Israel-Hamas war spilling into Syria: UN

NEW YORK, Oct 31 (AP/Reuters): The Israel-Hamas war is spilling into Syria, fueled by growing instability, violence and a lack of progress toward a political solution to its 12-year conflict, the United Nations special envoy for the country said Monday.
Geir Pedersen told the Security Council that, on top of violence from the Syrian conflict, the Syrian people now face "a terrifying prospect of a potential wider escalation" following Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ongoing retaliatory military action.
"Spillover into Syria is not just a risk; it has already begun," the U.N. envoy for Syria said.
Pedersen pointed to airstrikes attributed to Israel hitting Syria's airports in Aleppo and Damascus several times, and retaliation by the United States against what it said were multiple attacks on its forces "by groups that it claims are backed by Iran, including on Syrian territory."
With the region "at its most dangerous and tense," he said, "fuel is being added to a tinderbox that was already beginning to ignite" in Syria, which was seeing a surge in violence even before Oct. 7.
Pedersen said the number of Syrians killed, injured and displaced is at its highest since 2020, citing a significant intensification of attacks in government-controlled areas, including an unclaimed attack on a graduation ceremony at a military academy in Homs, which the government attributes to terrorist organizations.
Israeli forces attack Hamas
militants inside Gaza tunnels
Israel said on Tuesday its forces attacked Hamas gunmen inside the Islamists' vast tunnel network beneath Gaza, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed calls for a halt to fighting to ease the Palestinian enclave's humanitarian crisis.
The tunnels are a key objective for Israel as it expands ground operations inside Gaza to wipe out the ruling Hamas movement following its gun rampage three weeks ago that Israeli authorities say killed over 1,400 people.
"Over the last day, combined IDF combat forces struck approximately 300 targets, including anti-tank missile and rocket launch posts below shafts, as well as military compounds inside underground tunnels belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization," the Israel Defernce Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
Militants responded with anti-tank missiles and machine gun fire, it added. "The soldiers killed terrorists and directed air forces to real-time strikes on targets and terror infrastructure," the IDF said.
Putin blames West
for Gaza crisis
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday sought to blame the West for the crisis in the Middle East, where Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip to try to eradicate Hamas militants who killed some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in Israel on Oct 7.
In a televised statement to a meeting of members of his Security Council and the government and the heads of law enforcement agencies, Putin said the "ruling elites of the US" and their "satellites" stood behind the killing of Gaza's Palestinians, and behind conflicts in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
"They need constant chaos in the Middle East. Therefore (the US) does its best to discredit those countries that insist on an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, on stopping the bloodshed, and are ready to make a real contribution to resolving the crisis, and not parasitise on it."