MASYAF, Syria (AP) — The number of people killed in overnight Israeli strikes in Syria has risen to 18 with dozens more wounded, Syria's health minister said Monday — the largest death toll in such an attack since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
One of the sites targeted was a research center used in the development of weapons, a war monitor said. Syrian officials said civilian sites were targeted.
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MASYAF, Syria (AP) — The number of people killed in overnight Israeli strikes in Syria has risen to 18 with dozens more wounded, Syria's health minister said Monday — the largest death toll in such an attack since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
A poster shows Syrian President Bashar Assad installed at a broken window in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
A Syrian nurse treats an man who was injured in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
A Syrian nurse treats an man, who was injured, in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Syrian workers stand on a crane next of a flipped bulldozer in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
An ambulance drives past a vehicle that burned in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Israel regularly targets military sites in Syria linked to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Those strikes have become more frequent as Hezbollah has exchanged fire with Israeli forces for the past 11 months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas — a Hezbollah ally — in Gaza.
However, the intensity and death toll of Sunday night's strikes were unusual.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations. The strikes often target Syrian forces or Iranian-backed groups.
Israel has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in Syria, particularly since Syria is a key route for Iran to send weapons to Hezbollah.
Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires, Syrian state news agency SANA said.
Speaking to reporters, Syrian Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabbash described the strikes as a “brutal and barbaric aggression.” He said the death toll had risen to 18 with nearly 40 wounded.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said 25 were killed, including at least five civilians, while the others included Syrian army soldiers and members of Hezbollah and other Iran-linked armed groups.
One strike targeted a scientific research center in Masyaf, and other sites where “Iranian militias and experts are stationed to develop weapons in Syria,” the observatory said. It said the research center was reportedly used for developing weapons, including short- and medium-range precision missiles and drones.
Minister of Electricity Mohammad al-Zamel said the strikes had caused “truly significant” damage to water and electricity infrastructure.
“This brutal attack targeted civilian targets, and the martyrs were mostly civilians, as were the wounded,” he said.
Muhammad Sumaya, a firefighter with the Hama Fire Brigade, was wounded when shrapnel from one of the strikes hit his foot.
When the strikes began, he said while being treated in the Masyaf hospital Monday, “we moved from one place to another to deal with the fires and work to extinguish them.” While they were working, he said, “a missile landed right next to us.”
Azzam al-Omar, a SANA photographer, said he was hit by shrapnel in the chest when a missile landed while he was photographing the aftermath of a strike.
Local media also reported strikes around the coastal city of Tartous, which the observatory said were the result of air defense missiles falling.
On Monday afternoon, a charred car remained at the scene of one strike and smoke was still rising from some spots where fires had been put out.
Also on Monday, Saudi Arabia officially reopened its embassy in Damascus, marking a full restoration of relations between the two countries.
Syria was widely shunned by Arab governments over the brutal crackdown by the government of Bashar Assas on protesters in a 2011 uprising that descended into civil war. The breakdown in relations culminated with Syria being ousted from the Arab League.
As Assad consolidated his control over most of the country and the civil war turned into a largely frozen conflict, Arab states moved toward a rapproachement with Damascus.
Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Syria in 2012. Last year, soon after Syria was reinstated to the Arab League, the two countries announced they were restoring relations.
Sewell reported from Istanbul. Associated Press journalist Samar Kassaballi in Damascus contributed to this report.
A Syrian soldier smokes a cigaret, as he sits on the ground in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
A poster shows Syrian President Bashar Assad installed at a broken window in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
A Syrian nurse treats an man who was injured in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
A Syrian nurse treats an man, who was injured, in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Syrian workers stand on a crane next of a flipped bulldozer in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
An ambulance drives past a vehicle that burned in the town of Masyaf, Syria, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. Syrian state news agency SANA says that Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria Sunday night, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
In the second half of the 20th century, Mexican and Mexican-American children in Marfa, Texas, were educated in an adobe-style building in classrooms that alumni describe as barracks.
They received secondhand textbooks and were paddled for speaking Spanish instead of English in a school where Latino students were segregated from Anglos by law and practice, just as whites and Blacks were separated in the South. But the principal of the Blackwell School also created an interscholastic league specifically for “Mexican schools," and alumni remembered their friends, shared laughs, and kind teachers when they gathered in Marfa on Saturday, at the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, to celebrate the Blackwell School becoming the newest national park.
At a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newest national site dedicated to modern Latino history, former Blackwell students, neighbors, friends and politicians visited the original schoolhouse and a smaller building that served as the band hall. Inside, photographs, memorabilia and interpretive panels featuring quotes from former students and teachers show the imprint left by a school that once stood as an example of the racially divided education system that defined de-facto segregation in the country from 1889 to 1965.
At the ceremony, a mariachi band played exactly as the ribbon was cut. The 100 people in attendance also enjoyed a ballet folklórico performance and traditional border music of the Chihuahuan desert played by the band Primo y Beebe. Alumni also had the opportunity to write on a whiteboard what the Blackwell School meant to them.
