December 11, 2024: Syria civil war news

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Musicians play on top of a destroyed tank in Umayyad Square in Damascus, Syria, on December 11.

A caretaker prime minister linked to the rebel group that toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has been appointed to oversee the transition of power.

Meantime, the country’s Baath Party, which had been led by Assad’s family for decades, is suspending its work and activities until further notice, according to a statement. Assad fled the country following a lightning offensive by rebel forces.

Here are some of the top headlines:

Tens of thousands of people who fled to Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria for safety are facing “dire conditions” due to a lack of shelter and basic necessities, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Wednesday.

The organization said reception centers for displaced people have reached full capacity in Tabqa and Raqqa, and that authorities are now establishing more centers in Kobani, al-Hasakah and Qamishli.

Thousands have fled to the north since November 27, when a rebel coalition began a sweeping assault on territories held by the regime of Bashar al-Assad that led to the fall of the capital, Damascus, over the weekend.

A Yazidi woman told HRW local authorities in Tabqa were overwhelmed by the scale of displacement.

A Kurdish man who sought refuge at a Tabqa school with his family said they received food and mattresses, but other families “remained without proper shelter, resorting to the streets for accommodation.”

Several people interviewed by HRW also expressed fear of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) rebel group and the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), who seized territory from the toppled Syrian government.

The pro-Turkish factions involved in the fighting in the north are part of the coalition that began a rebel offensive against the Assad regime late last month. Since then, clashes have broken out with Kurdish groups in the parts of northern Syria that have been under Kurdish control for much of the last decade.

“The dire situation of displaced people in northeastern Syria won’t solve itself,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Donors, humanitarian agencies, and the United Nations should center their response around a rights-based approach to alleviate people’s needs.”

US officials have been scrambling to ensure that ISIS can’t regroup in Syria following the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — carrying out dozens of airstrikes on ISIS targets in recent days, as dozens of competing factions, including some backed by Turkey, now vie for control in different parts of the country.

But the US’ most important partner there, the SDF, has come under relentless attack by Turkish-backed militants in recent days, raising concerns among US officials and experts about the security of the more than 20 detention facilities and camps holding suspected ISIS members and their families in northern Syria.

The SDF is largely made up of Kurdish fighters from a group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), which is considered a terrorist organization by neighboring Turkey.

The SDF’s top commander in Syria, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, told CNN on Wednesday that the SDF has had to begin relocating ISIS detainees because the prisons in the city of Manbij have been threatened.

“Currently, detention centers in both Raqqa and Hasakah are facing similar threats, necessitating enhanced cooperation and additional security measures to protect these sites,” he said.

The SDF has now withdrawn from Manbij altogether following what it is describing as a fragile ceasefire with the Turkey-backed groups, which was brokered with the help of the US on Tuesday.

The fighting has also forced the SDF to halt its anti-ISIS operations, Mazloum told Sky News on Wednesday. Mazloum said that previously, ISIS was hiding, but their activities have now “increased” in areas under SDF control and “plans for breaking out from detention centers is also on their agenda.”

A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in central Gaza on December 11.

Israeli airstrikes on central Gaza have killed at least 17 people, including eight children, on Wednesday, according to authorities at Al Awda hospital.

Twelve were killed in a strike on Nuseirat in central Gaza, while five others were killed in several strikes elsewhere in central Gaza, hospital officials said. CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.

The latest strikes come amid warnings from Gaza Civil Defense that its system is on the brink of “imminent collapse” due to the loss of personnel and destroyed service vehicles, according to its spokesperson Mahmoud Basal.

The statement comes as the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned on Tuesday of spiking food prices in the besieged enclave, with one 25-kilogram (55 pound) bag of flour costing the equivalent of $280 in Deir al Balah as of December 1. In Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, all eight bakeries are closed due to flour shortages and safety concerns caused by overcrowding, the agency added.

Meanwhile, COGAT, the Israeli agency that approves aid shipments into Gaza, said over 350 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Strip on Tuesday. A further 269 truckloads were distributed within Gaza to warehouses and shelters by the international community, according to COGAT.

Syria’s Baath Party said it is suspending its work and activities until further notice, according to a statement published on the party’s media outlet on Wednesday.

The former ruling party, which had been led by the Assad family for decades, said that all its property, funds and weapons are to be handed to Syrian government bodies.

