Most #ICE detainees have no criminal history: AFP analysis. The number of migrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reached record numbers in June and a vast majority do not have criminal records, according to AFP analysis of official data.

Private prison corporations, running the United States’ already-huge and expanding detention system, are set to benefit from the Trump administration’s unprecedented deportation drive, data shows.

A record 60,254 people were held in ICE facilities last month, up from 40,500 in January before Trump took office.

Of those, 71 percent have no criminal record compared to 54 percent last year, ICE data from the end of the 2024 fiscal year shows.
Expanding detention capacity

President Donald Trump was elected last year on a promise to lead the largest migrant deportation program in US history.

His administration has been aggressively targeting the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented migrants.

Lawmakers also delivered a big win for the president this month by voting to give ICE its biggest budget to date, with $45 billion set to go towards constructing immigration facilities.

Data from June shows the detention system is already growing: 200 facilities held ICE detainees in June compared to 107 in January.

The Trump administration aims to increase the number of beds available for detainees to 100,000 by the end of the year, more than doubling the capacity available in 2024.

This rapid expansion is being carried out by building new centers and repurposing existing facilities.

A new migrant camp dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” opened on July 1 and is built on a disused airfield surrounded by alligator-filled swamps deep in the Florida Everglades.

Trump has also said he would like to turn the Guantanamo Bay navy station in Cuba into a 30,000-bed facility.

This has yet to happen, though. Official data shows a daily average of 22 people were held in the station’s two existing detention centers in June.

Various non-profits have raised concerns about the swift growth and the conditions that people are being detained in.

Human Rights Watch published a report on Monday describing abusive treatment at three facilities in Florida, where migrants are reportedly sleeping on floors and women are held in cells with exposed toilets visible to men in nearby rooms.

Soft-sided facilities, which are quick-to-build tent structures increasingly used by ICE, are also raising alarm bells.
Highly profitable

The private companies running large parts of the detention system are set to profit from the expansion.

More than four out of every five detainees were held at one of the United States’ 62 privately-operated facilities as of June 2025, according to AFP analysis of the ICE data.

These facilities are run by a handful of firms: the GEO Group and CoreCivic, both publicly traded companies, are the biggest operators and respectively manage 25 and 17 centers, official data shows.

The GEO Group – which announced a $70 million investment in December 2024 to grow its detention capabilities – has signed two new contracts with ICE since January and significantly expanded a third.

The firm hopes to earn an additional $153 million annually from these new deals alone, according to company reports.

A second Trump term has been good news for the private prison firms’ bottom line.

The GEO Group and CoreCivic’s stock prices increased by 75 and 69 percent each in the days following the Republican’s reelection, and both have remained at 5-year highs since.

The two leading private prison firms and some of their top executives also made significant contributions to Republicans and the Trump campaign last year, according to data from nonprofit OpenSecrets.

The GEO Group donated over $3.6 million to Republicans in 2024, including $1 million to a Trump PAC.

The corporation also has close ties with the administration: Pam Bondi, the US Attorney General, was a GEO Group lobbyist as recently as 2019.

CoreCivic donated $784,974 in 2024, mostly to Republicans. The group’s president Damon Hininger also made individual contributions to the Trump campaign, as did other executives, OpenSecrets Data shows.

By Laetitia Commanay in Paris with Corin Faife in New York

In Syria’s Sweida, the stench of death still lingers days after sectarian bloodshed.

At a bank branch, shattered glass covered the floor as an alarm blared nonstop. Walls are emblazoned with slogans graffitied by both sides in the recent conflict.

The devastation came after violent clashes broke out two weeks ago, sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority. The fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria’s fragile postwar transition.

Syrian government forces intervened, ostensibly to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Some government fighters reportedly robbed and executed Druze civilians.

Associated Press journalists from outside the city were able to enter Sweida on Friday for the first time since the violence started on July 13. With a ceasefire largely holding, residents of Sweida are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives.
‘Snipers hit him’

At the main hospital, where bodies of those killed in the fighting were piled up for days, workers were scrubbing the floor, but the smell lingered.

Manal Harb was there with her wounded 19-year-old son, Safi Dargham, a first-year engineering student, who was shot while volunteering at the overwhelmed hospital.

“Snipers hit him in front of the hospital,” she said. “We are civilians and have no weapons.”

