World

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,025

Published

2 hours ago

December 15, 2024

Press Room

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,025

Here is the situation on Sunday, December 15:

Fighting

Russia has begun using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in the country’s Kursk region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down 58 of 132 Russian drones, the Ukrainian air force said. It said 72 Russian drones were “lost” due to the use of electronic warfare interference tactics. There were no immediate reports of damage.
Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Ministry of Defence announced. Thirteen of the drones were downed over the Black Sea and one each over the Russian border regions of Kursk and Belgorod, it added.
A nine-year-old child was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Belgorod, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Two other people, including another child, were injured in the attack.

A Ukrainian serviceman and drone pilot of the 12th Special Operations Brigade ‘Azov’ inspects a Ukrainian unmanned aerial system before an aerial reconnaissance mission in Donetsk [Maria Senovilla/EPA]

Ukrainian drones carried out an attack on the Steel Horse oil facility in Russia’s Oryol region which is a crucial source of fuel supplies for Russian troops, Ukraine’s military announced.
Ukrainian drones struck a “fuel infrastructure facility” in Orlov, the local governor said, causing a fire to break out. Governor Andrei Klychkov said 11 drones had been shot down over the region. No casualties were reported.

Politics and diplomacy

Zelenskyy said he had instructed his government to set up mechanisms to supply food to Syria in the aftermath of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Since al-Assad’s fall, Russia’s wheat export to Syria has been suspended.
Ukrainian General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, 54, has been appointed to head the operational and tactical group Donetsk, replacing General Oleksandr Lutsenko, the military announced, as Russia makes swift advances in the Donetsk region.

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World

Video: Searching for Syria’s Disappeared

Published

48 minutes ago

December 15, 2024

Press Room

Video: Searching for Syria’s Disappeared

new video loaded: Searching for Syria’s Disappeared

transcript

Searching for Syria’s Disappeared

Taher al-Zain’s father disappeared 12 years ago at the height of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Now, like thousands of other Syrians, he is trying to find clues about what happened, and whether or not his father may still be alive.

: Taher al-Zain has come to this hospital in the Syrian capital in search of his father, Mohamed. The lawyer and father of five disappeared 12 years ago and is one of tens of thousands of Syrians who went missing during the country’s civil war. Thousands of political prisoners have been set free across Syria since the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown on Dec. 8. Ahmed Abu Seif was one of them. As bodies of those who died in prison are recovered, they’re taken to hospitals around the country. Taher inspects photos of the deceased on the wall, looking for a sign of his father. Among the crowd are supporters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that is now in control of much of the country. Taher’s final stop is the infamous Sednaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus. Thousands of people are believed to have been executed and tortured here over the years. Taher and others have come every day to search for evidence of their missing loved ones in the scraps of prison documents the former government left behind. As Syria enters a new and uncertain phase, the families of the disappeared feel trapped in the past. Without answers, they continue to look for their loved ones and for closure.
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American freed from Syrian prison after Assad's overthrow taken out of country by US military

Published

2 hours ago

December 15, 2024

Press Room

American freed from Syrian prison after Assad's overthrow taken out of country by US military

An American who was released this week after being held in a Syrian prison for seven months has been flown out of the country on a U.S. military helicopter, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Travis Timmerman, who was among thousands of prisoners freed by rebels who overthrew former President Bashar al-Assad over the weekend, said after his release that he had been on a Christian pilgrimage when he illegally crossed into the country seven months ago and was detained.

He told The Associated Press that, along with another Syrian man, the “liberators” freed him with around 70 women, some of whom were also being held with their children.

Timmerman said that he wasn’t treated badly while he was held in the infamous Syrian intelligence facility known as Palestine Branch.

TRUMP’S PLEDGE AGAINST ‘FOREVER WARS’ COULD BE TESTED WITH SYRIA IN HANDS OF JIHADIST FACTIONS

In this undated photo, Travis Timmerman sits on a porch swing in Urbana, Missouri. (Stacey Collins Gardiner via AP)

But he told the Al-Arabiya TV network that he could hear other men being tortured in the prison every day.

“It was OK. I was fed. I was watered,” said Timmerman. “The one difficulty was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was not beaten, and the guards treated me decently.”

He was allowed out of his cell three times a day to go to the bathroom.

After Assad’s overthrow, he said the rebels came to the prison and “knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.”

Timmerman was first seen in video that emerged online Thursday after rebels seized Damascus, the country’s capital.

Travis Timmerman speaking with reporters on Thursday after his release. (Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP via Getty Images)

SYRIA’S LIBERATED POLITICAL PRISONS REVEAL GRIM REALITY OF BASHAR ASSAD’S REGIME OF TORTURE

In the video, a bearded Timmerman was lying on a mattress under a blanket in what appeared to be a private house. A group of men in the video said he was being treated well and would be safely returned home, The Associated Press reported.

Palestine Branch, also known as Branch 235, houses nearly a dozen buildings hidden behind high concrete walls, according to The New York Times.

Human Rights Watch reported more than a decade ago that prisoners there were subjected to torture, including electrocutions and beatings.

“The guards hung me by my wrists from the ceiling for eight days,” a former prisoner told the organization in 2012. “After a few days of hanging, being denied sleep, it felt like my brain stopped working. I was imagining things. My feet got swollen on the third day. I felt pain that I have never felt in my entire life. It was excruciating. I screamed that I needed to go to a hospital, but the guards just laughed at me.”

Many prisoners would also die of illnesses or starvation under the deplorable conditions.

Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by rebels over the weekend. (Getty Images)

At another notorious Syrian prison known as Sednaya, The Free Press, in collaboration with the Center for Peace Communications, also discovered testimonies of torture and executions while investigating it after the fall of Assad’s regime this week.

“They would call out names at dawn, strip the prisoners of their clothes, and take them away,” a former inmate told The Free Press. “We knew from the sound of chains on the platforms that these were executions. Condemned prisoners wouldn’t be fed for three days prior. Once a month, they would search us. During one such search, an officer declared, ‘We’re not here to inspect; we’re here to kill.’”

Since the thousands of prisoners were released, loved ones have been searching for signs of those who went missing in the barbaric prisons.

“We slept on top of each other,” one woman, who said she had been held at Palestine Branch for four and a half months in 2020 along with dozens of other women, told The New York Times. “They did not feed us, they beat us.”

Fox News’ Stephen Sorace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.