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Hamas responds to Gaza truce deal, Blinken says agreement ‘possible’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, at Diwan Annex, in Doha on February 6, 2024. (AFP)
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, at Diwan Annex, in Doha on February 6, 2024. (AFP)
Hamas responds to Gaza truce deal, Blinken says agreement ‘possible’
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at Lusail Palace, in Doha on February 6, 2024. (AFP)
Hamas responds to Gaza truce deal, Blinken says agreement ‘possible’
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at Lusail Palace, in Doha on February 6, 2024, during his Middle East tour. (AFP)
Hamas responds to Gaza truce deal, Blinken says agreement ‘possible’
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, at Diwan Annex, in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 06 February 2024
Reuters
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Hamas responds to Gaza truce deal, Blinken says agreement ‘possible’

Hamas responds to Gaza truce deal, Blinken says agreement ‘possible’
  • Blinken said Washington was reviewing Hamas’ response and that he would discuss it with Israeli officials when he visits the country on Wednesday
  • Proposed deal would secure the release of remaining hostages held by militants in Gaza in return for a long pause to fighting
Updated 06 February 2024
Reuters
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GAZA STRIP: Hamas said on Tuesday it had delivered its response to a proposed ceasefire deal for Gaza, and the United States said it believed an agreement was possible.
Details of Hamas’ response were not immediately revealed but Qatar, which helped mediate the proposal that was passed on to Hamas last week and would also involve the release of hostages held in Gaza, said the reply had made Doha “optimistic.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a lightning tour of the Middle East, said Washington was reviewing Hamas’ response and that he would discuss it with Israeli officials when he visits the country on Wednesday.
“There’s still a lot of work to do be done, but we continue to believe that an agreement is possible, and indeed essential,” he told a press conference in Doha with Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
After Hamas issued a statement saying it had submitted its response to the ceasefire proposal, Sheikh Mohammed said it had been a “positive response” but declined to give further details.
The proposed deal, drawn up more than a week ago by US and Israeli spy chiefs at a meeting with the Egyptians and Qataris, would secure the release of remaining hostages held by militants in Gaza in return for a long pause to fighting.
Hamas has said previously that any deal must bring about a definitive end to the war. Israel has said it will not halt the war permanently until Hamas is destroyed.
Sources close to the talks have said the truce would last at least 40 days, during which militants would free civilians among remaining hostages they hold. Further phases would follow, to hand over soldiers and dead bodies of hostages, in exchange for releases of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The only truce so far, in November, was initially agreed for just four days and extended to last a week. At the time, Hamas released 110 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Israel began its military offensive in Gaza after militants from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 27,585 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Israel’s military campaign, with thousands more feared buried under rubble.

Topics: Qatar US Secretary of State Antony Blinken War on Gaza

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Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes

Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes
Updated 23 sec ago
AP
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Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes

Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes
  • The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short
Updated 23 sec ago
AP

JERUSALEM: With virtually no food allowed into the northernmost part of Gaza for the past month, tens of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli siege are rationing their last lentils and flour to survive.
As bombardment pounds around them, some say they risk their lives by venturing out in search of cans of food in the rubble of destroyed homes.
Thousands have staggered out of the area, hungry and thin, into Gaza City, where they find the situation a little better.
One hospital reports seeing thousands of children suffering from malnutrition. A nutritionist said she treated a pregnant woman wasting away at just 40 kilograms (88 pounds).
“We are being starved to force us to leave our homes,” said Mohammed Arqouq, whose family of eight is determined to stay in the north, weathering Israel’s siege. “We will die here in our homes.”
Medical workers warn that hunger is spiraling to dire proportions under a monthlong siege on northern Gaza by the Israeli military, which has been waging a fierce campaign since the beginning of October.
The military has severed the area with checkpoints, ordering residents to leave.
Many Palestinians fear Israel aims to depopulate the north long term.
On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening.
The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week for a 30-day request the administration of President Joe Biden gave Israel: raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.
The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short.
In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, according to figures from Israel’s military agency overseeing aid entry, known as COGAT. In the first week of November, the average was 81 a day.
The UN puts the number even lower — 37 trucks daily since the beginning of October.