Safi sustained injuries to his elbow, behind his ear, and his leg. Harb says he may lose his arm if he doesn’t receive urgent treatment.

Harb’s husband, Khaled Dargham, was killed when armed men stormed their home, shot him, and set the house on fire. She said the armed men also stole their phones and other belongings.

An emergency room nurse who gave only her nickname, Em Hassib (“mother of Hassib”), said she had remained in the hospital with her children throughout the conflict. She alleged that at one point, government fighters who were brought to the hospital for treatment opened fire, killing a police officer guarding the hospital and wounding another. The AP could not independently verify her claim.

She said the bodies had piled up for days with no one to remove them, becoming a medical hazard.
Sectarian tensions simmer as Druze resist disarmament

Disturbing videos and reports from Sweida surfaced showing Druze civilians being humiliated and executed during the conflict, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. After a ceasefire took hold, some Druze groups launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities. The U.N. has said more than 130,000 people were displaced by the violence.

Government officials, including interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, have promised to hold accountable those who targeted civilians, but many residents of Sweida remain angry and suspicious.

The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. There are roughly a million Druze worldwide and more than half of them live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

The Druze largely welcomed the fall of former President Bashar Assad in December in a rebel offensive that ended decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty.

However, the new government under al-Sharaa, a former Islamist commander who once had al-Qaida ties, drew mixed reactions from Druze leaders. Some clerics supported engaging with the new leadership, while others, including spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and his Sweida Military Council, opposed him.

Al-Sharaa has denied targeting the Druze and blamed the unrest on armed groups defying state authority, particularly those loyal to al-Hijri. He also accused Israel of deepening divisions by striking Syrian forces in Sweida, attacks that were carried out under the pretext of defending the Druze.

Talal Jaramany, a 30-year-old Druze resort owner, took up arms during the fighting.

“What pushed me to put on a military uniform and go to the front lines is that what happened was lawless,” he told The Associated Press.

Jaramany insisted there was little distinction between the Bedouin clans and the government’s General Security forces. “They used weapons, not dialogue,” he said.

He rejects calls for disarmament, saying the Druze need their weapons for self-defense.

“We won’t hand over our arms. Our weapon is sacred,” he said. “It’s not for attacking. We’ve never been supporters of war. We’ll only give it up when the state provides real security that protects human rights.”
Sweida’s Christians also recount near-death escapes

Members of Sweida’s Christian minority were also caught up in the violence.

At a church where a number of Christian families were sheltering, 36-year-old Walaa al-Shammas, a housewife with two children, said a rocket struck her home on July 16.

“Had we not been sheltering in the hallway, we would’ve been gone,” she said. ”My house lies in destruction and our cars are gone.”

Gunmen came to the damaged house later, but moved on, apparently thinking it was empty as the family hid in the hallway, she said.

In recent days, hundreds of people — Bedouins as well as Druze and Christians — have evacuated Sweida in convoys of buses carrying them to other areas, organized by the Syrian Red Crescent. Others have found their own way out.

Micheline Jaber, a public employee in the provincial government in Sweida, was trying to flee the clashes last week with her husband, in-laws and extended family members when the two cars they were driving in came under shelling. She was wounded but survived, along with her mother-in-law and the young son of one of her husband’s siblings.

Her husband and the rest of the family members who were fleeing with them were killed.

Someone, Jaber doesn’t know who, loaded her and the other two survivors in a car and drove them to an ambulance crew, which evacuated them to a hospital outside of the city. She was then taken to another hospital in the southwestern city of Daraa, and finally transported to Damascus. She’s now staying with friends in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, her arms encased in bandages.

“When the shell hit the car, I came out alive — I was able to get out of the car and walk normally,” Jaber said. “When you see all the people who died and I’m still here, I don’t understand it. God has His reasons.”

The one thing that comforts her is that her 15-year-old daughter was with her parents elsewhere at the time and was not harmed.

“My daughter is the most important thing and she is what gives me strength,” Jaber said.

‘Shocking’: Alberta man claims border agents found traces of fentanyl in his Turo rental.

“It was shocking, and it literally flipped my life over,” said Krisztian Riez, who lives in Calgary.

Turo is like an Airbnb, but for vehicles. According to the company’s website, the peer-to-peer car sharing app has 340,000 active vehicles and millions of users.