The decision comes days after former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled the country following a lightning offensive by rebel forces.

Assad became Syria’s leader in 2000 in an unopposed election following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had led the Baath Party since seizing power in 1970.

Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, whose real name is Ahmad Al Sharaa, said his team is working with international organizations to secure possible chemical weapons sites, according to a statement shared with Reuters on Wednesday.

Jolani also said he will shut down the notorious regime-era prisons and work to get rid of the security services affiliated with the former Assad regime.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh welcomed Jolani’s assurances about the potential chemical weapons sites during a press briefing. “We welcome this type of rhetoric, but actions have to meet words, as well,” Singh told reporters Wednesday, adding, “Our focus is that these chemical weapons do not fall into the wrong hands.”

Last week, the United Nations said Syria’s purported destruction of its chemical weapons couldn’t be verified, and on Monday, Israel said it struck Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities. The US on Monday said it has “good fidelity” on where chemical weapons may be located within Syria and is working with its partners to destroy them.

Former President Bashar al-Assad agreed, under threat of US intervention, to give up Syria’s chemical weapons which he had used on his own people during the Syrian civil war. But the US and others believed he retained a secret stockpile, with the regime accused of additional chemical attacks in the following years.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, DC, on December 11.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he is “not confident” that Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), will keep his word about protecting minorities in Syria.

“I’m encouraged by the fact that they’ve said the right thing, but what we have to focus on is whether they do the right thing, including protecting minorities,” Blinken said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Blinken was responding to a question by GOP Rep. Keith Self, who asked specifically if the top US diplomat was confident HTS would protect Christians and Muslim women in Syria.

A State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday that the US would judge HTS and Jolani “not by those words but by their actions over the coming days, the coming weeks, the coming months.”

Self also asked Blinken if he expected Syria would “descend into a terrorist enclave,” to which Blinken answered that the US needs “to do everything possible to avoid that” in the coming days and weeks.

Blinken left the hearing to embark on a trip to Jordan and Turkey to coordinate on Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship.

The Israeli military said it has confiscated several Syrian tanks along the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

“The 474th Brigade Combat Team continues activities in key positions within the area of separation, targeting threats and terrorist sites along the border. During searches, they confiscated several out-of-use Syrian tanks,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

Israeli troops also said they located a Syrian observation post in the Mount Hermon region within the buffer zone and seized a cache of weapons including missiles, explosives and other equipment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military seize the buffer zone and other positions near it. Israel insists it is conducting “defensive missions” and eliminating threats to its citizens in the area.

The Israeli military has also engaged in a concerted effort to destroy Syrian military assets, striking air bases, ports, and weapons stockpiles across the country. As of Tuesday, it had conducted about 480 strikes in total, it said in a statement.

Satellite image of Matleh, Syria on December 9.

At least 15 military aircraft at Syria’s Marj Ruhayyil Airbase have been targeted in a spate of airstrikes, according to CNN analysis of satellite imagery obtained from Planet Labs. The strikes also appear to have targeted base infrastructure.

The facility, located 18 miles (30 km) south of Damascus, appears to have housed a unit of Mi-25 “Hind” helicopters,” seen in satellite imagery collected by Planet Labs on December 3 and Maxar imagery from earlier this year.

Some context: In recent days, the Israeli military has engaged in a concerted effort to destroy Syrian military assets, striking air bases, ports, and weapons stockpiles across the country. Israeli strikes were intended to eliminate strategic military assets of the Assad regime, with the intention of preventing them falling into an adversary’s hands. As of Tuesday it had conducted about 480 strikes in total, it said in a statement.

An American MQ-9 Reaper drone was accidentally shot down over northern Syria on Monday by the US’ main partners in the country, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, multiple officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

The SDF forces thought the drone was Turkish, the officials said, and shot it down because they believed it posed a threat. Turkish-backed militants have been clashing with the US-backed SDF forces in northern Syria in recent days, in areas that have been under Kurdish control for much of the last decade.

The accidental shootdown of the multimillion-dollar drone underscores the chaotic nature of the fighting in northern Syria right now.

A US Defense Department official later told CNN “the incident was a result of friendly fire from partner forces conducting operations in the region who misidentified the unmanned aircraft as a threat.”

