Syria's president and 2 top ministers were targets of 5 foiled assassination attempts, UN says

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Syria’s president, interior minister and foreign minister were the targets of five foiled assassination attempts last year, the U.N. chief said in a report on threats posed by Islamic State militants released Wednesday.

The report said President Ahmad al-Sharaa was targeted in northern Aleppo, the country’s most populous province, and southern Daraa by a group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, which was assessed to be a front for the Islamic State group.

The report, issued by Secretary-General António Guterres and prepared by the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism, gave no dates or details of the attempts against al-Sharaa or Syrian Interior Minister Anas Hasan Khattab and Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani.

The assassination attempts are more evidence that the militant group remains intent on undermining the new Syrian government and “actively exploiting security vacuums and uncertainty” in Syria, the report said.

It said al-Sharaa was “assessed to be a primary target” of the Islamic State. And it said the front group provided IS with plausible deniability and "improved operational capacity.”

Al-Sharaa has led Syria since his rebel forces ousted longtime Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024, ending a 14-year civil war.

Al-Sharaa was previously the leader of Hayar Tahrir al-Sham, a militant group that was once affiliated with al-Qaida, although it later cut ties.

In November, his government joined the international coalition formed to counter the Islamic State group, which once controlled a large part of Syria.

The U.N. counter-terrorism experts said the militant group still operates across the country, primarily attacking security forces, particularly in the north and northeast.

In one ambush attack on Dec. 13 on U.S. and Syrian forces near Palmyra, two U.S. servicemen and an American civilian were killed and three Americans and three members of Syria's security forces were wounded. President Donald Trump retaliated, launching military operations to eliminate IS fighters.

According to the U.N. counter-terrorism experts, the Islamic State group maintains an estimated 3,000 fighters across Iraq and Syria, the majority of them based in Syria.

The U.S. military in late January began transferring IS detainees who were held in northeastern Syria to Iraq to ensure they remain in secure facilities. Iraq has said it will prosecute the militants.

Syrian government forces had taken control of a sprawling camp housing thousands of IS detainees following the withdrawal of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as part of a ceasefire with the Kurdish fighters.

The report released Wednesday to the U.N. Security Council said as of December, before the ceasefire deal, more than 25,740 people remained in the al-Hol and Roj camps in the northeast, more than 60% of them children, with thousands more in other detention centers.

Residents walk along the al-Hol camp, one of the detention facilities holding thousands of Islamic State group members and their families, now under the control of the Syrian government following the withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in al-Hassakeh province, northeastern Syria, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

A vehicle pauses as a convoy of Syria's Interior Ministry forces passes through en route to the town of Qamishli, where the forces deploy under a ceasefire agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), near the village of Mazraat al-Nahar, northeastern Syria, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

HAT YAI, Thailand (AP) — A 17-year-old stole a gun from police and opened fire at a public high school in southern Thailand, briefly taking people hostage Wednesday in a two-hour attack that killed one person and injured two others, police and local officials said.

Police also wounded the assailant in a gunbattle at the Patongprathankiriwat School in Songkhla province before taking him into custody to end the standoff, the provincial government said in a statement. The attack took place in late afternoon shortly after classes were dismissed.

The school’s director died in a hospital in the early hours of Thursday after being severely wounded in the attack. A student was also wounded by gunshots, while another student was injured while jumping off a building to flee the scene, Thailand's Health Ministry said.

The suspect was identified by local officials as a 17-year-old with a history of drug abuse and mental health issues. Officials said the suspect was causing a disturbance and that police were called in to deal with the situation, but he attacked a police officer and stole the gun before going inside the school.

Officials were still investigating the motive for the attack.

Gun violence isn’t uncommon in Thailand, which has one of the highest rates of gun ownership and gun-related deaths in Asia, though mass shootings are rare.

Data collected in 2017 by the groups Small Arms Survey and GunPolicy.org found that there were about 10.3 guns per 100 people in Thailand, compared with less than one per 100 in neighboring Malaysia. If illegal guns are added to the total, Thailand’s rate is 15.1.

In October 2022, a police sergeant who was fired from his job killed 36 people, including two dozen toddlers, at a day care center in the small northeastern town of Uthai Sawan. The shocking gun and knife attack spurred calls for tighter gun controls, though there have been no major reforms.

In February 2020, a disgruntled Thai soldier angry over a financial dispute with his commanding officer went on a shooting rampage in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, killing 29 people and wounding dozens of others before police shot him dead after an overnight siege at a major shopping mall.

A Thai policeman stands outside Patongrathankiriwt school at Hat Yai, southern Thailand, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Sumeth Panpetch)