Israeli military strikes Lebanese targets after Hezbollah fires on Israel

The rebel groups fighting in Syria’s 13-year-long war are a complex patchwork of fighters, focused on battling against different enemies — including, sometimes, each other — backed at times by foreign powers. In the past week, Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) has emerged as a formidable challenger to President Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s ruler for nearly a quarter-century — over half of which he has spent fighting for survival in this conflict.

The group’s stated aim is to establish Islamic rule in Syria, and it is the successor to onetime al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

In recent years, HTS has used its dominance in northwestern Syria — where it had been contained by government forces — to rebuild the constellation of remaining opposition forces into fighting forces.

HTS has also been working to soften its image in that time. Once affiliated with al-Qaeda, it has since distanced itself from its extremist roots, focusing instead on its provision of government services to millions of people in Idlib province through the fledgling Syrian Salvation Government, the de facto administrators of HTS-controlled territory. In recent statements, the group said it will protect cultural and religious sites in Aleppo, including churches.

The U.S. State Department has designated HTS as a foreign terrorist organization.

The impacts of the rebels’ advances will not just reshape the contours of the civil war, but could ripple beyond Syria’s borders too. It could threaten to pull Russia and Iran further into the conflict, while the United States has distanced itself from the unfolding offensive, calling for an urgent de-escalation. Here’s what to know about the key players involved in the fighting.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency for Palestinian refugees, has suspended aid deliveries via the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point for humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, after attacks on aid trucks as they return from the Israeli-controlled border and at a time of deepening distress in the enclave.

Amid growing hunger and desperation, armed gangs are waylaying aid convoys and stealing food, the agency said in a statement.

A Washington Post investigation last month reported that criminal looting in Israel-controlled areas had become the biggest impediment in the distribution of aid and that armed gangs have beaten, killed and kidnapped aid workers around Kerem Shalom. An internal United Nations memo obtained by The Post concluded that the gangs “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israel Defense Forces.

“In Gaza, the humanitarian operation has become unnecessarily impossible due to: the ongoing siege, hurdles from Israeli authorities, political decisions to restrict the amounts of aid, lack of safety on aid routes and targeting of local police,” UNRWA said in its Sunday announcement.

UNRWA is the largest aid agency servicing Gaza, and the pause is likely to compound the grave hunger among displaced civilians. For months, little aid has been able to reach Gaza’s north. Humanitarian organizations say Israel’s policies in Gaza have left the population on the edge of mass starvation.

“The responsibility of protection of aid workers + supplies is with the State of Israel as the occupying power,” UNRWA said, adding that it needs to ensure continuous aid flow into Gaza and refrain from attacking humanitarian workers.

At a conference in Cairo on Monday, U.N. deputy secretary general Amina Mohammed said Gazans were struggling with “humanitarian aid being blocked again and again by draconian Israeli measures as well as the total breakdown in law and order giving way to looting and destroyed and overcrowded roads.”

“The crisis in Gaza is a crisis of political will to influence the parties’ conduct,” Mohammed said at the conference, which is aimed to bring fresh momentum to international efforts to provide relief to the beleaguered population of Gaza. Mohammed urged governments to work to get aid flowing into Gaza again and to support the work of UNRWA.

France pledged approximately $52 million toward humanitarian aid to Gaza at the conference, including approximately $21 million for UNRWA. Britain pledged more than $20 million, including $8.9 million to UNRWA.

A U.S. hostage believed to have been held in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, was actually killed on the day of Hamas’s attack, the Israel Defense Forces said Monday, without providing further details.

Omer Neutra’s body is still being held by Hamas, however, said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which speaks on behalf of the hostages’ families.

Neutra, a 21-year-old New York native, was a tank platoon commander in the 77th Battalion of the Israel Defense Forces’ 7th Brigade. He was the leader of a small army post near the border with Gaza when Hamas attacked Israel, The Washington Post previously reported. He was shown being pulled out of a tank by Hamas gunmen in a blurry clip recorded on Oct. 7.

Since then, his parents, Ronen and Orna Neutra, have traveled the world demanding a deal to release the hostages and speaking about their son to lawmakers and anyone who might be able to support their cause.

They were informed early Monday of their son’s death, the families forum said in a statement.