“I am glad that it wasn't torn down,” Betty Nuñez Aguirre, a former alumni and director of the Blackwell School Alliance said. “It will show the next generation that it was not always easy for their parents or grandparents to get educated.”
Many alumni see Blackwell — first built in 1909 and closed 11 years after the landmark 1954 court decision, Brown v. Board of Education — as more than just a symbol of America's history of racial inequality. It's a symbol of Latinos triumphant over adversity.
In 2006, Joe Cabezuela, 80, was at a local restaurant celebrating the reunion of the 1960 Blackwell class. That's when he learned the Marfa Independent School District would demolish the Blackwell school. Cabezuela said he knew immediately that something had to be done to stop the demolitions, so he went straight to the superintendent’s office.
“That is not going to happen,” Cabezuela told the superintendent. “It’s part of Hispanic heritage, a history that we need to save.”
The superintendent then invited Cabezuela, founder and former president of the Blackwell School Alliance, to give a presentation to the school board on why the building needs to be preserved. Cabezuela and other alumni eventually allied and worked with a local artist on a sketch of what the preserved school should look like.
Soon after, the Marfa school board agreed to a century-long, $1 building lease to the Blackwell School Alliance, under the condition that the building would be demolished if the building's preservation stalled for more than 25 years.
Small fundraisers were started every year to pay the electricity bill, keep the water on and repair damages.
Authorized by the Blackwell School National Historic Site Act, which President Biden signed into law in October 2022, the school became an official part of the National Park system in July.
“This site is a powerful reminder of our nation’s diverse and often complex journey toward equality and justice. By honoring the legacy of Blackwell School, we recognize the resilience and contributions of the Latino community in our shared history,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in July, when the site was formally established.
Out of 429 National Park sites, only two recounted modern Latino history before Blackwell: the Cesar Chavez National Monument in California and the Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso.
Tony Cano, a member of the Blackwell School Alliance, attended the Blackwell School for three years starting in the fall of 1952. During his time there, he remembers the teachers making students write Spanish words on paper, place those papers in mini coffins out of hats or cigar boxes and bury “Mr. Spanish” in a symbolic funeral in front of the school’s flagpole.
“They were trying to get us to speak English only on campus and in the classroom,” Cano said. “A lot of kids rebelled. Once you rebelled they spanked you three times with the paddle.”
Cano said he remembers one girl who was spanked went home with bruises and did not come back to school for three days. Cano said that now that he is older he realizes, no matter what they did to them back then, “they can’t take my heritage away from me.”
From 1920 to 1947, Principal Jesse Blackwell, who is Anglo, transformed the school by creating an interscholastic league specifically for “Mexican schools,” where kids in the region could compete against each other, said historian Cristobal Lopez. For his contributions, the school first known as the Ward or Mexican School was named after Blackwell when he retired.
“He took the fundamentals and elevated that to the next level to ensure that the students, even though they were in a segregated school house, received the proper education that they needed,” said Lopez, who is a Texas field representative with the National Parks Conservation Association.
“Mexican schools, and when you look at segregated education, some of the things that stick out — the physical abuse, the emotional abuse — that did happen at Blackwell," Lopez said. "But the alumni really came together and changed the narrative and really made it into a story of resiliency, perseverance, success.”
Despite the negative associations with “Mexican schools” discouraging the Spanish language, alumni have held on to memories of teachers, their friends, small gestures and laughter.
“I think at Blackwell, they just cared so much for us,” Cano said, “even though some of us were tough to handle.”
In fifth grade, Cabezuela recalls, he and his classmates received new playground equipment when then-principal Henry Ward showed up with a duffel bag full of brand-new baseball bats. Cabezuela said it was one of his best memories while at the school.
Cabezuela said he is happy and proud that the school was able to be preserved but the best part of having the Blackwell school named a national park site is that those who walk through it are going to see their grandparents and learn more about their history.
Now, he said, “our grandkids, great-grandkids will go through that building. Even when I am gone, they’ll go there and they’ll probably see something about me and they’ll say look at granddaddy.”
The Associated Press receives financial support from the Sony Global Social Justice Fund to expand certain coverage areas. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
A Mariachi band performs during the ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
The playground of Blackwell School is pictured during its inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
A folkloric dance group performs during the inauguration of Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
Alumni Lionel Salgado walks the Blackwell school grounds with help from his grand daughter Sarah Madero during its inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, right, congratulates alumni Betty Nuñez Aguirre, center, and Tony Cano during the inauguration of Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
A display with photos of the 1957 class of the Blackwell School decorates the classroom during the inauguration day of the school as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
An old book rests on a desk of the Blackwell School classroom pictured during the school inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
The Blackwell School classroom is pictured during the school inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
From left, alumni Betty Nuñez Aguirre, musician Remigio "Primo" Carrasco, alumni Ismael Vasquez, his wife Elisa Vasquez and Gretel Enck, former president of the Blackwell School Alliance, sit at the school entrance during its inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, center left, Blackwell School alumni Joe Cabezuela, center right, National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, second from left, and NPS Intermountain Regional Director Kate Hammond, second from right, react after cutting the ribbon to inaugurate Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
A Border Patrol color guard conducts the presentation of colors during the inauguration of Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)