“U.S. Air Forces Central is actively assessing the actions that led to the incident and will adjust tactics, techniques, and procedures to safeguard U.S., Coalition, and partner forces and their associated assets,” the official added in a statement.

CNN has reached out to the SDF for comment.

Senior US officials have been in regular contact with their Turkish counterparts to urge deconfliction, and the US helped broker a ceasefire agreement on Tuesday between the SDF and the Turkey-backed forces in which the SDF agreed to withdraw from the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij.

Some background: The SDF is largely made up of Kurdish fighters from a group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), which is considered a terrorist organization by neighboring Turkey.

The MQ9 is remotely piloted by the US Air Force and is capable of conducting surveillance and carrying out offensive strikes. It is not clear what the drone’s mission was at the time it was shot down, but the US has continued conducting anti-ISIS operations in Syria even amid the fall of the country’s former president Bashar al-Assad.

Around 900 US military personnel remain in Syria as part of an anti-ISIS coalition that includes the SDF, and defense officials have said the US intends to maintain its presence in the country to prevent the terror group from reconstituting.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters in Japan on Wednesday that the US will continue to work with the SDF going forward.

“We have a good relationship with them and I think it will remain that way,” Austin said.

This post has been updated with information from the US Defense Department.

Syria’s rebels will not pardon those involved in torturing prisoners under the Assad regime, their leader said on Wednesday.

Mohammad al-Jolani, who is head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main group in the coalition that overthrew the regime, said: “We will not pardon those who were involved in the torture and killing of detainees and were the cause of this.”

Earlier, Jolani said the rebels would make public a list of names of senior regime officials “involved in torturing the Syrian people.”

“We will offer rewards for information on senior military and security officers involved in war crimes,” Jolani said.

Remember: The Assad regime’s notorious detention facilities were black holes where thousands of people deemed opponents disappeared. When rebels swept into the Syrian capital Damascus over the weekend, they also freed prisoners from the notorious Saydnaya prison, which has been dubbed the “slaughterhouse.”

Farouq Habib, deputy general manager of Syria’s White Helmets, told CNN that some people detained there had forgotten their own names. Most of the detainees held at Saydnaya “were either executed, buried in mass graves, or transferred to other detention centers,” he added.

A top US Air Force general spoke with his Turkish counterpart about the situation in Syria on Tuesday according to a readout, amid reports of attacks on a US partner in Syria by Turkey-backed forces.

“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., spoke with Chief of the Turkish General Staff Gen. Metin Gürak yesterday by phone,” the readout said.

The conversation between the two military leaders comes just days after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and as a close US ally in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, have faced attacks by Turkey-backed fighters.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters in Japan on Wednesday that the US will continue to work with the SDF going forward. The SDF is largely made up of Kurdish fighters from a group that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

“We have a good relationship with them and I think it will remain that way,” Austin said.

Turkey and Israel have been striking military sites in Syria in the days following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.

Turkish state media said a drone destroyed military equipment in northern Syria that had been seized by a Kurdish group, while Israel said it struck Syria nearly 500 times in just two days, hitting most of the country’s strategic weapons stockpiles and destroying its navy fleet.

Israeli strikes were intended to eliminate strategic military assets of the Assad regime, with the intention of preventing them falling into an adversary’s hands.

Here’s what else to know:

• Assad family mausoleum set ablaze: The gravesite of Syria’s former ruler Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, has been set on fire. Social media video showed extensive damage to the mausoleum that contains the grave of Hafez al-Assad in the family’s ancestral village of Qardaha in the western Latakia province.

• Iran accuses US of involvement: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused Israel and the US of being behind the fall of Assad. He offered no proof himself but said that Iran have “evidence” of their involvement.

• New rebel coalition seizes town: The newly formed rebel coalition, Military Operations Command, claimed it had seized the city of Deir Ezzor from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — which the SDF disputed, saying its forces had only withdrawn from the western banks of the Euphrates River.

• Videos links Assad regime to drug trafficking: Social media video surfaced Wednesday allegedly showing a warehouse in Syria stacked with captagon, an illicit drug that had transformed the country into a narco-state under Assad’s rule.

• Blinken traveling to region: Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Jordan and Turkey as the US looks to coordinate on Syria after the Assad regime was ousted.

Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Hasakah, Syria, on December 11.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of militant groups in northern Syria dominated by Kurdish organizations, says that Turkey and its militia allies continued bombardments Wednesday in areas near the city of Kobani that borders Turkey.

The SDF said the city “remains at risk of war due to continuous provocations by Turkey” and its supporters, with attacks using heavy artillery and drones in rural areas south and west of Kobani.

Two paramedics were killed, the SDF said, when their ambulance was struck by a drone. A woman was killed when the vehicle she was traveling in was hit.

The SDF claimed Turkish warplanes and drones were “flying intensively in the airspace in Kobani, Manbij,” and other areas.

Further south in the city of Raqqa, there had been two drone strikes, the SDF said. Social media video showed a plume of smoke rising in one location in Raqqa. Turkish military and intelligence declined comment on the strikes. Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria also possess attack drones but have not commented on the situation in Raqqa.

A resident of Raqqa confirmed to CNN that a US military convoy had been present Wednesday at the northern entrance of the city. The US has worked with the SDF since 2017 to eliminate the remnants of the ISIS terror group in northern Syria and has some 900 troops stationed in northern Syria.

The pro-Turkish factions involved in the fighting in the north are part of the coalition that began a rebel offensive against the Assad regime late last month. Since then, clashes have begun with Kurdish groups in the parts of northern Syria that have been under Kurdish control for much of the last decade.

The collapse of the Assad regime has prompted a punishing military response from Israel, which has launched airstrikes at military targets across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years.

The Israeli military on Tuesday said it had carried out about 480 strikes across the country over the past two days, hitting most of Syria’s strategic weapon stockpiles, while Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli navy had destroyed the Syrian fleet overnight, hailing the operation as “a great success.”

CNN International Correspondent Jomana Karadsheh reports from close to Mezzeh Air Base, a strategic military base southwest of Damascus in Syria after a presumed strike from Israel.

Screengrabs taken from a video posted to social media on December 11 show a facility where captagon was produced in Syria.

Social media video surfaced Wednesday allegedly showing a warehouse in Syria stacked with captagon, an illicit drug that had transformed the country into a narco-state under former President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The large warehouse was reportedly located at the headquarters of a military division near Damascus that was commanded by Assad’s brother Maher. CNN is unable immediately to verify the location.

A voice commenting over the video says that it is “one of the largest warehouse facilities of captagon manufacturing of pills.” Piles of pills are seen on the floor along with drug-making equipment.

If confirmed, the discovery would support claims by the United States and others that the Assad regime had been involved in actively exporting the drug. Captagon has become a significant social problem in neighboring Arab nations and spurred some of them to engage in talks with the former Syrian regime to curb its trafficking.

It is a highly addictive drug, mostly containing amphetamine, that is sometimes described as the “poor man’s cocaine.” Studies over recent years have estimated the annual trade in the drug to be worth billions of dollars. It is believed to have become an economic lifeline for the Assad regime while it was under crippling American sanctions.

Read more about how captagon has impacted Syria and the Middle East here.

Turkish state media says that a Turkish drone destroyed military equipment in northern Syria that had been seized by a Kurdish group.

Turkish military intelligence released drone surveillance footage showing several vehicles in a convoy being struck. The strikes were reported to have been carried near Qamishli airport close to the Syrian border with Turkey.

The convoy included twelve trucks loaded with ammunition and two tanks according to Turkish state media. Ammunition stores were also struck.

Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria have clashed with Kurdish fighters in several locations over the past week.

Days after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s dramatic ousting from power, video shows the capital of Damascus from above.

Watch the video here:

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Drone offers bird's-eye view of Damascus landmarks

00:41 - Source: CNN

Rebel fighters stand next to the burning gravesite of Syria's late president Hafez al-Assad at his mausoleum in the family's ancestral village of Qardaha in the western Latakia province on December 11.

The gravesite of Syria’s former ruler Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, has been set on fire.

Social media video showed extensive damage to the mausoleum that contains the grave of Hafez al-Assad in the family’s ancestral village of Qardaha in the western Latakia province.

It’s unclear who was responsible for the fire.

Hafez al-Assad died in 2000 after ruling Syria for 30 years. Bashar al-Assad succeeded him and ruled the country for 24 years before he was overthrown over the weekend.