Syria’s new leader says all weapons to come under ‘state control’

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a woman and her child were killed in “artillery shelling by pro-Turkey factions” in the Kobane countryside, and the factions clashed with the SDF further south.Ankara regards the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main component of the SDF, as being connected to the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) at home, which both Turkey and Western allies deem a “terrorist” organization.Regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia is also in direct contact with Syria’s new authorities, having supported the opposition to Assad for years during Syria’s civil war. Riyadh will send a delegation to the country soon, Syria’s ambassador in the Saudi capital said.During his meeting with visiting Lebanese Druze chiefs Walid and Taymur Jumblatt, Sharaa said Syria would no longer engage in “negative interference in Lebanon at all”.Syria “will stay at equal distance from all” in Lebanon, Sharaa added, acknowledging that Syria has been a “source of fear and anxiety” for its neighbor.Walid Jumblatt, long a fierce critic of Assad and his father Hafez who ruled Syria before him, arrived in Damascus on Sunday at the head of a delegation of lawmakers from his parliamentary bloc and Druze religious figures.The Druze religious minority is spread across Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Jordan.The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976, only leaving in 2005 after enormous pressure and mass protests following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group.The seizure of power by the Sunni Islamists of HTS — proscribed as a terrorist organization by many governments including the United States — has sparked concern, although the group has in recent years sought to moderate its image.Global powers including the United States and the European Union have stepped up contacts with the war-ravaged country’s new leaders, urging them to guarantee protections for women and minorities.The foreign leaders have also stressed the importance of combating “terrorism and extremism”.Assad had long played a strategic role in Iran’s “axis of resistance”, a loose alliance of regional proxy forces aligned against Israel, particularly in facilitating the supply of weapons to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.That axis has suffered heavy blows over the past year with Israel’s devastation of the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.