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Concern over north-east Syria security amid fears IS militants could re-emerge

Concerned western officials said they were closely monitoring the deteriorating security situation in north-east Syria amid fears that Islamic State militants could re-emerge after the Kurdish defeat at the hands of the Damascus government. The US military said it had transported “150 IS fighters” from a frontline prison in Hasakah province across the border to Iraq, and said it was willing to move up to 7,000 to prevent what it warned could be a dangerous breakout. Kurdish sources said the prison involved was Panorama, which holds men from numerous countries – including a handful from the UK – though there was no detail on who had been rendered across the border. The dramatic advance of Syrian government forces, halted by a fragile ceasefire on Tuesday, resulted in prisons holding former IS fighters and a camp of over 23,000 IS women and children changing hands in a chaotic fashion within a few days. Though other high-profile female detainees, such as Shamima Begum, are thought to remain in the still Kurdish-controlled al-Roj camp in the extreme north-east of Syria, reports of escapes and a loss of control remain a source of anxiety in Europe. Reprieve, a human rights campaign group, estimates there are about 55 men, women and children from the UK or with a claim to UK nationality held in north-east Syria, though many – like Begum – have had their British citizenship removed. An estimated 120 IS militants escaped on Monday from the Shaddadi prison after it was seized from Syrian Kurdish forces in a bloody fight, although the Syrian government said that 81 had been recaptured since. Al-Hawl camp, holding more than 20,000 women, originally from about 70 countries, changed hands on Tuesday amid conflicting reports that at least some of the women detained there had been able to leave after Kurdish forces departed. Humanitarian organisations providing food, water and heating materials for al-Hawl, which lies in hostile desert, said they had not been able to visit since Sunday and were concerned that the situation there could become more unstable. European officials warned that many militants in the prisons and camps were considered to be dangerous, though it was unclear how far they would be able to regroup, and whether the Syrian government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president, would clamp down on them as had the Syrian Kurds. IS was territorially defeated in 2019, with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) military led by Kurdish fighters acting as ground troops. Thousands of male militants were detained in prisons, while women and children were moved to camps, from where some have been gradually repatriated while others have remained for years. The SDF remained in control, as an effective government in north-eastern Syria during the final years of al-Assad’s regime in Damascus. But when al-Assad was ousted in December 2024 by al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), it led to an uncertain situation with the SDF unwilling to fully integrate into the new Syria. Nanar Hawach, a Syria expert and analyst with Crisis Group, said there was a danger was “not a reborn caliphate but a dispersed insurgency rebuilding in the cracks”. Prison breaks “may have released experienced operatives into a contested security environment” between Syrian government and SDF forces, he said. On Tuesday, the US signalled it had abandoned its support for the SDF. Tom Barrack, the US special envoy for Syria, said: “The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-Isis force on the ground has largely expired” and Washington’s partner in holding down IS was the Damascus government. Though HTS has its origins as an offshoot of al-Qaida, the terror group, it has had a history of opposing IS, and cut its ties with al-Qaida in 2016. Before beginning its offensive on Damascus, al-Sharaa emphasised that HTS had moved on, though there has been sectarian violence targeting Alawite, Druze and Kurdish minorities. Hawach said that the new Syrian government “clearly wants to be seen as a counter-terrorism partner” – but he cautioned that “securing Isis detention facilities, managing camps like al-Hawl, and suppressing sleeper cells across newly acquired territory requires resources, discipline, and institutional capacity that the Syrian government is still building”. A lightning offensive by the Syrian government forces, starting over the weekend, led to rapid gains from the SDF. The city of Raqqa was captured on Sunday and the SDF agreed to hand over the provinces of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor for a ceasefire. That broke down almost immediately, and government forces made more gains. Al-Sharaa agreed to a fresh ceasefire on Tuesday, a day after he had spoken to Donald Trump. The US president said he had been “trying to protect the Kurds”, though it is unclear if the SDF will agree to al-Sharaa’s demands or risk another round of fighting. The SDF leader, Mazloum Abdi, had been given four days from Tuesday to consult Kurdish leaders over accepting the Syrian government’s demands for close integration with Damascus.