Riez rented a vehicle for the day to go and pick up his friend in Montana and drive back to Calgary. Crossing the U.S. border was no trouble, but returning back to Canada was.

Riez says Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers asked to search the rental vehicle he and his passenger were in.

“I was like, ‘well I’ve got nothing to hide, go for it,’” said Riez.

“Long story short, they found fentanyl on the steering wheel and in the backseat.”

After finding remnants of fentanyl, Riez says officers took everything out of the vehicle, and sent dogs in.

“They went into my business. They went into every nook and cranny of my life, as well as the passenger’s life, thinking that we were drug dealers or drug smugglers.

Riez says the search took three hours, was traumatizing and triggered his PTSD. He said officers said they found 2 mg of fentanyl.

“They made the conclusive understanding that based on that residue that it was from somebody before us or somebody before us was connected to Turo who was driving that car who dropped the car off,” said Riez.

“Me and the passenger were in disbelief. I’m like, ‘this is nuts.’”

Riez says he is relieved that his friend and infant goddaughter, who were supposed to join him on the trip, cancelled at the last minute because officers said there was “enough fentanyl in the vehicle to kill her.”

CTV News reached out to the CBSA, and in an email it said it “cannot comment or provide details on specific cases as a person’s border and immigration information is considered personal information and protected under the Privacy Act.” And that “being referred for secondary examination is a normal part of the cross-border process and should not be viewed as any indication of wrongdoing.”

Riez filed a freedom of information request to retrieve documents to show that his rented vehicle was searched. Despite this, Turo disputes his claims about the drugs saying to CTV News in an emailed statement that “allegations regarding the presence of fentanyl in the vehicle are not supported by the records available to Turo.”

The San Francisco-based company restricted the use of the vehicle, but Riez says to his surprise it was relisted the next day.

“I think when someone says they’re going to restrict the vehicle, they hold that vehicle and they do an investigation,” said Riez.

Turo says it confirmed with the owner of the vehicle that it was thoroughly cleaned before being relisted and that it’s confident in its “safety standards and longstanding policies requiring clean, safe vehicles.”

Riez says that’s not enough and wants Turo to do more, but that might be difficult.
Turo ‘not able to physically inspect the cars’

In an email to Riez, Turo explains that its Terms of Service states that because the company doesn’t own any of the cars it’s “not able to physically inspect the cars” shared on the platform before each trip. The burden is then put on the hosts “to ensure their cars are shared in a clean, safe and legally compliant condition.”

Turo has offered to refund Riez for the entire ride and compensate him for his time at the border, but Riez has refused, saying he wants to see change.

“I want reform. Public change and reform. Not just for Turo but for all ridesharing companies to take hazardous substances seriously and to have policies in place and really think about the customers that they’re trying to keep safe.”

Furthermore, Riez wants more oversight.

“Accountability. An investigative body that looks at car sharing or car sharing companies as a whole and investigates them with protocols, safety procedures to ensure Albertans and Canadians are safe,” said Riez.

Daniel Tsai, Law Business and Technology Adjunct professor at the University of Toronto says implementing a regulatory body might be challenging due to various levels of bureaucracy.

“Are they regulating the owners or are they regulating the previous driver or are they regulating the apps, the third-party apps?” said Tsai.

“And who is going to actually administer it? Is it a provincial thing or a municipal issue?”

Despite the challenge, Riez isn’t giving up. Saying he feels it’s his responsibility to make sure this doesn’t happen to someone else.

“Having that over my head is huge. That’s scary.”

Democrats and advocates criticize #Trump’s executive order on homelessness.

SAN FRANCISCO — Leading #Democrats and advocates for homeless people are criticizing an executive order President Donald Trump signed this week aimed at removing people from the streets, possibly by committing them for mental health or drug treatment without their consent.

Trump directed some of his Cabinet heads to prioritize funding to cities that crack down on open drug use and street camping, with the goal of making people feel safer. It’s not compassionate to do nothing, the order states.

“Shifting these individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment is the most proven way to restore public order,” the order reads.

Homelessness has become a bigger problem in recent years as the cost of housing increases, especially in states such as California where there aren’t enough homes to meet demand. At the same time, drug addiction and overdoses have soared with the availability of cheap and potent fentanyl.

The president’s order might be aimed at liberal cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, which Trump views as too lax about conditions on their streets. But many of the concepts have already been proposed or tested in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic mayors have worked for years to get people off the streets and into treatment.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for cities to clear encampments even if the people living in them have nowhere else to go.