Neutra is survived by his parents and his brother, Daniel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed sympathy to Neutra’s loved ones in a statement on X on Monday. “My wife Sarah and I extend our heartfelt condolences to the parents and family of Captain Omer Neutra, the heroic armored corps officer, upon receiving the heartbreaking news of his fall on October 7,” Netanyahu wrote. “We will not rest or relent until we bring him home to a grave in Israel, and we will continue to act with determination and tirelessly until we bring back all of our hostages — both the living and the deceased.”

President Joe Biden said in a statement that he was “devastated and outraged” by the news of Neutra’s death.

The announcement of Neutra’s death brings the number of Americans believed to be alive and held in Gaza as hostages down to three. Edan Alexander, an American hostage from New Jersey who was stationed at the same army post as Neutra, is believed to be alive after Hamas released a video of him on Saturday. The video was proof that “there are living hostages and they are suffering greatly,” the families forum said, reiterating calls for a hostage-release deal. Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen are also believed to still be alive.

Three other American hostages — Itay Chen, Gad Haggai and Judy Weinstein — have been declared dead, with their bodies still believed to be in captivity.

A well-known chef who ran one of the few soup kitchens in Gaza’s starvation-gripped north was shot dead Saturday by an Israeli drone, according to an eyewitness and family members.

Mahmoud Almadhoun, 33, was steps away from his home in Beit Lahiya and heading toward the Kamal Adwan Hospital when he was killed, Ahmed Al Majdoul, who was there, told The Washington Post by WhatsApp.

The Israel Defense Forces said it was “still working” on a comment.

Almadhoun’s family-run and donation-funded soup kitchen started in February, and “pulling off each day’s meal requires a series of small miracles,” he wrote in an April opinion piece for The Post. The kitchen also provided food to patients and doctors remaining at Kamal Adwan, northern Gaza’s last partially functioning medical facility.

Majdoul said Almadhoun was going to the hospital to help deliver produce the soup kitchen had purchased from Gaza City.

“He was targeted directly,” said Majdoul, who worked with Almadhoun.

In early November, Israeli forces launched a massive operation in Gaza’s northernmost areas, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. The IDF says it is targeting regrouping Hamas militants, but residents have described indiscriminate attacks on civilians. As part of the offensive, the IDF has told residents to leave for the south. While tens of thousands have gone, some have chosen to stay out of fear of not being able to return.

One of Almadhoun’s brothers, Hadi, who is the Washington-based director of philanthropy for the U.S. committee of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians, told The Post that his brother was well known in the area and targeted for his work.

“Because we help the hospitals hold on, because we have food, the Israelis are [angered] as I guess they want to drive everybody out,” he said.

The IDF says the evacuation orders are for the safety of civilians who will be able to return after the operation.

Israeli authorities briefly detained Mahmoud Almadhoun during a mass roundup in December. He detailed his ordeal in an interview with The Post and was pictured among a group of men stripped down to their underwear, beaten, taken to Israel and then dropped back off in Gaza.

Syrian opposition forces made a shock advance across the northern part of the country in recent days, seizing control this weekend of most of Aleppo, Syria’s economic capital, in a stunning challenge to President Bashar al-Assad that has refocused global attention on the nation’s years-long civil war.

Since its start in 2011, when Assad cracked down on largely peaceful protests, the conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced around 13 million more, according to the United Nations. It gave rise to the Islamic State, sucked in world powers including Russia and the United States, and carved Syria into different zones of control.

The sudden assault by Syrian rebels, led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has rapidly redrawn the war’s front lines and threatened to destabilize the country further. Here’s what to know.

A lightning advance by insurgents over the past two days in parts of northern and central Syria was the result of better organization by rebel forces, the weakening of President Bashar al-Assad’s military allies and, possibly, luck: Few expected the Syrian army to collapse as quickly as it did.

On Sunday, opposition forces were in control of much of Aleppo, the northern city where Assad’s troops and allied militias vanquished rebel fighters eight years earlier in what seemed then to be a turning point in the country’s bitter civil war. Video footage suggested government troops had either retreated or melted away, allowing a long-planned offensive to advance further than expected, experts said.

The timing of the operation is one of the central questions looming over the rebel offensive, given that before the insurgents started advancing last week, it had been years since Syria’s front lines had moved.