UN chief says Israeli air strikes in Syria must stop

UNITED NATIONS — Israeli airstrikes on Syria are violations of the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity and "must stop," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday (Dec 19).

Since a lightning rebel offencive ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes that it says are aimed at destroying strategic weapons and military infrastructure.

"Syria's sovereignty, territorial unity, and integrity must be fully restored, and all acts of aggression must come to an immediate end," Guterres told reporters.

Israeli troops also moved into a demilitarised zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights — created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war — that is patrolled by UN peacekeepers.

Israeli officials have described the move as a limited and temporary measure to ensure the security of Israel's borders but have given no indication of when the troops might be withdrawn.

"Let me be clear: There should be no military forces in the area of separation other than UN peacekeepers — period. Israel and Syria must uphold the terms of the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement, which remains fully in force," Guterres said.

He said the United Nations is focused on facilitating an "inclusive, credible and peaceful" political transition in Syria and getting aid moving to combat one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world.

"This is a decisive moment — a moment of hope and history, but also one of great uncertainty," he said.

Some players might try to exploit the situation for their own ends, Guterres said.

"But it is the obligation of the international community to stand with the people of Syria who have suffered so much. Syria's future must be shaped by its people, for its people, with the support of all of us," he added.

Guterres also named Mexican lawyer Karla Quintana to head the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria and said her team must be allowed to fully carry out their mandate.

The UN General Assembly created the institution in 2023 discover what had happened to missing people and to support to victims, survivors and their families.

Quintana, a lawyer who has worked at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, ran Mexico's National Search Commission for missing persons from 2019 until 2023.

The International Commission on Missing Persons in The Hague has said it had received data indicating there may be as many as 66, as yet unverified, mass grave sites in Syria. More than 150,000 people are considered missing, according to international and Syrian organisations, including the United Nations and the Syrian Network for Human Rights, it said.

A violent crackdown by Assad on peaceful pro-democracy protesters in 2011 led to a civil war. Millions of people fled Syria with millions more internally displaced.

[[nid:712581]]