Three journalists among 11 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza

Hospitals in Gaza say Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians on Wednesday, including two 13-year-old boys and three journalists, in the latest violence to undermine a three-month-old ceasefire. Palestinian health officials said the Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinian journalists who were travelling in a car to film a newly established displacement camp in the Netzarim area of central Gaza. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement that the reporters who died “were carrying out a humanitarian, journalistic mission to film and document the suffering of civilians”. In separate incidents on the same day, two boys aged 13 were killed in different parts of Gaza. In one strike, a boy, his father and a 22-year-old man were hit by Israeli drones on the eastern edge of the Bureij refugee camp, according to officials at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, which received the bodies. In another case, a 13-year-old boy, Moatsem al-Sharafy, was shot dead by Israeli troops while collecting firewood in the eastern town of Bani Suheila, according to Nasser hospital. Footage shared online showed the boy’s father weeping over his body on a hospital bed. The journalists killed were named as Mohammed Salah Qashta, Abdul Raouf Shaat and Anas Ghneim. Shaat was a regular contributor to Agence France-Presse as a photo and video journalist, although the agency said he was not on assignment at the time of the strike. Local journalists said their work was sponsored by the Egyptian Relief Committee, which oversees Egypt’s relief operations in Gaza. Mohammed Mansour, a spokesperson for the committee, said the vehicle had been known to the Israeli military. Video circulating online showed a burned-out vehicle by the roadside, with smoke still rising from the wreckage and debris scattered across the ground. The bodies of two journalists had been taken to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, while the third was transferred to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, medical officials said. The Israeli military said it had ordered the strike after its soldiers “identified several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas” in central Gaza. “Following the identification and due to the threat that the drone posed to the troops, the IDF precisely struck the suspects who activated the drone,” it said, adding that the details of the incident were under examination. The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said Israeli forces had killed at least 29 Palestinian journalists in Gaza between December 2024 and December 2025 and that nearly 220 journalists had been killed since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. Other groups put the toll higher. Moatsem al-Sharafy’s mother, Safaa al-Sharafy, told the Associated Press that her son had gone out to gather firewood so she could cook. She said: “He went out in the morning, hungry. He told me he’d go quickly and come back.” Israeli forces have killed at least 466 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect in October, according to health authorities.

Zelenskyy meeting with Trump expected to take place on Thursday – as it happened

This blog will be closing shortly, but you can still keep up with the latest updates coming from the World Economic Forum in Davos here. Here is an overview of today’s key developments: Donald Trump has stepped up his demand to annex Greenland in an extraordinary speech in Davos, but said the US would not use force to seize what he called the “big, beautiful piece of ice”. Addressing thousands of business and political leaders at the World Economic Form in the Swiss ski resort, the US president said he was “seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States”. The European parliament has formally suspended the ratification process on its US trade deal, in protest against Donald Trump’s threat to impose 10% tariffs on EU exports unless the bloc agrees he can take over Greenland. Bernd Lange, head of the European parliament trade committee, said until “the threats [on Greenland] are over there will be no possibility for compromise” on ratifying the US deal, which promised Americans a new era of 0% tariffs on many industrial exports. At several points during his speech, Trump appeared to confuse Greenland with Iceland, claiming “Iceland” had caused a drop in stock prices on Tuesday – when markets fell as a result of his threat to impose new tariffs on eight European countries. The US president claimed Nato has treated the US very unfairly, and “it’s time that Nato steps up” as “we are helping them with Ukraine”. He said Greenland costs Denmark “hundreds of millions a year to run it”, and while Denmark is “a small country and wonderful people, it is very expensive” for “a very big piece of ice”. Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said it’s “positive in isolation” that Trump pledged not to use force over Greenland, but it doesn’t change the fact that he seems to be determined to take control of the territory. He added that Denmark will continue diplomatic talks with the US, but it’s not negotiating or willing to compromise on its fundamental principles about territory. Greenland’s government announced a new brochure on Wednesday offering advice to the population in the event of a “crisis” in the territory, which Trump has repeatedly vowed to seize from ally Denmark. This document is “an insurance policy”, said self-sufficiency minister Peter Borg at a press conference in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital. A meeting between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to take place tomorrow, with the US president saying on Wednesday that “we are reasonably close to deal on Ukraine”. The European parliament voted on Wednesday to refer a freshly signed trade deal with South American bloc Mercosur to the EU’s top court, casting a veil of legal uncertainty over the accord. In a close ballot, lawmakers in Strasbourg voted 334 to 324 in favour of asking the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to determine whether the highly polarising deal, which sparked protests on the sidelines of this week’s sitting, is compatible with the bloc’s policy. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen reiterated that “the future of Greenland is only for the Greenlanders to decide” as she warned that Europe needs to “transform the ways in which we think and act” to step up to challenges posed by the rapidly changing world order. She said that Europe needed to realise “we now live in a world defined by raw power,” adding that “in this increasingly lawless world, Europe needs its own levers of power” and abandon its “traditional caution” to build on its economic might and become more independent. Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki has defended his recent comments suggesting that the issue of Greenland should be primarily resolved bilaterally between Denmark and the US. Speaking in Davos, he said he “recognised some problems about Greenland,” but said he looked at it in the broader security perspective as Poland was acutely aware of the Russian threat in particular and the US played an important role “on the eastern flank of Nato.” A major power cut affected the Danish Bornholm island after local power supplier Trefor El-Net Øst said that a submarine cable linking it with Sweden failed this morning. The island, which has nearly 40,000 residents, was cut off this morning after a reported overload, but the company insisted in comments to Danish media that there was no reason for concern. Jakub Krupa will be back tomorrow with more coverage the latest events in Europe.

