WarSclerotic

Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in a predawn car-ramming attack in the northern West Bank on Monday, one of them seriously, the army said. The force opened fire on the three occupants of the vehicle, killing two and wounding the third.

The ramming occurred at approximately 3:30 a.m. near the village of N’ima, northwest of Ramallah. The army said that “from an initial investigation it appears to have been an attack.”

“Terrorists rammed their vehicle into a number of soldiers who had stopped by the side of the road at the entrance to the village,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

The soldiers had earlier conducted arrest raids in Nima. Their vehicle broke down as they exited the village. The ramming occurred as the soldiers were standing outside the truck.

An IDF officer was seriously injured and a border guard was lightly wounded in the attack, the military said.

Palestinian residents of the village denied it was a deliberate attack and said it was an accident, noting the lack of streetlights, narrowness of the road and the thoroughfare’s nickname: “Death Street.”

Israeli troops arrive at the scene after a car-ramming attack in which two Israeli servicemen were injured and two of the assailants were killed in the central West Bank on March 4, 2019. (Israel Defense Forces)

“The troops opened fire on the terrorists. Two of them were neutralized and the third terrorist was lightly injured,” the IDF said, adding that reinforcements were sent to the area.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry identified the two slain assailants as Amir Daraj, 20, from the village of Kharbatha al-Misbah and
Yousef Inqawi, 20, from Beit Sira. The name of the third, injured assailant was not immediately released.

The Israeli military said the three young Palestinian men had earlier thrown firebombs at a nearby highway.

“In the car in which the terrorists carried out the attack, additional Molotov cocktails were found,” the army said.

Protests and low-level rioting broke out in the area following the car-ramming.

A helicopter and ambulances were sent to the scene to evacuate the soldiers who were hurt.

The two injured servicemen, both approximately 20 years old, were taken to Tel Hashomer Hospital in Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv, for treatment.

The seriously wounded officer sustained injuries throughout his body, medics said.

The lightly hurt border guard was released from the hospital later in the morning after being examined by doctors, medical officials said.

IDF crackdown on Hamas

The Hamas terror group praised the attack, saying it showed “that the Palestinian nation will continue in its fight against the occupier until it earns its rights and frees its land.”

“The message of the young rebels in the West Bank is that they will not rest until the occupation is expelled and their holy places are liberated, and that the plans to Judaize Jerusalem will not stand,” Hamas said in a statement.

Also in the central West Bank on Monday morning, Israeli troops arrested 16 Palestinian people in predawn raids, 11 of them suspected of being Hamas members.

“Tonight IDF troops conducted an operation in the Binyamin Regional Brigade as part of the campaign against the Hamas terror group. As part of the operation, IDF and Border Police troops arrested 11 Hamas members,” the army said.

Israeli defense officials have warned that the coming months may see an escalation in violence in the already restive West Bank and Gaza Strip, in light of added pressure from the upcoming Israeli elections, US President Donald Trump’s plans to announce his proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and ongoing struggles between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

AL-OMAR OIL FIELD BASE, Syria — A spokesman for the US-backed force fighting the Islamic State group in eastern Syria says fighters are waging intense battles with the group, advancing on two fronts in the last area they control.

Mustafa Bali of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces tweeted Saturday that “heavy clashes” are taking place in the area on the east bank of the Euphrates River.

Bali said three SDF fighters were wounded.

The SDF on Friday evening resumed military operations to liberate the last piece of territory held by IS in the province of Deir el-Zour after evacuating thousands of civilians and hostages who had been besieged inside.

Zana Amedi, an SDF commander, told The Associated Press that “an active ground force” is advancing into IS-held territories as the jihadists resort to sniper fire and booby-traps.

A girl waits to be screened by US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) after being evacuated out of the last territory held by Islamic State militants, in the desert outside Baghouz, Syria, Friday, March 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

“Those left inside are fighters who do not wish to surrender,” Bali told The Associated Press.

The military campaign to uproot the militants from the eastern banks of the Euphrates River began in September, pushing them down toward this last corner in the village of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border. The military operation was halted on February 12 as the SDF said a large group of civilians and hostages were holed up in the territory, which sits atop caves and tunnels where they had been hiding.

The remaining speck of IS-controlled land in Baghouz village is also along the Euphrates from one side and the desert near the Iraqi border from the other. Thousands of civilians were living in a tent encampment and houses along the riverside.

Over the last two weeks, thousands of civilians have been evacuated, many of them women and children in desperate conditions. The only aid group at the evacuation site, the Free Burma Rangers, estimated that at least 10,000 civilians have left the IS pocket since February 20, in trips organized by the SDF.

The evacuees, who included IS family members, said food was running low and clean water and medicine were scarce. Despite its demise, many defended what remained of the group’s territorial hold, which once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria.

As they trickled out, SDF and coalition officials screened them. Women and children were transferred to camps miles away. Men suspected of links to the militant group were taken into custody at other facilities.

Women and children exit the back of a truck as they arrive at a US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) screening area after being evacuated out of the last territory held by Islamic State, in the desert outside Baghouz, Syria, Friday, March 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

US President Donald Trump said Thursday that IS has lost “100 percent” of the territory it once controlled in Syria, but officials estimate there are hundreds of militants left in the small patch of territory in Baghouz, and that they will likely fight till the end.

Bali would not speculate on how long the military operation might take but said he expects a “fierce battle.”

He said the battles are expected to take place in a very small area that includes a complex network of tunnels, as well as suicide bombers and land mines.

“The battle to finish off what is left of Daesh has started,” said SDF commander Adnan Afrin, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

Afrin said he expects “resistance” from the remaining fighters who are likely to deploy all their weapons, including suicide bombers.

