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Iran-Backed Iraqi Militias Enter Syria to Reinforce Government Forces
People walk past damaged site in Aleppo, after Syrian army said dozens of its soldiers had been killed in major attack by rebels who swept into city, in Syria, Nov. 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano
Hundreds of fighters from Iran-backed Iraqi militias crossed into Syria overnight to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week, Syrian and Iraqi sources said on Monday, and Tehran pledged to aid the Damascus government.
At least 300 fighters, primarily from the Badr and Nujabaa groups, crossed late on Sunday using a dirt road to avoid the official border crossing, two Iraqi security sources said.
“These are fresh reinforcements being sent to aid our comrades on the front lines in the north,” a senior Syrian military source said, adding the fighters had crossed in small groups to avoid airstrikes.
Iran’s constellation of allied regional militia groups has long been integral to the success of pro-government forces in subduing rebels who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, and they have long maintained bases in Syria.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Monday Syria‘s military was capable of confronting the rebels but, referring to the regional militia groups Tehran backs, he added that “resistance groups will help and Iran will provide any support needed.”
Syrian government and Russian warplanes intensified attacks on Monday in areas held by rebels in the northwest, residents and rescue workers said, including a strike on a displaced people’s camp that killed seven.
The lightning rebel assault last week caught many in the region unaware, dealing Assad his biggest blow in years and reigniting a conflict that had appeared frozen for years after civil war front lines stabilized in 2020.
Although Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022, it retains an air base in northern Syria. The main Iran-backed terrorist group, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, has been focused on its own war with Israel since the Gaza conflict began last year.
The US and United Arab Emirates have discussed the possibility of trying to peel Assad away from Iran by offering to lift sanctions if he cuts off weapons routes to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The discussions took place before the rebel advance on Aleppo last week, the sources said.
Syria‘s conflict erupted in a rebellion against Assad’s rule in 2011 and the rebels held much of Aleppo from 2012 until 2016, when government forces retook it with help from Russia and Iran-backed militias in a major turning point of the war.
Any prolonged escalation in Syria risks further destabilizing a region already roiled by the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, with millions of Syrians already displaced and with regional and global powers backing rival forces in the country.
The rebels include mainstream groups backed by Turkey, as well as the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda. Turkey also has a military presence in a strip of Syrian territory along its border.
Kurdish-led forces that Ankara calls terrorists, but which fought Islamic State militants with US help, hold territory in the northeast.
The Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers met on Monday and discussed the fighting in Syria. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said rebel advances could not be explained by foreign intervention and urged the Syrian opposition to compromise.
AIRSTRIKES
Russia, whose 2015 entry into the conflict turned the military balance decisively in Assad’s favor continues to support the Syrian president and is analyzing the situation on the ground, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
On Sunday Moscow dismissed the general in charge of its forces in Syria, Russian war bloggers reported.
The Syrian government said Syrian and Russian air forces were striking rebel-held positions in the countryside east of Aleppo city.
The White Helmets rescue organization and residents of rebel-held areas in the north said warplanes had hit residential areas of Aleppo city and a displaced people’s camp in Idlib province where seven people were killed, including five children.
The government said the military was working to secure a string of towns it recaptured from rebels on Sunday that run along the front line north of Hama, a city lying between Aleppo and the capital Damascus.
In Turkey, Syrian opposition leader Hadi al-Bahra said the rebels sought to force the Syrian government to accept a political transition. “We are ready to start negotiating tomorrow,” Bahra told a press conference.
Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency said the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army had taken the town of Tel Rifaat from the Kurdish YPG militia and was continuing to advance in outer areas of the district.
Rebel sources and an Aleppo resident said the Kurdish YPG group was pulling out of the city’s Sheikh Maqsoud district under a deal with rebel forces. The YPG had long held Sheikh Maqsoud.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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