Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad

Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad
Abdullah Zahra demonstrates how he was tortured in a cell at Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence during Bashar Assad's regime, in Damascus, Syria. (AP)
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Updated 07 January 2025
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Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad

Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad
  • Activists and rights groups say the brutality was systematic and well-organized, growing to more than 100 detention facilities where torture, sexual violence and mass executions were rampant

DAMASCUS: Handcuffed and squatting on the floor, Abdullah Zahra saw smoke rising from his cellmate’s flesh as his torturers gave him electric shocks.
Then it was Zahra’s turn. They hanged the 20-year-old university student from his wrists until his toes barely touched the floor and electrocuted and beat him for two hours. They made his father watch and taunted him about his son’s torment.
That was 2012, and the entire security apparatus of Syria’s then-President Bashar Assad was deployed to crush the protests that had arisen against his rule.
With Assad’s fall a month ago, the machinery of death that he ran is starting to come out into the open.
It was systematic and well-organized, growing to more than 100 detention facilities where torture, brutality, sexual violence and mass executions were rampant, according to activists, rights group and former prisoners. Security agents spared no one, not even Assad’s own soldiers. Young men and women were detained for simply living in districts where protests were held.
As tens of thousands disappeared over more than a decade, a blanket of fear kept the Syrian population silent. People rarely told anyone that a loved one had vanished for fear they too could be reported to security agencies.
Now, everyone is talking. The insurgents who swept Assad out of power opened detention facilities, releasing prisoners and allowing the public to bear witness. Crowds swarmed, searching for answers, bodies of their loved ones, and ways to heal.
The Associated Press visited seven of these facilities in Damascus and spoke to nine former detainees, some released on Dec. 8, the day Assad was ousted. Some details of the accounts by those who spoke to the AP could not be independently confirmed, but they matched past reports by former detainees to human rights groups.
Days after Assad’s fall, Zahra – now 33 — came to visit Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence in Damascus where he was held for two months. In an underground dungeon, he stepped into the windowless, 4-by-4-meter (yard) cell where he says he was held with 100 other inmates.
Each man was allowed a floor tile to squat on, Zahra said. When ventilators weren’t running — either intentionally or because of a power failure — some suffocated. Men went mad; torture wounds festered. When a cellmate died, they stowed his body next to the cell’s toilet until jailers came to collect corpses, Zahra said.
“Death was the least bad thing,” he said. “We reached a place where death was easier than staying here for one minute.”
Assad’s system of repression grew as civil war raged
Zahra was arrested along with his father after security agents killed one of his brothers, a well-known anti-Assad graffiti artist. After they were released, Zahra fled to opposition-held areas. Within a few months, security agents returned and dragged off 13 of his male relatives, including a younger brother and, again, his father.
They were brought to Branch 215. All were tortured and killed. Zahra later recognized their bodies among photos leaked by a defector that showed the corpses of thousands killed while in detention. Their bodies were never recovered, and how and when they died is unknown.
Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing after anti-government protests began in 2011, most vanishing into Assad’s prison network. Many of them were killed, either in mass executions or from torture and prison conditions. The exact number remains unknown.
Even before the uprising, Assad had ruled with an iron fist. But as peaceful protests turned into a full-fledged civil war that would last 14 years, Assad rapidly expanded his system of repression.
New detention facilities sprung up in security compounds, military airports and under buildings — all run by military, security and intelligence agencies.
Touring the site of his torture and detention, Zahra hoped to find some sign of his lost relatives. But there was nothing. At home, his aunt, Rajaa Zahra, saw the pictures of her killed children for the first time. She had refused to look at the leaked photos before. She lost three of her six sons in Branch 215 and a fourth was killed at a protest. Her brother, she said, had three sons, now he has only one.
“They were hoping to finish off all the young men of the country.”
Syrians were tortured with ‘the tire’ and ‘magic carpet’
The Assad regime’s tortures had names.
One was called the “magic carpet,” where a detainee was strapped to a hinged wooden plank that bends in half, folding his head to his feet, which are then beaten.
Abdul-Karim Hajjeko said he endured this five times. His torturers stomped on his back during interrogations at the Criminal Security branch, and his vertebrae are still broken.