He said most of the remaining fighters are Europeans, Asians, Iraqis and Arabs from the area.

On Friday, the smallest batch of evacuees, just over 200, came out of the pocket in around six trucks used to transport sheep. About 10 trucks sent to the perimeter of the IS pocket came back empty, and drivers said no more evacuees came out after hours of waiting.

The evacuees Friday included wounded men but were mostly women and children. There were Russians, Indonesians, Bosnians, Dagestani, Kazaks, Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis. They dragged along few belongings, distraught children and broken spirits.

A woman walks with her children at a US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) screening area after being evacuated out of the last territory held by Islamic State, in the desert outside Baghouz, Syria, Friday, March 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Umm Mohammed — or mother of Mohammed — a 38-year-old Syrian, left Baghouz with her three children Friday but her husband stayed behind in support of IS. “There are many fighters and families inside,” she said. “The Islamic State is weak only in Baghouz but elsewhere it is expanding and growing.”

The capture of the last pocket still held by IS fighters in Baghouz would mark the end of a devastating four-year global campaign to end the group’s hold on territory in Syria and Iraq — their so-called “caliphate” that at the height of the group’s power in 2014 controlled nearly a third of both Iraq and Syria.

It would allow Trump to begin withdrawing the estimated 2,000 US troops from Syria, a decision he accounced in December — though last week he partially reversed course and agreed to keep a residual force of perhaps a few hundred troops as part of an international effort to stabilize northeastern Syria.

The resumption of military operations against IS breaks a dayslong standoff while the civilians were being evacuated. In the last week alone, 13,000 people, most of them women and children, arrived at the al-Hol camp in Hassakeh province which now houses approximately 45,000 people, according to the United Nations.

In a statement Friday, the UN cited reports that more than 84 people, two thirds of them young children under five years of age, have died since December on their way to al-Hol camp after fleeing the group in Syria’s Deir el-Zour province.

“Many of the arrivals are exhausted, hungry and sick,” according to Jens Laerke, spokesman of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at a news briefing in Geneva.

The United States is expected to move ahead with the downgrade of its mission to the Palestinians on Monday by merging its Jerusalem consulate with the embassy in Israel, a US official said Saturday.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said when announcing the merger in October that it was intended to improve “efficiency and effectiveness” and did not constitute a change in policy.

But Palestinian leaders have seen the decision as another move against them by the Trump administration, which they froze contact with after US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017.

A date for the merger of the consulate into the embassy had not been announced, but a State Department official told AFP on condition of anonymity that it “is expected to take place on March 4.”

The Jerusalem consulate general, which has acted independently as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, will be replaced by a new Palestinian affairs unit within the embassy.

The closure of the consulate general means that Palestinian affairs will come under the direction of US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who has been a supporter of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. Some Palestinians view Friedman as biased in favor of Israel.

US ambassador to Israel David Friedman speaks at the Jewish federation’s annual General Assembly in Tel Aviv, on October 24, 2018. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

The State Department official could not confirm reports that the consul general’s residence in Jerusalem would eventually become the home for the US ambassador as part of the embassy’s move to the city, which began last May.

Located near Jerusalem’s Old City, it has been the home of the consul general since 1912, while the US permanent diplomatic presence in the city was established in 1844.

Trump, who is expected to release his long-awaited peace plan in the coming months, has also cut more than $500 million in Palestinian aid in what the Palestinians have said is a bid to pressure them to negotiate.

A senior Iranian official on Sunday declared that US efforts to secure Israel have stalled and that the Middle Eastern country feels increasingly threatened.

“Despite the great resources that the US has invested in Israel’s security, their strategies have come to a halt,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said, according to a report from the ISNA news agency.

Shakmani told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran that Israel “feels more threatened on its borders and even within them.”

Shamkhani also said US allies in the Middle East risk an uprising by their “humiliated citizens” if they continue to rely on Washington.

“Trump and even his underlings ridicule and humiliate Saudi Arabia and the [United Arab] Emirates day and night, saying that you’re nothing without us and cannot last a day without America’s support,” he said.

In October, Trump said that Saudi Arabia’s 83-year-old King Salman “might not be there for two weeks” without US military support. The comments were mostly shrugged off by Riyadh.

US President Donald Trump (C-L) and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (C-R) arrive for the Arabic Islamic American Summit at the King Abdulaziz Conference Center in Riyadh on May 21, 2017 (AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN)

“Our prediction about America’s allies in the region is that if they continue the policy of relying on Islam’s enemies, they will face the uprising of their humiliated citizens,” said Shamkhani.

Iran’s relations with its Gulf neighbors have soured in recent years and tensions escalated last month when the Islamic Republic accused Riyadh and Abu Dhabi of being complicit in a suicide bombing that killed 27 Iranian troops.

The Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards blasted the “traitorous governments of Saudi Arabia and [the] Emirates” and said Iran will no longer tolerate their “hidden support for anti-Islam thugs and Takfiri [Sunni extremist] groups.”

Mourners a carry flag-draped casket during a mass funeral for those killed in a suicide car bombing that targeted members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Isfahan, killing at least 27 people. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The February 13 bombing targeted a busload of Guards in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan and was claimed by Jaish al-Adl, a Pakistan-based extremist group blacklisted by Iran as terrorists.

Last month the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tehran has plans “to break America, Israel, and their partners and allies” in worldwide attacks.

In a speech aired February 19 on Iran’s IRINN TV, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said Iran was preparing to “fight them on the global level, not just in one spot. Our war is not a local war. We have plans to defeat the world powers,” according to a translation published by the Washington-based MEMRI watchdog.

Tehran is also a major supporter of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and its “resistance” against the Islamic Republic’s arch-foe, Israel.