The spy who came in from the bus stop | Brief letters

Dan Sabbagh reports that a former British defence attache to Moscow said he was tailed every time he left the British embassy (Why a Chinese ‘mega embassy’ is not such a worry for British spies. 18 January). A British spy in Moscow in the 1960s told me how, after offering his bus fare one morning, the driver said it had already been paid. As the driver pointed to a fellow passenger, the Briton and the Russian tasked with tailing him exchanged knowing glances. Richard Norton-Taylor London • Following the letters (15 January and 18 January) in praise of Martin Kettle’s excellent political writing, I’d like to add my appreciation for his superb reviews of classical music. He shows great knowledge and insight into both areas – a real renaissance man. I hope that he will still provide the odd music review in his well-earned retirement. Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick St Albans • I’d got as far as page 6 of the 20 January print edition of the Guardian and was mentally composing a letter about the appalling Trump situation – then I reached page 7, where John Crace said everything I’d planned to say. Cheers, John! Sophie Houston Dunoon, Argyll and Bute • In our house we refer to the chore of changing a double duvet cover (Letters, 15 January) as “wrestling with the bear” – a term purloined from a description in the Guardian of Neil Young’s guitar soloing. Chris Osborne West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire • If Robert Jenrick is “the new sheriff in town” (Report, 18 January), I wonder what that makes Nigel Farage. Deputy Dawg? Cherry Weston Wolverhampton • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

EU parliament blocks US trade deal after Trump’s tariff threat

The European parliament has formally suspended the ratification process on its US trade deal, in protest against Donald Trump’s threat to impose 10% tariffs on EU exports unless the bloc agrees he can take over Greenland. The pause is the strongest material response the EU has shown so far to what several leaders last week called blackmail. Bernd Lange, head of the European parliament trade committee, said until “the threats [on Greenland] are over there will be no possibility for compromise” on ratifying the US deal, which promised Americans a new era of 0% tariffs on many industrial exports. Lange confirmed that the EU’s promise to buy $750bn (£560bn) of energy would not be affected by the decision as it was separate to the tariff deal. In a sign of the downward turn in transatlantic relations, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, went back to Brussels after addressing parliament, instead of taking a detour back to Davos to meet Trump. She returned to prepare for an emergency summit in Brussels at 7pm on Thursday to discuss a range of options open to the EU in the event the US president went ahead with his tariff threat. They include slapping €93bn (£81bn) worth of tariffs on US exports to the EU and the activation of a never-before-used anti-coercion instrument, seen as the nuclear deterrent of trade sanctions. Originally designed to limit China’s coercion of individual member states, it would allow the EU to restrict US businesses from accessing the EU market. In theory, the EU could take aim at anything from US tech and crypto companies to aircraft makers or agricultural goods. But European consumers could balk at extra costs or restrictions on US companies, such as Apple or Netflix. The EU said it continued to work at diplomatic solutions to avert a trade war, while Lange conceded that “a lot could happen” between now and 2 February when Trump’s tariff threats are due to be realised. “There are always day-by-day surprises coming from the White House,” he said. While a trade war with the US would be highly damaging, the EU’s attempts to diversify its markets were also dealt a serious blow by parliament after MEPs voted, by a majority of just 10, to refer the Mercosur trade deal with Latin American countries to the European court of justice. The decision was condemned by Lange, while the European Commission said the decision was “regrettable”, as did Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, where car manufacturers also denounced the move. The European Commission has the power to implement the Mercosur agreement provisionally as it did with the Brexit trade deal with the UK. But Lange warned that if the Commission pressed ahead with such a move, it would plunge the bloc into “huge institutional conflict”.