“My screams would go to heaven. Once a doctor came down from the fourth floor (to the ground floor) because of my screams,” he said.
He was also put in “the tire.” His legs were bent inside a car tire as interrogators beat his back and feet with a plastic baton. When they were done, he said, a guard ordered him to kiss the tire and thank it for teaching him “how to behave.” Hajjeko was later taken to the notorious Saydnaya Prison, where he was held for six years.
Many prisoners said the tire was inflicted for rule violations — like making noise, raising one’s head in front of guards, or praying – or for no reason at all.
Mahmoud Abdulbaki, a non-commissioned air force officer who defected from service, was put in the tire during detention at a military police facility. They forced him to count the lashes — up to 200 — and if he made a mistake, the torturer would start over.
“People’s hearts stopped following a beating,” the 37-year-old said.
He was later held at Saydnaya, where he said guards would terrorize inmates by rolling a tire down the corridor lined with cells and beat on the bars with their batons. Wherever it stopped, the entire cell would be subjected to the tire.
Altogether, Abdulbaki spent nearly six years in prison over different periods. He was among those freed on the day Assad fled Syria.
Saleh Turki Yahia said a cellmate died nearly every day during the seven months in 2012 he was held at the Palestine Branch, a detention facility run by the General Intelligence Agency.
He recounted how one man bled in the cell for days after returning from a torture session where interrogators rammed a pipe into him. When the inmates tried to move him, “all his fluids poured out from his backside. The wound opened from the back, and he died,” he said.
Yahya said he was given electric shocks, hanged from his wrists, beaten on his feet. He lost half his body weight and nearly tore his own skin scratching from scabies.
“They broke us,” he said, breaking into tears. “Look at Syria, it is all old men ... A whole generation is destroyed.”
But with Assad gone, he was back visiting the Palestine Branch.
“I came to express myself. I want to tell.”
The mounting evidence will be used in trials
Torture continued up to the end of Assad’s rule.
Rasha Barakat, 34, said she and her sister were detained in March from their homes in Saqba, a town outside Damascus.
Inside a security branch, she was led past her husband, who had been arrested hours earlier and was being interrogated. He was kneeling on the floor, his face green, she said. It was her last brief glimpse of him: He died in custody.
During her own hours-long interrogation, she said, security agents threatened to bring in her sons, 5- and 7-years-old, if she didn’t confess. She was beaten. Female security agents stripped her and poured cold water on her, leaving her shivering naked for two hours. She spent eight days in isolation, hearing beatings nearby.
Eventually she was taken to Adra, Damascus’ central prison, tried and sentenced to five years for supporting rebel groups, charges she said were made up.
There she stayed until insurgents broke into Adra in December and told her she was free. An estimated 30,000 prisoners were released as fighters opened up prisons during their march to Damascus.
Barakat said she is happy to see her kids again. But “I am destroyed psychologically … Something is missing. It is hard to keep going.”
Now comes the monumental task of accounting for the missing and compiling evidence that could one day be used to prosecute Assad’s officials, whether by Syrian or international courts.
Hundreds of thousands of documents remain scattered through the former detention facilities, many labeled classified, in storage rooms commonly underground. Some seen by the AP included transcripts of phone conversations, even between military officers; intelligence files on activists; and a list of hundreds of prisoners killed in detention.
Shadi Haroun, who spent 10 years imprisoned, has been charting Assad’s prison structure and documenting former detainees’ experiences from exile in Turkiye. After Assad’s fall, he rushed back to Syria and toured detention sites.
The documents, he said, show the bureaucracy behind the killings. “They know what they are doing, it is organized.”
Civil defense workers are tracking down mass graves where tens of thousands are believed to be buried. At least 10 have been identified around Damascus, mostly from residents’ reports, and five others elsewhere around the country. Authorities say they are not ready to open them.
A UN body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism has offered to help Syria’s new interim administration in collecting, organizing and analyzing all the material. Since 2011, it has been compiling evidence and supporting investigations in over 200 criminal cases against figures in Assad’s government.
Robert Petit, director of the UN body, said the task is so enormous, no one entity can do it alone. The priority would be to identify the architects of the brutality.
Many want answers now.
Officials cannot just declare that the missing are presumed dead, said Wafaa Mustafa, a Syrian journalist, whose father was detained and killed 12 years ago.
“No one gets to tell the families what happened without evidence, without search, without work.”


