• Syrian govt describes attack on US convoy as “terrorist attack”.
• Syria arrests 11 security members after killing of US personnel.
• Washington says deadly attack carried out by Daesh militant.
  

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Syria’s interior ministry on Sunday said the gunman who killed three Americans in the central Palmyra region the previous day was a member of the security forces who was to have been fired for extremism.

Two US troops and a civilian interpreter died in what the Syrian government described as a “terrorist attack” on Saturday, while Washington said it had been carried out by a Daesh militant who was then killed.

The Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding extremist ideas and had planned to do so on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Noureddine al-Baba told state television.

A Syrian security official told AFP on Sunday that “11 members of the general security forces were arrested and brought in for questioning after the attack”.

The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the gunman had belonged to the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra”.

Palmyra, home to Unesco-listed ancient ruins, was controlled by Daesh at the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.

The incident is the first of its kind reported since the ouster of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December last year.

US President Donald Trump vowed “very serious retaliation” following Saturday’s attack.

A Syrian defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity that prior to the attack, US forces had “arrived by land from the direction of the Al-Tanf military base” in southeastern Syria, near the border with Jordan.

“The joint Syrian-American delegation first toured the city of Palmyra, then proceeded to the T-4 airbase before returning to a base in Palmyra”, the source added.

A Syrian military official who requested anonymity said on Saturday that the shots were fired “during a meeting between Syrian and American officers” at a Syrian base in Palmyra.

However, a Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that the attack “took place in an area where the Syrian president does not have control.”

Warnings

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counterterrorism operations when the attack occurred, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol”.

Trump called the incident a Daesh attack “against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them”.

He said the three other US troops injured in the incident were “doing well”.

The official SANA news agency said the attack also wounded two members of the Syrian security forces.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said Damascus “strongly condemns the terrorist attack”.

In an interview on state television on Saturday, Syrian Interior Ministry spokesman Anwar al-Baba said there had been “prior warnings from the internal security command to allied forces in the desert region”.

The international coalition forces did not take the Syrian warnings of a possible Daesh infiltration into consideration, he said.

Daesh seized swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014 during Syria’s civil war, before being territorially defeated in the country five years later.

Its fighters still maintain a presence, however, particularly in Syria’s vast desert.

Last month, during Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s historic visit to Washington, Damascus formally joined the US-led global coalition against Daesh.

US forces are deployed in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast as well as at Al-Tanf near the border with Jordan.

• Multiple people injured as first responders “work to save lives”.
• Thirteen people taken to hospital, NSW ambulance says.
• Israel’s president says Hanukkah candle-lighters attacked.

SYDNEY: Australian police say 10 people are dead on Sunday after a shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach

Multiple people were injured and first responders were “working to save lives”, officials said.

Thirteen people were taken to hospital after the shooting, a New South Wales ambulance spokesperson said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident “shocking and distressing”, adding that “emergency responders are on the ground and working to save lives”.

ABC aired footage showing people lying on the ground.

“I saw at least 10 people on the ground and blood everywhere,” 30-year-old local Harry Wilson, who witnessed the shooting, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Jewish people who had gone to light the first candle of the Hanukkah holiday on the beach had been attacked by “vile terrorists”.

One of the world’s most famous beaches, Bondi is typically crowded with locals and tourists, especially on warm weekend evenings.

“If we were targeted deliberately in this way, it’s something of a scale that none of us could have ever fathomed. It’s a horrific thing,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told Sky News, adding his media adviser had been wounded in the attack.

• UNISFA base in Kadugli targetted while peacekeepers were inside building.
• Bangladesh interim leader Yunus expresses grief, pledges support to families.
• Sudan’s war killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, creating severe crisis.

Six United Nations peacekeepers from Bangladesh were killed on Saturday in a drone strike on Sudan’s southern Kordofan region, the UN mission said, with Dhaka sharply condemning the attack.

The United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) said “six troops were killed and six injured”, including four seriously, when a drone hit their camp in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state.

All of the victims are from Bangladesh, it said.

UN chief Antonio Guterres condemned the “horrific” attack, saying it “may constitute war crimes under international law”.

“Attacks as the one today in South Kordofan against peacekeepers, are unjustifiable. There will need to be accountability,” he said in a statement.

Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus, in a statement, said he was “deeply saddened” by the attack, and put the toll at six dead and eight wounded.

He asked the UN to ensure that his country´s personnel were offered “any necessary emergency support”.

“The government of Bangladesh will stand by the families in this difficult moment,” Yunus added.

Dhaka’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemned” the attack.

UN peacekeepers are deployed to Abyei, a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan.

Fires blazing

A medical source had earlier told AFP that the strike on a United Nations facility in Kadugli killed at least six people, with witnesses saying they were UN employees.

“Six people were killed in a bombing of the UN headquarters while they were inside the building,” the medical source at the city´s hospital said.

Eyewitnesses said a drone had hit the UN facility.

The Sudanese army published a video on its Facebook page showing fires blazing and two columns of smoke rising from the UNISFA base.

The army-aligned government based in Port Sudan issued a statement condemning the attack and accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of being behind it.

In a statement, the Sovereignty Council, headed by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, called the attack a “dangerous escalation”.

The RSF in a statement on Telegram said it rejected “the claims and allegations… regarding an air attack that targeted the United Nations headquarters in Kadugli, and the accompanying false accusations against our forces of being behind it through the use of a drone”.

Meanwhile, Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris said that “the terrorist rebel militia has met all the conditions to be classified as a terrorist group”, and urged the UN to “bring the perpetrators to justice”.

Kadugli, where famine was declared in early November, has been besieged for a year and a half by the RSF.

Strategic position

Following their late-October capture of El-Fasher — the army’s last stronghold in Sudan’s western Darfur region — the RSF have pushed eastward into the oil-rich Kordofan region, divided into three states.

Kordofan is a vast agricultural region that lies between RSF-controlled Darfur in the west and army-held areas in the north, east and centre.

Its position is important for maintaining supply lines and moving troops.

The RSF has been at war with the military since April 2023 and has deployed fighters, drones and allied militias to the fertile region.

Analysts say the RSF seek to punch through the army’s defences around central Sudan, paving the way for recapturing Khartoum.

Last week, strikes on a kindergarten and hospital in Kalogi in South Kordofan killed 114 people, including 63 children, according to the UN’s World Health Organisation.

Sudan’s war has so far killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and resulted in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Efforts to end the war have so far failed.

Last month, US President Donald Trump said he would move to end the conflict following discussions in Washington with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the initiative has yet to materialise.