‘Treated like shirkers’: German unions cry foul over Merz’s sick-note crackdown

A German proposal to end the right to get short-term sick leave from a doctor over the telephone as a means of cracking down on skiving has met with outcry from labour groups and the medical profession. Germans enjoy some of the most generous employee illness policies in Europe, a fact the conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, says is undermining efforts to kickstart the EU’s biggest economy, whose growth has largely stalled since 2022. At a regional campaign event last weekend, Merz said staff took an average 14.5 sick days per year – “too high”, he said. “That’s nearly three weeks in which people in Germany don’t work due to illness,” he said. “Is that really correct? Is that really necessary?” He later said that if the one or two days of recovery time not requiring a doctor’s note were taken into account the figure would be even larger. Merz, who worked in the private sector for two decades before taking office last year, specifically blamed the phone option for patients, saying it made it far too easy to bunk off work. He received support from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), whose chair, Andreas Gassen, said: “No one can reliably assess whether someone is truly unfit for work over the phone.” Merz’s health minister, Nina Warken, said she would take the matter onboard with a critical review of the practice, most commonly used for minor illnesses not requiring medical treatment such as colds, flu and Covid-19. “Compared with other countries, sick leave in Germany is high,” Warken told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper. “The truth is that the low-threshold option of reporting sick by telephone can be abused,” she said. “That is exactly what we will tackle.” However, the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Merz’s government, argued that forcing such patients to see their doctor in person would amount to “harassment”. Sicknotes by telephone were introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of infection and made permanent in 2023 under the then health minister Karl Lauterbach. He said abolishing them now would be “counterproductive” because it would unnecessarily fill up waiting rooms at doctors’ surgeries. Sharp criticism also came from the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). Its leader, Yasmin Fahimi, called it “highly indecent to place employees who have called in sick under general suspicion, as if they were shirkers and slackers”. Doctors’ groups also voiced opposition to changing the policy. “All evaluations by health insurance companies to date confirm that sicknotes issued by telephone do not lead to greater abuse of sick leave,” Markus Beier, chair of the Association of General Practitioners, told the RND media group. He stressed that doctors’ surgeries could only issue sick leave by telephone to patients already known to them and that it was capped at five days. Public health insurers say that sicknotes via telephone make up less than 1% of the total. International comparisons can be difficult because of variations in how sick days are tallied. But a study conducted by the Iges Institute for the public health insurance company DAK showed Germany ranking in the upper midfield of European countries. An evaluation of how much of weekly working time is lost because of illness put Germany at 6.8% – similar to Belgium (6.7), Sweden (6.6) and Iceland (6.1) in 2023. Norway was the frontrunner with 10.7%. The Cologne-based economic institute IW said sick leave cost the economy €82bn in 2024, amounting to nearly €1,000 for each person a year and equalling military defence spending. The BDA employers’ association noted that Germany was more generous to sick employees than nearly any other country in Europe, with full pay guaranteed by employers for 42 calendar days while off sick, after which health insurers step in to pay 70% of gross salaries. Merz, who is historically unpopular, has repeatedly painted the national work ethic as a drag on the economy in swipes seen as targeting “lazy Germans”. The chancellor, 70, said at a business conference last May: “We won’t be able to maintain the prosperity of this country with a four-day week and work-life balance.” He has since said not “all Germans need to work more” but rather that the national average needed to be lifted. A record 71% of Germans said in a representative poll this month they were unsatisfied with Merz’s government.