It says Israeli military operations and general lawlessness often prevent it from collecting supplies, leaving hundreds of truckloads stranded at the border.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.
But he said Israel must do more.
“It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads,” he said.
Israeli forces have been hammering the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya refugee camp.
Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.
A trickle of food has reached Gaza City.
However, as of Thursday, nothing entered the towns farther north for 30 days, even as an estimated 70,000 people remain there, said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, speaking from Gaza City.
The government acknowledged in late October that it hadn’t allowed aid into Jabaliya because of military “operational constraints” in response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups. On Saturday, COGAT said it allowed 11 trucks of food and supplies into Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. But Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the WFP, said Israeli troops at a checkpoint forced the convoy to unload the food before it could reach shelters in Beit Hanoun.
It was not clear what then happened to the supplies.
Palestinians in the north described a desperate daily struggle to find food, water, and safety as strike-level buildings, sometimes killing whole families.
Arqouq said he goes out at night to search bombed-out buildings: “Sometimes you find a half-empty package of flour, canned food, and lentils.”
He said his family relies on help from others sheltering at a Jabaliya school, but their food is also running low.
“We are like dogs and cats searching for their food in the rubble,” said Um Saber, a widow.
She said she and her six children had to flee a school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya when Israel struck it. Now they live in her father-in-law’s home, stretching meager supplies of lentils and pasta with 40 others, mostly women and children.
Ahmed Abu Awda, a 28-year-old father of three living with 25 relatives in a Jabaliya house, said they have a daily meal of lentils with bread, rationing to ensure children eat.
“Sometimes we don’t eat at all,” he said.
Lubna, a 38-year-old mother of five, left food behind when fleeing as strikes and drone fire pummeled the street in Jabaliya.
“We got out by a miracle,” she said from Beit Lahiya, where they’re staying.
Her husband scavenged flour from destroyed homes after Israeli forces withdrew around nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, she said. It’s moldy, she said, so they sift it first.
Her young daughter, Selina, is visibly gaunt and bony, Lubna said.
The offensive has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel seeks to empty northern Gaza and hold it long-term under a surrender-or-starve plan proposed by former generals.
Witnesses report Israeli troops going building to building, forcing people to leave toward Gaza City.
On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered new evacuations from several Gaza City neighborhoods, raising the possibility of a ground assault there.
The UN said some 14,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering there.
Food and supplies are also stretched for the several hundred thousand people in Gaza City.
Much of the city has been flattened by months of Israeli bombardment and shelling.
Dr. Rana Soboh, a nutrition specialist at Gaza City’s Patient Friend Benevolent Hospital, said she sees 350 cases of moderate to severe acute malnutrition daily, most from the north and also from Gaza City.
“The bone of their chest is showing, the eyes are protruding,” she said, and many have trouble concentrating.
“You repeat something several times so they can understand what we are saying.”
She cited a 32-year-old woman shedding weight in her third month of pregnancy — when they put her on the scale, she weighed only 40 kg.
“We are suffering, facing the ghost of famine hovering over Gaza,” Soboh said.
Even before the siege in the north, the Patient Friend hospital saw a flood of children suffering from malnutrition — more than 4,780 in September compared with 1,100 in July, said Dr. Ahmad Eskiek, who oversees hospital operations.
Soboh said staff get calls from Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya pleading for help: “What can we do? We have nothing.”
She had worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north but fled with her family to Gaza City. Now, they stay with 22 people in her uncle’s two-bedroom apartment.
On Thursday, she had had a morsel of bread for breakfast and later a meal of yellow lentils.
As winter rains near, new arrivals set up tents wherever they can.
Some 1,500 people are in a UN school already heavily damaged in strikes that “could collapse at any moment,” UNRWA spokesperson Wateridge said.
With toilets destroyed, people try to set aside a classroom corner to use, leaving waste “streaming down the walls of the school,” she said.
She said that others in Gaza City move into the rubble of buildings, draping tarps between layers of collapsed concrete.
“It’s like the carcass of a city,” she said.