Israel orders negotiators to Doha after fifth hostage-prisoner swap

Israel orders negotiators to Doha after fifth hostage-prisoner swap
Updated 12 sec ago
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Israel orders negotiators to Doha after fifth hostage-prisoner swap

Israel orders negotiators to Doha after fifth hostage-prisoner swap
  • The fifth exchange since the truce took effect last month came as negotiations were set to begin on the next phase of the ceasefire, which is intended to pave the way for a permanent end to the war

DEIR EL-BALAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered negotiators on Saturday to return to Qatar to discuss the fragile ceasefire in the war with Hamas, after the fifth hostage-prisoner swap agreed under the truce was completed.
He repeated his vow to crush Hamas and free all remaining hostages, denouncing the militant group as “monsters” after the handover of three captives in Gaza who appeared emaciated and were forced to speak on a stage.
The hospital treating the three Israeli hostages released from Gaza on Saturday said Or Levy and Eli Sharabi were in a “poor medical condition,” while Ohad Ben Ami was in a “severe nutritional state.”
Of the 183 inmates released by Israel in return, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said seven required hospitalization and decried “brutality” and mistreatment in jail.
While 41 of those released returned to the West Bank city of Ramallah, four were released in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, 131 were sent to Gaza and seven were deported to Egypt.
The fifth exchange since the truce took effect last month came as negotiations were set to begin on the next phase of the ceasefire, which is intended to pave the way for a permanent end to the war.
But senior Hamas official Bassem Naim on Saturday said Israel’s “procrastination and lack of commitment in implementing the first phase... exposes this agreement to danger and thus it may stop or collapse.”
He also described, in an interview with AFP, the condition of the hostages as “acceptable under the difficult circumstances that the Gaza Strip was living.”
Saturday’s swap followed remarks by President Donald Trump suggesting the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants, sparking global outrage.
The three Israeli hostages, who were all seized by militants during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war, “crossed the border into Israeli territory” on Saturday, the Israeli military said.
With their return, 73 out of 251 hostages taken during the attack now remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Jubilant crowds in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv cheered as they watched live footage of the hostages, flanked by masked gunmen, brought on stage in Deir el-Balah before being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
But the joy at their release was quickly overtaken by concern for their condition, with all three appearing thin and pale.
Sharabi’s cousin Yochi Sardinayof said “he doesn’t look well.”
“I’m sure he will now receive the right treatment and he will get stronger... He has an amazing family, and we will all be there for him.”
The choreographed handover included forced statements from the three on stage, in which they stated support for finalizing the next phases of the Israel-Hamas truce.
The “disturbing images” from Gaza show that “we must get them all out,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group.
The ICRC meanwhile called on “all parties, including the mediators, to take responsibility to ensure that future releases are dignified and private.”
Sharabi, 52, and Ben Ami, a 56-year-old dual German citizen, were both abducted from their homes in kibbutz Beeri when militants stormed the small community near the Gaza border.
Sharabi lost his wife and two daughters in the attack.
Levy was abducted from the Nova music festival, where gunmen murdered his wife.
In the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, relatives and supporters gathered to welcome inmates released by Israel, embracing them and cheering as they stepped off the bus that brought them from nearby Ofer prison.
But Fakhri Barghouti, 71, whose son was among the prisoners, told AFP that Israeli soldiers had stormed his home and beaten him, warning him not to celebrate his son’s release.
“They entered after midnight, smashed everything, took me into a side room, and beat me before leaving,” Barghouti told AFP.
“I was taken to the hospital, where it was found that I had a broken rib.”
The Israeli military said in a statement it had “conveyed messages that celebrations and processions in support of terrorism are prohibited during the release of the terrorists,” but did not give an immediate response when asked about Barghouti’s allegations.
Israel’s prison service said that “183 terrorists... were released” to the West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and Gaza.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said “all the prisoners who were released today are in need of medical care... as a result of the brutality they were subjected” to in jail.
Hamas in a statement accused Israel of undertaking a “policy of... the slow killing of prisoners.”
Gaza militants have so far freed 21 hostages, including 16 Israelis in exchange for hundreds of mostly Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.
Five Thai hostages freed last week from Gaza were discharged on Saturday from a hospital in central Israel, where they had been treated since their release, and were headed back to their home country.
The ceasefire, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, aims to secure the release of 17 more hostages during the remainder of the 42-day first phase.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliation has killed at least 48,181 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.


Arab League reaffirms support for Jordan and Egypt, rejects displacement of Palestinians

Arab League reaffirms support for Jordan and Egypt, rejects displacement of Palestinians
Updated 1 min 21 sec ago
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Arab League reaffirms support for Jordan and Egypt, rejects displacement of Palestinians

Arab League reaffirms support for Jordan and Egypt, rejects displacement of Palestinians
  • Arab League's Assistant Secretary-General Hossam Zaki reaffirmed the unity of the Arab position in rejecting displacement efforts

CAIRO: The Arab League on Saturday reiterated its firm stance against the displacement of Palestinians, warning that such actions undermined the Palestinian cause and regional stability.

