DAMASCUS/JERUSALEM — Israel launched powerful airstrikes in Damascus on Wednesday, blowing up part of the Defense Ministry and hitting near the presidential palace as it vowed to destroy government forces attacking Druze in southern Syria and demanded they withdraw.

The attacks marked a significant Israeli escalation against the Islamist-led administration of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa. They came despite his warming ties with the US and his administration’s evolving security contacts with Israel.

Describing Syria’s new rulers as barely disguised jihadists, Israel has said it will not let them move forces into southern Syria and vowed to shield the area’s Druze community from attack, encouraged by calls from Israel’s own Druze minority.

The US said the fighting would stop soon.

“We have engaged all the parties involved in the clashes in Syria. We have agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end tonight,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media.

The United Nations (UN)Security Council will meet on Thursday to address the conflict, diplomats said.

“The council must condemn the barbaric crimes committed against innocent civilians on Syrian soil,” said Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon. “Israel will continue to act resolutely against any terrorist threat on its borders, anywhere and at any time.”

WARPLANES OVER DAMASCUS
Scores of people have been killed this week in violence in and around the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, pitting fighters from the Druze minority against government security forces and members of Bedouin tribes.

Reuters reporters heard warplanes swoop low over the capital and unleash a series of massive strikes mid-afternoon. Columns of smoke rose from the area near the Defense Ministry. A section of the building was destroyed, the ground strewn with rubble.

A Syrian medical source said the strikes on the ministry killed five members of the security forces.

An Israeli military official said the entrance to the military headquarters in Damascus was struck, along with a military target near the presidential palace. The official said Syrian forces were not acting to prevent attacks on Druze and were part of the problem.

“We will not allow southern Syria to become a terror stronghold,” said Eyal Zamir, Israel’s military chief of staff.

Sharaa faces challenges to stitch Syria back together in the face of deep misgivings from groups that fear Islamist rule. In March, mass killings of members of the Alawite minority exacerbated mistrust.

On Monday, Syrian government troops were dispatched to the Sweida region to quell fighting between Druze fighters and Bedouin armed men. The troops ended up clashing with the Druze militias.

New clashes broke out in the city, according to a Reuters witness, after the Syrian Interior Ministry and a Druze leader, Sheikh Yousef Jarbou, said a ceasefire had been reached.

Sweida residents said they were holed up indoors. “We are surrounded, and we hear the fighters screaming… we’re so scared,” a resident of Sweida said by phone.

Cracks of gunfire interspersed by booms could be heard in the background. “We’re trying to keep the children quiet so that no one can hear us,” the man added, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Syria’s Health Ministry said dozens of bodies, including fighters and civilians, had been found in a hospital in the city.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said 169 people had been killed in this week’s violence. Security sources put the toll at 300. Reuters could not independently verify the tolls.

AN OFFSHOOT OF ISLAM
Druze, followers of a religion that is an offshoot of Islam, are spread between Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Following calls in Israel to help Druze in Syria, scores of Israeli Druze broke through the border fence on Wednesday, linking up with Druze on the Syrian side, a Reuters witness said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military was working to save the Druze and urged Israeli Druze citizens not to cross the border. The Israeli military said it was working to safely return civilians who had crossed.

Israeli Druze man Faez Shkeir said he felt helpless watching the violence in Syria. “My family is in Syria — my wife is in Syria, my uncles are from Syria, and my family is in Syria, in Sweida, I don’t like to see them being killed. They kicked them out of their homes, they robbed and burned their houses, but I can’t do anything,” he said.

On Tuesday, a Reuters reporter said they had seen government forces looting and burning homes and stealing cars and furniture in Sweida. One man showed the reporter the body of his brother who had been shot in the head inside their home.

A Syrian government statement on Wednesday said those responsible for lawlessness in Sweida would be held accountable. It said the government was committed to protecting the rights of the people in Sweida.

Sharaa has repeatedly promised to protect minorities. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — The US Senate early on Thursday approved President Donald J. Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.

The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favor of Mr. Trump’s request to cut $9 billion in spending already approved by Congress.

Most of the cuts are to programs to assist foreign countries suffering from disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates all $1.1 billion the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.

Mr. Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as suffering from anti-right bias.

Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But Mr. Trump’s Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting his policies since he began his second term in January.

The $9 billion at stake is extremely small in the context of the $6.8-trillion federal budget, and represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

As of mid-June, Mr. Trump was blocking $425 billion in funding that had already been appropriated and previously approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding.

However, Mr. Trump and his supporters have promised more of the “rescission” requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government.

The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation without altering Mr. Trump’s request by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no.

But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programs, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that PEPFAR, a global program to fight HIV/AIDS launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush, was being exempted.

The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9 billion from $9.4 billion, requiring another House vote before the measure can be sent to the White House for Mr. Trump to sign into law.

The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House will be required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress.

REPUBLICAN ‘NO’ VOTES
Two of the Senate’s 53 Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — joined Democrats in voting against the legislation.

“You don’t need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Ms. Murkowski said in a Senate speech.

She said the Trump administration also had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Most of all, Ms. Murkowski said, Congress must assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota called Trump’s request a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity.”

Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans earlier this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3 trillion to the nation’s $36.2-trillion debt.

Democrats charged Republicans with giving up Congress’ constitutionally mandated control of federal spending.

“Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said.

“Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later,” Mr. Schumer said.

The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut now could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by Sept. 30 to avoid a shutdown.

Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate, but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democratic support. — Reuters

SEOUL — South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has ordered the setting up of a new investigation team, involving police and prosecutors, to look into the deadly Halloween crowd crush that killed 159, mostly young people, in 2022, his spokesperson said on Thursday.

Mr. Lee’s move to launch a new probe came as he met the bereaved families of victims from recent major disasters, including the Halloween crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district, his spokesperson Kang Yu-jung told a briefing.

Mr. Lee, who took office in June, has promised to make the country safer and to prevent any repeat of the disasters in recent years that have often been blamed on the inadequate response by authorities.

The president said the new investigation team would work alongside a special commission that was launched in September last year to look into the case, according to the spokesperson.

At the meeting with Mr. Lee, Song Hae-jin, a representative for the families of the crush victims, said police records and information regarding the government’s response to the disaster had been withheld from the special commission.

During his meeting with the bereaved families, Mr. Lee bowed deeply as he apologized for any failures by the authorities.

“As the head of the state, I would like to formally apologize on behalf of the government for failing to fulfill its responsibility to protect the lives and safety of the people, and for the many people who lost their lives as a result,” he said as some relatives wept. — Reuters