 

Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza Lebanon US

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Child, pregnant woman among 7 killed in Israeli strikes on Tyre

A resident checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP)
A resident checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP)
Updated 5 min 4 sec ago
NAJIA HOUSSARI
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Child, pregnant woman among 7 killed in Israeli strikes on Tyre

A resident checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP)
  • PM Mikati gains support in efforts to end Lebanon conflict on eve of OIC summit
  • Israel accused of ‘scorched-earth policy’ after 22 border towns devastated
Updated 5 min 4 sec ago
NAJIA HOUSSARI

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that seven people, including a child and a pregnant woman, were killed and 46 others injured in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Tyre the previous day, with rescuers still searching for those missing under the rubble.

Repeated airstrikes on the city’s neighborhoods brought down buildings, trapping residents.

The strikes hampered civil defense rescue efforts during the night. Rescuers resumed work early on Saturday in search of the missing.

Israeli airstrikes on the city of Nabatieh devastated one of the country’s most important heritage homes owned by the late former minister Rafiq Shaheen.

Another heritage home belonging to Kamal Daher, which previously served as the headquarters for the Cultural Council of South Lebanon, was also destroyed.

Airstrikes targeting the western Bekaa region killed six people.

Hezbollah continued its military operations, and Israeli media reported in the afternoon that several rockets landed in Metula, damaging a house.

The group said it targeted a military gathering on the border of the settlement.

Airstrikes on the south continued along with Hezbollah’s responses.

Mohammed Shamseddine, a researcher from Information International, said that Israel had so far destroyed 22 border towns out of 29 locations along the 120 km front stretching from Ras Al-Naqoura in the west, through the western and central sectors, and reaching the Shebaa farms in the east, near the Syrian border.

Shamseddine accused Israel of “adopting a scorched-earth policy in these areas.”

He said Israel was “destroying everything and leaving no signs of life to prevent residents from returning to any potential settlement in the future.”

Shamseddine estimated that up to 44,000 housing units had been destroyed, with the cost of reconstruction reaching $4.2 billion.

Hostilities continued as the Supreme Islamic Shariah Council emphasized Lebanon’s need to “restore its decision, role, power, and status, and implement the constitution and the Taif agreement.”

The council said that it stands by “caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s efforts to overcome the ordeal faced by Lebanon and contain the consequences of the Israeli aggression against the country.”

The council’s stance came on the eve of Miktai’s departure for Riyadh to take part in the extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Saudi Arabia is convening the talks to address Israel’s aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the resulting devastation.

The Shariah Council, which includes all Sunni segments, called for “the need to live within the state, accept the idea of the state, respect its laws and constitution, and subject oneself to its authority.”

The council said that “outside the state, we are conflicting groups, communities, and tribes,” adding that “the state of the constitution, institutions, and human dignity can save Lebanon and restore its economic stability, advancement, and prosperity.”

The council, led by Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, met on Saturday with Mikati.

It called on the UN Security Council to “secure an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, compel Israel to implement the ceasefire, and apply the UN Charter, which calls for pacific settlement of disputes.”

It added that Israel no longer abided by the charter, and should lose its UN membership.

The Shariah Council urged “the Security Council to answer the Lebanese state’s call and immediately implement UN Resolution 1701 in full, thereby ensuring the end of the war and enabling the Lebanese armed forces to exercise their national right to defend Lebanon, while providing them with all the capabilities and possibilities to fulfill this role.”

The council criticized Hezbollah’s support indirectly, saying that “what has happened and is still happening now is a challenging test that we hope we have learned from, as it has led to the destruction of the whole country.”

The council urged “the state, with all its institutions, and all Lebanese to support the displaced people, provide them with resilience and health care means, and preserve civil peace.”

Israeli hostilities against Lebanon escalated in the past 24 hours.

A video featuring several Israeli soldiers invading houses in southern Lebanon was shared on social media, prompting widespread anger among Lebanese.