Still, advocates say Trump’s new order is vague, punitive and won’t effectively end homelessness.

Newsom has directed cities to clean up homeless encampments and he’s funneled more money into programs to treat addiction and mental health disorders.

His office said Friday that Trump’s order relies on harmful stereotypes and focuses more on “creating distracting headlines and settling old scores.”

“But, his imitation (even poorly executed) is the highest form of flattery,” spokesperson Tara Gallegos said in a statement, referring to the president calling for strategies already in use in California.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has also emphasized the importance of clean and orderly streets in banning homeless people from living in RVs and urging people to accept the city’s offers of shelter. In Silicon Valley, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan recently pushed a policy change that makes a person eligible for jail if they reject three offers of shelter.

Trump’s executive order tasks Attorney General Pam Bondi and the secretaries for health, housing and transportation to prioritize grants to states and local governments that enforce bans on open drug use and street camping.

Devon Kurtz, the public safety policy director at the Cicero Institute, a conservative policy group that has advocated for several of the provisions of the executive order, said the organization is “delighted” by the order.

He acknowledged that California has already been moving to ban encampments since the Supreme Court’s decision. But he said Trump’s order adds teeth to that shift, Kurtz said.

“It’s a clear message to these communities that were still sort of uncomfortable because it was such a big change in policy,” Kurtz said.

But Steve Berg, chief policy officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, called parts of the order vague. He said the U.S. abandoned forced institutionalization decades ago because it was too expensive and raised moral and legal concerns.

“What is problematic about this executive order is not so much that law enforcement is involved — it’s what it calls on law enforcement to do, which is to forcibly lock people up,” Berg said. “That’s not the right approach to dealing with homelessness.”

The mayor of California’s most populous city, Los Angeles, is at odds with the Newsom and Trump administrations on homelessness. Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, opposes punishing sweeps and says the city has reduced street homelessness by working with homeless people to get them into shelter or housing.

“Moving people from one street to the next or from the street to jail and back again will not solve this problem,” she said in a statement.

___

Kramon reported from Atlanta. She is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Janie Har And Charlotte Kramon, The Associated Press

A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops on Thursday, prompting the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis Friday.

“Cambodia asked for an immediate ceasefire - unconditionally - and we also call for the peaceful solution of the dispute,” said Phnom Penh’s UN ambassador Chhea Keo following a closed meeting of the Council attended by Cambodia and Thailand.

A steady thump of artillery strikes could be heard from the Cambodian side of the border Friday, where the province of Oddar Meanchey reported one civilian - a 70-year-old man - had been killed and five more wounded.

More than 138,000 people have been evacuated from Thailand’s border regions, its health ministry said, reporting 15 fatalities - 14 civilians and a soldier - with a further 46 wounded, including 15 troops.

Fighting resumed in three areas around 4 am on Friday (2100 GMT Thursday), the Thai army said, with Cambodian forces firing heavy weapons, field artillery, and BM-21 rocket systems, and Thai troops responding “with appropriate supporting fire.”

Thai Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nikorndej Balankura told AFP that fighting had begun to ease off by Friday afternoon, however, adding that Bangkok was open to talks, possibly aided by Malaysia.

“We are ready, if Cambodia would like to settle this matter via diplomatic channels, bilaterally, or even through Malaysia, we are ready to do that. But so far we have not had any response,” Nikorndej told AFP, speaking before the UN meeting had been held.

Malaysia currently holds the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc, of which Thailand and Cambodia are both members.

Earlier, acting Thai Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai had warned that if the situation escalated, “it could develop into war.”

“For now, it remains limited to clashes,” he told reporters in Bangkok.
Ongoing dispute

Both sides blamed each other for firing first, while Thailand accused Cambodia of targeting civilian infrastructure, including a hospital hit by shells and a petrol station hit by at least one rocket.

At the UN, Cambodia’s envoy questioned Thailand’s assertion that his country, which is smaller and less militarily developed than its neighbor, had initiated the conflict.

“(The Security Council) called for both parties to (show) maximum restraint and resort to a diplomatic solution. That is what we are calling for as well,” said Chhea Keo.

None of the other attendees of the UNSC meeting spoke to reporters.