Speaking in a televised interview on Saturday, the Arab League's Assistant Secretary-General Hossam Zaki reaffirmed the unity of the Arab position in rejecting displacement efforts and expressed strong support for the Palestinians, as well as for Jordan and Egypt in their opposition to such moves.

Zaki emphasized that the Arab League was actively working to mobilize both regional and international support for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

He also underscored the organization's commitment to countering Israeli claims while reinforcing the principle of a two-state solution as the foundation for peace in the region.

The ambassador further revealed that discussions are ongoing regarding the possibility of convening an Arab summit to address the Palestinian issue.

While no date has been set, Zaki stressed that the matter remains a priority for the league.

The reaffirmation of Arab solidarity comes amid escalating tensions and renewed international focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with regional powers emphasizing the need for a just and lasting resolution, Jordan News Agency reported.


How Gaza displacement could deepen Egypt’s already unbearable refugee burden

How Gaza displacement could deepen Egypt’s already unbearable refugee burden
Updated 12 min 42 sec ago
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How Gaza displacement could deepen Egypt’s already unbearable refugee burden

How Gaza displacement could deepen Egypt’s already unbearable refugee burden
  • Host to refugees from Sudan, Syria, and elsewhere, Egypt faces new challenges as Trump proposes relocating Gazans
  • With inflation at 24.1 percent in December, experts warn more refugees would stretch Egypt’s economy and security

LONDON: Already host to almost 10 million migrants and refugees, Egypt now faces pressure to shelter hundreds of thousands of Gazans — a move Cairo deems unfair to the Palestinians and a potential threat to its economy and security.

US President Donald Trump has suggested that some 1.5 million people from the Palestinian enclave could be relocated to Egypt and Jordan — a plan that has met with opposition from both countries’ leaderships.

“Egypt views this proposal as an unacceptable liquidation of the Palestinian cause — something that neither Egyptians, Palestinians, nor other influential regional states would accept,” Hani Nasira, an Egyptian author and academic, told Arab News.

“It undermines the two-state solution and the peace agreements with Israel, which many regional countries have tied their engagement to.”

Beyond what this might mean for the Palestinians, Nasira also cited economic concerns for Egypt, especially if Gazans are not permitted to return. “Egypt hosts more than 9 million refugees and migrants who pose an economic burden and do not live in camps,” he said.

“Rather than treating displaced people as refugees or housing them in camps, Egypt has integrated them into society and considers them ‘guests,’ as President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has repeatedly stated.”

Indeed, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has praised Egypt for its policy of placing displaced foreign nationals in host communities, “reflecting the government’s commitment to the Global Compact on Refugees’ principle of finding alternatives to camps.”

Egypt is a signatory to key international treaties defining refugee rights and state obligations, including the 1951 Refugee Convention, its 1967 Protocol, and the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention.

While official statistics show that Egypt hosts more than 9 million refugees and asylum-seekers, only 822,701 of them were registered with the UNHCR as of October. Access to many services typically requires being registered with the UNHCR or one of its partners.

According to UN figures, Egypt’s registered refugees originate from 59 nations, including Sudan, Syria, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq. As of October 2023, the Sudanese nationality was the largest group, followed by Syrians.

Sudan, which borders Egypt to the south, has been trapped in a state of conflict between rival military factions since April 2023, leading to one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes, displacing some 12 million people, both internally and externally.

In this photo taken on May 13, 2023, Sudanese fleeing war-torn Sudan are seen arriving at Qastal land port crossing between Egypt and Sudan. (AFP)

Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has devastated the capital Khartoum and other cities, shattering the nation’s health system and compounding outbreaks of once preventable diseases.

Domestic agriculture and supply chains have collapsed, leading to outbreaks of famine across the country. In Darfur and other areas, accounts of sexual violence and even genocide have emerged. Access issues and underfunding have hampered the humanitarian response.

Syria, meanwhile, has only recently emerged from more than a decade of civil war, which has displaced millions of refugees throughout the region and across the globe. Instability persists even after the toppling of the Bashar Assad regime, and swathes of the country remain in ruins.

South Sudan and nations on the Horn of Africa have experienced some of the most extreme and least reported conflicts of recent years, including the Tigray war in Ethiopia, not to mention climate disasters including devastating floods and crippling drought.

Recent and ongoing conflicts in Libya, Yemen, and Iraq have likewise sent millions in search of safety and a route out of poverty in Egypt — already the Arab world’s most populous country — which has itself experienced instability and hardship.