Syrian army takes control of detention camp for Islamic State suspects

Syrian government forces have taken control of al-Hawl detention camp, which houses tens of thousands of suspected Islamic State members, after Kurdish forces withdrew. Soldiers entered the heavily fortified camp on Wednesday, part of a handover from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which oversaw the camp for the last seven years, as the Syrian government vowed to secure the facility. Al-Hawl hosts about 24,000 people of 42 different nationalities, most of whom are family members of suspected IS fighters and alleged members of the group. For years, Kurdish authorities and humanitarians have urged countries to take back their citizens from the camps and prosecute them at home, warning that conditions there were intolerable. The camp has been the subject of international concern as security experts say it is a hotbed of extremism and in the event of a jailbreak could help IS reconstitute itself in Syria and beyond. The Syrian government accused Kurdish forces of withdrawing and leaving the prison unguarded, which it said had led to the escape of some detainees. A similar scenario unfolded in Shaddadi prison as the SDF withdrew in front of advancing forces, leading to 120 prisoners escaping. The SDF denied it had let any prisoners escape at either location. The takeover came as the US military said it had begun transferring IS detainees held in north-eastern Syria to Iraq to ensure they remained in secure facilities. US central command said the transfer began on Wednesday and so far 150 IS members had been taken from al-Hasakah province to “secure locations” in Iraq. “Ultimately, up to 7,000 Isis detainees could be transferred from Syria to Iraqi-controlled facilities,” the statement said. The Syrian defence ministry said on Tuesday it was ready to assume responsibility for al-Hawl and other IS detainee camps, and that it was taking the proper procedures to secure the facilities. It was in contact with the US-led international coalition to defeat IS, which helps guard the camps. The SDF still controls a number of prisons and detention camps for suspected members of IS, including al-Roj camp, where London-born Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her British citizenship by the UK government in 2019, is held. She left London as a schoolgirl and travelled in secret with two friends to live under Islamic State in 2015. The SDF has warned the international community over its ability to maintain control over IS detention facilities if it comes under attack by the Syrian government once again. Government forces have swept into north-east Syria over the past week, wresting control of vast swathes of territory. The SDF, which controlled about a third of Syria for the past seven years, lost most of the areas under its control, specifically the vast Arab-majority provinces of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. Fighting paused on Tuesday after the two sides reached a four-day ceasefire, which the Syrian government said was meant to give the SDF a grace period to implement a lasting agreement. The two sides had agreed to a 14-point peace plan in principle, under which the SDF would surrender most of its governing authorities to Damascus and integrate into the Syrian military while leaving Kurdish-majority areas in the north-east to be supervised by local security forces rather than the Syrian military. If the SDF fails to implement the 14-point agreement, fighting would restart between the two sides. The Kurdish force has little room to manoeuvre or to ask for more concessions as the US, its principal backer, has made it clear that it wants the Kurdish authority to be brought into the fold of the state. On Tuesday, the US Syria envoy, Tom Barrack, said the deal was an “opportunity” for Kurds in Syria to integrate into the Syrian state, and he urged the SDF to accept Damascus’s terms. The “original purpose” of the SDF as a force to fight IS had “largely expired”, Barrack said, as Damascus had become Washington’s primary partner in Syria.

Chile’s president-elect names staunch abortion opponent as gender equality minister

Chile’s incoming far-right president José Antonio Kast has named a vehement opponent of abortion who has repeatedly stated her support for life “from conception to natural death” as the country’s new women and gender equality minister. Judith Marín, 30, was once ejected from Chile’s senate by police for screaming “return to the Lord” during a vote to decriminalise abortion under restricted circumstances. She is an evangelical former student church group president who belonged to the Eagles of Jesus, a far-right Christian group which recruits at universities around the country. Marín has publicly questioned the future of the ministry she will now lead, and defended the “natural family” – the idea that a man and woman head a household – as a central tenet of society. In October, she said: “Our country is going through a spiritual, social, moral and political crisis, and more than ever we, the children of God, need to stand up.” Late on Tuesday, Kast, a Catholic father of nine children who himself has been a staunch opponent of abortion throughout his career, named his first cabinet in a ceremony in an upmarket neighbourhood of the capital, Santiago. “This unity cabinet was not formed to administer normality,” he said. “It was brought together to face a national emergency.” Kast won a resounding victory in December’s runoff vote with his anti-crime and anti-migration message. During the campaign, he avoided discussing the hardline conservative social values he is known for, only saying, “I have not changed my convictions,” during a televised debate. Since 2017, abortion in Chile has been decriminalised in three specific cases: if the mother’s life is at risk, if the pregnancy was the result of rape, or if the foetus will not survive. Chile’s congress is debating a bill presented last year by the outgoing president, Gabriel Boric, which would decriminalise abortion in any circumstances up to the 14th week of a pregnancy. Kast’s ministers, 13 of whom are men and 11 women with an average age of 54, are mostly drawn from the right and far right with minority representation of centrist voices. Two are lawyers who represented the former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Fernando Barros, 68, who will become defence minister, defended Pinochet when he faced extradition from London in 1998. The new justice minister, Fernando Rabat, 53, represented the former dictator in a vast embezzlement case which began in 2004. Chile voted to remove Pinochet from power and democracy returned in 1990. The former dictator died in 2006 at the age of 91 without facing trial for the litany of human rights violations perpetrated under his dictatorship or the public finance scandal which followed him towards the end of his life. Kast, who won the presidency in December at his third attempt, is a renowned supporter of the former dictator, and campaigned to keep him in power before a 1988 referendum on the continuation of the dictatorship. During his first run for the presidency in 2017, Kast said that the former dictator would have voted for him if he were still alive. He will be sworn in on 11 March to serve a four-year term.