The fighting marks a dramatic escalation in a long-running dispute between the neighbors - both popular destinations for millions of foreign tourists - over their shared 800-kilometre (500-mile) border.

Dozens of kilometres in several areas are contested and fighting broke out between 2008 and 2011, leaving at least 28 people dead and tens of thousands displaced.

A UN court ruling in 2013 settled the matter for over a decade, but the current crisis erupted in May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a new clash.
‘We are scared’

Fighting on Thursday was focused on six locations, according to the Thai army, including around two ancient temples.

Ground troops backed up by tanks battled for control of territory, while Cambodia fired rockets and shells into Thailand and the Thais scrambled F-16 jets to hit military targets across the border.

In the Cambodian town of Samraong, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border, AFP journalists saw families speeding away in vehicles with their children and belongings as gunfire erupted.

“I live very close to the border. We are scared,” Pro Bak, 41, told AFP.

He was taking his wife and children to a Buddhist temple to seek refuge.

U.S. military kills #ISIS leader in #Syria.

The U.S. military killed a senior ISIS leader in a raid in Syria on Friday, as well as two of his ISIS-affiliated sons, according to a release from U.S. Central Command.

The senior leader, Dhiya’ Zawba Muslih al-Hardani, as well as his two adult sons, Abdallah Dhiya al-Hardani and Abd al-Rahman Dhiya Zawba al-Hardani, “posed a threat to U.S. and coalition forces, as well as the new Syrian Government,” the CENTCOM release said. Three children and three women who were on-site were unharmed. Few other details about the raid were provided.

While the U.S. has conducted anti-ISIS missions with partner forces without some regularity over recent months and years, it is less common for U.S. forces to conduct ground raid operations instead of airstrikes.

“We will continue to relentlessly pursue ISIS terrorists wherever they operate,” CENTCOM commander Gen. Erik Kurilla said in the release. “ISIS terrorists are not safe where they sleep, where they operate, and where they hide.”

Over recent months and years, the U.S. has continued supporting and conducting anti-ISIS missions with partner and coalition forces in Syria and Iraq. In May, the U.S. military supported six operations — five in Iraq, one in Syria — which resulted in the death of two ISIS operatives and the detention of two others, including an ISIS leader, CENTCOM said last month.

In March, the U.S. military conducted a precision airstrike in Iraq and killed Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, the terror group’s chief of operations and Delegated Committee Emir, and one other ISIS operative.

The U.S. announced it was beginning a withdrawal of roughly half its forces in Syria in April, which the Pentagon said was a sign of the “significant steps” made towards degrading ISIS capabilities in the region. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said at the time that the U.S. military would ultimately have less than a thousand U.S. forces in the country as a result.

Friday’s raid comes just weeks after the Trump administration said it was revoking the foreign terrorist organization designation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group once led by Syria’s interim president. It also comes after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order officially ending U.S. sanctions on Syria.

By Haley Britzky, CNN

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Trump says when asked if he would pardon Ghislaine Maxwell

#French court upholds some of Syrian ex-leader Bashar Assad’s legal protections

#Syria’s Druze fear for their future after sectarian clashes.

#DAMASCUS, Syria — Before the eruption of sectarian violence in southern Syria, Saber Abou Ras taught medical sciences at a university in the city of Sweida and was somewhat hopeful of a better future for his country as it emerged from nearly 14 years of civil war.

Now, like many others in the Druze-majority city in southern Syria, he carries arms and refuses to give them up to the government. He sees little hope for the united Syria he recently thought was in reach.

“We are for national unity, but not the unity of terrorist gangs,” Abou Ras, a Druze, told The Associated Press in a phone call from the battered city.

Clashes broke out last week that were sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters with the Druze religious minority. The violence killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria’s fragile postwar transition. Syrian government forces intervened to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans.

Disturbing videos and reports soon surfaced of Druze civilians being humiliated and executed, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. One showed gunmen in military uniform asking an unarmed man about his identity. When he replies that he is Syrian, the gunmen demand, “What do you mean Syrian? Are you Sunni or Druze?” When the man says he is Druze, the men open fire, killing him.

Hossam Saraya, a Syrian-American Druze from Oklahoma, was shown in another video, kneeling with his brother, father, and at least three other relatives, before a group of men in military garb sprayed them with automatic fire and celebrated.
A religious sect with roots in Islam

The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. Outsiders are not allowed to convert, and most religious practices are shrouded in secrecy.

