years. The use of anti-submarine munitions for that purpose fits the old regime’s pattern of using whatever it could either fabricate or repurpose for launching aerial attacks via helicopter.

The munitions used in the helicopter attacks appeared to be Russian RBG-25 depth charges, which are normally launched from ships for use against submarines, said Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician. They most likely originated from old Assad regime stocks, he said.

“This is quite a bit different from how they are designed to be deployed,” said Mr. Ball. “These aren’t going to cause as much damage as the barrel bombs the Assad regime commonly used.”

Christina Goldbaum, Muhammad Haj Kadour and Reham Mourshed contributed reporting.

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.

Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.

There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

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People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.

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More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

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Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

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Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.

Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.

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Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.

The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.

The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.

On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.

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KEANE WARNS IRANIAN REGIME TO TAKE TRUMP ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ ON PROTEST KILLING THREAT AMID ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS

Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)

On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

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IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.

“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”

The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence. 

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“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.

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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.

Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.

They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.

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Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.

Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.

“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.

He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.

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“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”

The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.

He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.

Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.

They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.

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The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.

Additional sources • AP

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