Closing summary
Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
All references to Syria’s former ruling Ba’ath party will be removed from the country’s education system, the country’s new education minister said. Speaking to Reuters, Nazir Mohammad al-Qadri added that the country’s new leaders will not change school curricula or restrict the right of girls to learn, saying, “Education is a red line for the Syrian people, more important than food and water… The right to education is not limited to one specific gender. ... There may be more girls in our schools than boys.”
The UK government has said any new Syrian government needs to build a “secure and peaceful” Syria weeks after its president Bashar al-Assad fled the country. Foreign Office minister Anneliese Dodds said British officials had met with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus and the UK was giving Syria £61m in aid.
Thousands of people demonstrated on Thursday in northeast Syria in support of a US-backed, Kurdish-led force that for weeks has been pushing back against Turkey-backed fighters, an AFP correspondent said. The show of support for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) comes after Islamist-led rebels toppled Syria’s longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad earlier this month.
Israel launched strikes against ports and energy infrastructure in Houthi-held parts of Yemen on Thursday and threatened more attacks against them. As Israeli jets were in the air, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile headed towards central Israel which destroyed a school building in Ramat Efal in the western part of Tel Aviv.
An Israeli airstrike hit a house in the central Gaza Strip, killing five people including a boy and two women and injuring seven others early Thursday morning. Those killed and injured at the Maghazi refugee camp were transferred to Aqsa hospital, where officials confirmed the number of fatalities. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip in a report documenting the 14-month conflict published on Thursday. The report documents 41 attacks on MSF staff including airstrikes on health facilities and direct fire on humanitarian convoys, AFP reported. The NGO said it was forced to evacuate hospitals and health centres on 17 occasions.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had not been defeated in Syria and that Moscow had made proposals to the new rulers in Damascus over Russia’s military bases there. Putin said he had not yet met with Bashar al-Assad but planned to meet him and said he would ask about the fate of missing US reporter Austin Tice.
Updated
Bulgaria is attempting to force out Syrian asylum seekers after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, according to an ecxlusive Guardian report.
The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo and Ashifa Kassam report:
No Name Kitchen (NNK), a humanitarian organisation working with refugees in the Balkans, has collected evidence of increased harassment of Syrian people on European borders since the Syrian opposition armed forces ousted the Assad family, ending a 54-year bloody regime.
NNK’s report, reviewed by the Guardian, includes testimonies, pictures and documents on how Bulgaria is trying to repatriate hundreds of Syrian asylum seekers, subjecting them to extensive interrogations about their perspectives on Syria to justify rejecting their claims.