REFUGEES & MIGRANTSIN EGYPT

4 million+ Sudanese

1.5 million+ Syrians

1million+ Yemenis

1 million+ Libyans

(Source: IOM)

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said last year that Egypt hosted 40 percent of those fleeing Sudan, 1.5 million Syrian refugees since 2012, and expected to receive more Palestinians displaced from Gaza.

Since Israel mounted its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, nearly all of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced from their homes at least once.

As many as 100,000 Gazans managed to cross into Egypt before Israel captured the Rafah border crossing in May, according to Palestine’s Ambassador in Cairo Diab Al-Louh. Many lacked the documents needed to enroll children in school, open businesses, travel, or access health services.

Trump first floated the idea of relocating Gazans en masse on Jan. 25 and reiterated it the next day aboard Air Force One, saying he wanted the Palestinian enclave “just cleaned out” to start afresh after a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced in mid-January.

On Feb. 4, he went even further, announcing plans for a US “takeover” of the Gaza Strip during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington D.C.

Trump said he wanted the US to take a “long-term ownership position” and turn the Eastern Mediterranean territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Palestinians could be resettled away from Gaza, “in areas where the leaders currently say no,” he said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty had already expressed concerns about the strain Egypt’s refugee burden is placing on the national budget and host communities, citing insufficient international support amid the growing number of displaced people.

During a Jan. 27 meeting with heads of three UN agencies in Geneva, Abdelatty reiterated Egypt’s call for a fairer and more sustainable distribution of responsibility, urging the UN International Organization for Migration to help manage migrant flows and strengthen Egypt’s capacity to host those it already had.

On Jan. 28, Abdelatty told the Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights in Geneva that his country has shouldered a significant responsibility on behalf of the international community by hosting 10.7 million foreign nationals, including refugees and irregular migrants.

However, he said Egypt’s “capacity to accommodate and continue our efforts is at risk, especially given the insufficient international support relative to the pressures we are facing.”

In April last year, Egypt’s Prime Minister Madbouly said hosting some 9 million refugees was costing his country approximately $10 billion per year, at a time when Egypt is grappling with its own economic crisis, despite receiving financial assistance from the EU, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and others to help stave off collapse.

Egypt’s revenues from the Suez Canal dropped by more than 60 percent in 2024, amounting to a $7 billion loss compared to the previous year, President El-Sisi said in a December statement. The loss was primarily driven by regional tensions, including attacks on ships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.

Egypt’s economy is also struggling with a high inflation rate, which stood at 24.1 percent in December, according to Trading Economics.

Economic repercussions are not the sole concern surrounding plans to relocate Gazans to Egypt. Officials believe the move may also threaten the security of the country and the wider region.

El-Sisi told a press conference on Jan. 29 that the transfer of Palestinians “can never be tolerated or allowed because of its impact on Egyptian national security.”

Egyptian academic Nasira said that implementing Trump’s proposal “could shift the conflict onto Egyptian soil and across the Middle East.”

Two days before El-Sisi’s statement, Parliament Speaker Hanafy El-Gebaly warned that relocating Gaza’s residents “may impede efforts to maintain the current truce and reach a permanent ceasefire” and risk “transferring the conflict to other territories, with disastrous repercussions for the entire region.”

Nasira said Cairo considers the relocation a threat to its national security, “as it could destabilize the Suez Canal the Sinai Peninsula, which was contested in multiple wars, the most recent in October 1973,” and “fuel further extremism in Egypt and the broader region.”

Echoing Cairo’s concerns, several influential Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, also warned that such plans “threaten the region’s stability, risk expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples.”

Cairo fears that relocating Palestinians from Gaza — along with Hamas and other militant groups — could unravel the Camp David Accords, brokered in 1978 by US President Jimmy Carter between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (R) is seen with his supporters in Beirut during the early days of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. (AFP)

Palestinian militant groups could ignite future wars on Egyptian territory — much like in 1970s Lebanon, when Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization turned the southern part of the country into a launchpad for attacks on Israel.

Shortly after the Gaza war began, El-Sisi warned a mass exodus of Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai could wreck the 1978 peace deal, turning the region into “a base for attacks on Israel,” prompting Israel to “strike Egyptian territory.”