There are roughly a million Druze worldwide and more than half of them live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

Though a small community within Syria’s population of more than 20 million, Sweida’s Druze take pride in their involvement in liberating the country from Ottoman and later French colonial rule, and establishing the present-day Syrian state.

During the uprising-turned-civil war that started in 2011, Druze leaders reached a fragile agreement with former President Bashar Assad that gave Sweida semi-autonomy, leaving the minority group to protect its own territory instead of serving in the Syrian military.
Most Druze celebrated Assad’s fall

The Druze largely welcomed the fall of Assad in December in a rebel offensive that ended decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty.

The Druze were largely skeptical of the Islamist background of Syria’s interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, especially as he once led the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. But many, including influential clerics, supported diplomatically engaging with the new leadership.

Among those more hostile towards al-Sharaa is spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and a faction of Druze militias called the Sweida Military Council. There were intense divisions between them and others in the Druze community for months.

Previous clashes between Druze armed groups and government forces were resolved before the violence could escalate. A security agreement was reached between the Druze and Damascus in May that was intended to bring about long-term calm.

But the recent clashes and sectarian attacks in Sweida have upset that balance, and many Druze appear to have lost hope in reaching a fair settlement diplomatically.
Sectarian violence after the fall of Assad

Many Druze see the government’s attacks as an extension of a wave of sectarian violence that broke out months ago on Syria’s coast. Clashes between the new government’s forces and Assad loyalists spiraled into revenge killings targeting members of the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs.

A government investigation into the coastal violence found that more than 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians, and that members of the security forces were implicated in the attacks.

The difference in Sweida, as Abou Ras, the Druze medical sciences professor, sees it, is that the Druze had their own armed factions that were able to fight back.

“They talked about respecting minorities and the different components of Syria,” he said. ”But what happened at the coast was a hard lesson for Syrians, and we learned from it.”
The interim president denies that Druze are being targeted

After the violence in Sweida, Al-Sharaa vowed to hold perpetrators to account, and restated his promises since taking power that he will not exclude Syria’s minority groups.

He and other officials have insisted that they are not targeting the Druze, but armed factions that are challenging state authority, namely those led by al-Hijri.

Al-Sharaa also accused Israel of trying to exacerbate divisions in the country by launching airstrikes on government forces in the province, which Israel said was in defense of the Druze.

The tensions have already created new challenges to forging national unity.

Other minority groups — particularly the Kurdish forces controlling Syria’s northeast, who have been in negotiations with Damascus to merge with the new national army — are reconsidering surrendering their weapons after seeing the violence in Sweida.

A Syrian Druze who lived abroad for over 20 years was in Syria when Assad fell and celebrated with friends and family on the streets of Sweida. He quit his job to move back and be involved with the community. He joined in with people who waved Syria’s new flag that symbolized the uprising, danced, and stepped on torn portraits of Assad.

He said he wanted al-Sharaa to be successful, but now he doesn’t see a peaceful future for Syria’s different ethnic and religious groups with him at the helm.

“In every household (in Sweida), someone has died,” he told the AP. The Associated Press could not confirm that independently as there was no official death toll. However, it was a sentiment frequently shared by Syrians from Sweida. He asked to have his name and other identifying details withheld out of fear for his and his family’s safety.

“I think after the massacres that happened, there is not a single person in Sweida that wants anything to do with this government, unfortunately,” he said. ”This government butchered people, and butchered any possibility to (bring) reconciliation and harmonize the south.”

___

Kareem Chehayeb And Abdulrahman Shaheen, The Associated Press

Chehayeb reported from Beirut.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as a state, in a bold diplomatic move amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza. Israel denounced the decision.

#Macron said in a post on X that he will formalize the decision at the United Nations General Assembly in September. “The urgent thing today is that the war in Gaza stops and the civilian population is saved,” he wrote.
The mostly symbolic move puts added diplomatic pressure on Israel as the war and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip rage. France is now the biggest Western power to recognize Palestine, and the move could pave the way for other countries to do the same. More than 140 countries recognize a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.

The Palestinians seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and Gaza, territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel’s government and most of its political class have long been opposed to Palestinian statehood and now say that it would reward militants after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

“We strongly condemn President Macron’s decision,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became. A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it."

The Palestinian Authority welcomed it. A letter announcing the move was presented Thursday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem.