The Syrian conflict claimed at least 6,800 people in 2020, the lowest annual death toll since it began nearly a decade ago, a war monitor said yesterday. According to figures compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 10,000 people were killed in the conflict in 2019. The deadliest year was 2014, when more than 76,000 people died, according to the UK-based organisation, which has an extensive network of sources on the ground. The overall tally since the start of the conflict has crept up to 387,000, including 117,000 civilians. On Wednesday, fighters from the Islamic State jihadist group ambushed soldiers in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, killing 37 of them.

26 held after Pak Hindu temple destroyed

At least two dozen people, including several Muslim clerics, were detained yesterday after a mob attacked and set fire to a Hindu temple in northwest Pakistan, police said. Around 1,500 Muslims on Wednesday descended on the temple -- which was destroyed in similar circumstances in 1997 -- after staging a protest against renovations at an adjoining building owned by Hindus. The temple is located in a remote village in Karak district, some 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Peshawar. Police were looking for a further 50 people identified from videos of the attack.

Assam bans madrasas

An Indian state ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party on Wednesday passed a law abolishing all Islamic schools, saying they provided sub-standard education. Opposition politicians criticised the move and said it reflected the government’s anti-Muslim attitude in the Hindu-majority country. More than 700 of the schools, known as madrasas, in northeastern Assam will be shut by April, the state’s education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the local assembly. The government would convert them to regular schools as education provided in the madrasas could not prepare anyone for “the temporal world and its earthly concerns”, Sarma said.

British PM Johnson’s father

applying for French citizenship

The father of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday said he was in the process of applying for a French passport to maintain his ties with the European Union after Brexit. Stanley Johnson, a former member of the European Parliament who voted Remain in Britain’s 2016 referendum, told RTL radio he wanted to become a French citizen because of strong family links to France. “I will always be a European, that’s for sure. One cannot tell the British people: you are not Europeans. Having a tie with the European Union is important,” said the 80-year-old Johnson. The United Kingdom officially leaves the EU’s orbit on Thursday night, after an often strained 48-year liaison with the European project.