He said: “The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands. All for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”
 

 


Trade mission from Philippines to arrive in Jordan to strengthen economic ties

Trade mission from Philippines to arrive in Jordan to strengthen economic ties
Updated 08 February 2025
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Trade mission from Philippines to arrive in Jordan to strengthen economic ties

Trade mission from Philippines to arrive in Jordan to strengthen economic ties
  • Delegation set to arrive on Sunday

AMMAN: A delegation of 13 Philippine companies and senior officials will arrive in Jordan on Sunday as part of a business, trade, and investment mission aimed at deepening economic cooperation between the two nations.

The mission, scheduled for Feb. 11-12 in Amman, will see the Philippine delegation engage with 39 Jordanian companies in efforts to boost bilateral trade and investment, the Jordan News Agency reported.

Speaking at a joint press conference alongside Philippine Trade Commissioner Vichael Angelo Roaring from the Philippine Trade and Investment Center in Dubai, Wilfredo C. Santos, Philippine ambassador to Jordan, reaffirmed Manila’s commitment to fostering stronger economic ties with Jordan.

Santos said: “The Philippines, as one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, seeks to expand its global presence by forging strategic partnerships. Our robust sectors in food, agriculture, manufacturing, and creative industries align well with Jordan’s strategic location, its safety and security as an oasis of peace in this region, and its investment-friendly environment.”

The ambassador also highlighted that the delegation — which will include representatives from the Philippine Department of Agriculture, the Department of Trade and Industry, and the PTIC in Dubai — reflected the country’s dedication to expanding its footprint in Jordan’s market and building long-term partnerships with local businesses.

He expressed confidence that the visit would serve as a “springboard for elevated bilateral trade levels and facilitate meaningful business exchanges.”

Santos also acknowledged Jordan’s Filipino community, numbering around 48,000, praising their contributions and the care they received in the country.

Roaring officially announced the launch of the Philippine Outbound Business Matching Mission to Jordan, describing it as a strategic initiative to strengthen trade relations and create new market opportunities for Filipino exporters in the Middle East.

Roaring said: “Jordan is a valued trading partner and a gateway for Filipino companies seeking regional expansion.”

He added that the delegation would include Filipino exporters specializing in food, beverages, and personal care products.

A key element of the visit will be a business-to-business matching session on Feb. 11, hosted by the Amman Chamber of Commerce, at which Filipino exporters will engage directly with Jordanian industry players to explore trade and investment opportunities.

Roaring added: “This mission is more than just trade: It is about building long-term partnerships and expanding business opportunities in Jordan and beyond. With the continued support of our partners, we look forward to turning discussions into concrete trade deals that benefit both our nations.”


Sudan army says retakes key district in Khartoum North

Sudan army says retakes key district in Khartoum North
Updated 08 February 2025
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Sudan army says retakes key district in Khartoum North

Sudan army says retakes key district in Khartoum North
  • Military spokesman Nabil Abdullah said that army forces, alongside allied units, had “completed on Friday the clearing of” Kafouri and other areas in Sharq El Nil
  • The army has in recent weeks surged through Bahri pushing the paramilitaries to the outskirts

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s military said Saturday that it had regained control of a key district in greater Khartoum as it presses its advance against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The district of Kafouri in Khartoum North, or Bahri, had been under RSF control since war between the army and the paramilitaries began in April 2023.
In a statement, military spokesman Nabil Abdullah said that army forces, alongside allied units, had “completed on Friday the clearing of” Kafouri and other areas in Sharq El Nil, 15 kilometers to the east, of what he described as “remnants of the Dagalo terrorist militias.”
The army has in recent weeks surged through Bahri — an RSF stronghold since the start of the war — pushing the paramilitaries to the outskirts.
The Kafouri district, one of Khartoum’s wealthiest neighborhoods, had served as a key base for RSF leaders.
Among the properties in the area was the residence of Abdel Rahim Dagalo, the brother of RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and his deputy in the paramilitary group.
The recapture of Kafouri further weakens the RSF’s hold in the capital and signals the army’s continued advance to retake full control of Khartoum North, which is home to one million people.
Khartoum North, Omdurman across the Nile River, and the city center to the south make up greater Khartoum.
On Thursday, a military source told AFP that the army was advancing toward the center of Khartoum, nearly two years after the city fell to the RSF at the start of the war.
Eyewitnesses in southern Khartoum reported hearing explosions and clashes coming from central Khartoum Saturday morning.
The developments mark one of the army’s most significant offensives since the war broke out between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his erstwhile ally Dagalo’s RSF, which quickly seized much of Khartoum and other strategic areas.
The conflict has devastated the country, displacing more than 12 million and plunging Sudan into the “biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded” according to the International Rescue Committee.