MOSCOW: Russia forces based in Syria on Friday said four Israeli jets had launched a total of four cruise missiles and 16 guided aerial bombs against a research facility in the city of Masyaf on Thursday, Russian agencies reported.
Syrian troops using Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons shot down two missiles and seven guided bombs, Tass and RIA said, quoting a senior Russian officer. The attacks damaged equipment at the facility, he said.
Russian forces have remained in Syria since 2015 when they helped turn the tide in a civil war in favor of President Bashar Assad.

RAMALLAH: About 4,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are taking part in a series of protests designed to highlight their ill treatment, including staging a hunger strike that is set to start on Thursday.

The inmates say they are being deprived of their fundamental rights and forced to endure unbearable living conditions.

Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, told Arab News that the protests were necessary to highlight the problems Israel had created. The prisoners’ actions were “a battle for self-defense,” he said.

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will set up a new center in the next year to help avoid civilian casualties in military operations around the world through better education and training and increased screening before strikes are launched.

The plan ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and released Thursday comes on the heels of widespread criticism over a US airstrike in Kabul last August that killed 10 civilians, including children, during the final chaotic days of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON: An Iranian opposition group has filed a lawsuit in the US against Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, accusing him of involvement in the massacre of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988.

The lawsuit, filed in the State of New York last week, alleges that 30,000 people who opposed the Iranian regime were put to death unjustly and without due process in the notorious Evin and Gohardasht prisons in Tehran. Raisi was elected president of Iran in August 2021.

BEIRUT: Three years of economic devastation in Lebanon have plunged children into poverty, affecting their health, welfare and education, shattering their hopes and breaking down family relationships, a new UN report has revealed.

UNICEF carried out a rapid assessment in Lebanon to examine the impact of the wide-ranging poverty crisis on children’s lives in the country. 

The report is based on a study conducted last September — involving 1,500 families with at least one child — including Syrian and Palestinian refugees, as well as Lebanese families.