Israeli media reported on Saturday afternoon that explosions were heard after sirens sounded in the Krayot and Western Galilee, adding that Hezbollah fired 10 rockets targeting Nahariya, Acre, and Krayot.

Hezbollah said that it shot down a Hermes 450 drone with a surface-to-air missile over Deir Seriane and that Israeli warplanes attacked the town.

The southern suburbs of Beirut and the southern region experienced intense Israeli assaults from Friday night into early Saturday.

For two hours, 14 airstrikes targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Targeted locations included Hadath, Burj Al-Barajneh, Haret Hreik, and the Al-Jamous neighborhood, with operations extending to the area surrounding the Lebanese University building in Hadath.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that the “airstrikes, guided by precise intelligence from the military intelligence agency, targeted command centers, a weapons production site, and other infrastructure belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut.”

The assertion made by the Israeli army that it avoids targeting civilians by issuing prior evacuation warnings did not hold for the southern region, particularly in Tyre.

 

 

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US

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Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index

Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index
Updated 52 sec ago
Arab News
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Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index

Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index
  • Jordan scored 98.6 percent on the 2024 index, up from 71 percent in 2020
Updated 52 sec ago
Arab News

LONDON: Jordan jumped to 27th on the latest Global Cybersecurity Index, up from 71st position four years earlier, the head of its National Cybersecurity Center said on Saturday.

Speaking at the Jordan Economic Forum, Bassam Maharmeh attributed the improvement to the introduction of a cybersecurity law in 2019 and the establishment of the NCC. He also highlighted the importance of cybersecurity amid Jordan’s digital transformation.

Jordan scored 98.6 percent on the 2024 index, up from 71 percent in 2020, putting it in the “T1 — Role-modeling” category.

Forum president Mazen Hamoud said the progress made would enhance Jordan’s appeal among investors and boost private sector confidence.

A 2023 report by the International Monetary Fund said there had been more than 20,000 cyberattacks on the global financial sector in the past two decades, with losses of more than $12 billion.

The NCC provides round-the-clock monitoring of data traffic and advanced services like penetration testing and emergency response. It also supports institutions and fosters youth engagement through training camps and competitions, the Jordan News Agency reported.

The rise through the 2024 rankings was the result of a unified effort involving the Ministry of Education, universities and the Central Bank of Jordan, the report said.

Topics: Jordan Cybersecurity

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While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity

While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
Updated 41 min 43 sec ago
AP
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While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity

While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
  • According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September
  • Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian
Updated 41 min 43 sec ago
AP

BEIRUT: Hundreds of thousands of Syrians refugees have returned to their country since Israel launched a massive aerial bombardment on wide swathes of Lebanon in September. Many who fled to Lebanon after the war in Syria started in 2011 did not want to go back.
But for officials in Lebanon, the influx of returnees comes as a silver lining to the war between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced some 1.2 million in Lebanon. Some in Syria hope the returning refugees could lead to more international assistance and relief from western sanctions.
’I wasn’t thinking at all about returning’
Nisreen Al-Abed returned to her northwest Syrian hometown in October after 12 years as a refugee in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The airstrikes had been terrifying, but what really worried her was that her 8-year-old twin daughters need regular transfusions to treat a rare blood disorder, thalassemia.
“I was afraid that in Lebanon, in this situation, I wouldn’t be able to get blood for them,” Al-Abed said.
During their dayslong journey, Al-Abed and her daughters were smuggled from government-held to opposition-held territory before reaching her parent’ house. Her husband remained in Lebanon.
“Before these events, I wasn’t thinking at all about returning to Syria,” she said.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September. Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian.
Most of the returnees are in government-controlled areas of Syria, according to UNHCR, while tens of thousands have made their way to the Kurdish-controlled northeast and smaller numbers to the opposition-controlled northwest.
Political leaders in Lebanon, which was hosting an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees before the recent wave of returns, have been calling for years for the displaced to go home, and many don’t want the refugees to return.
Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar told Russia’s Sputnik News last month that the war in Lebanon could yield “a positive benefit, an opportunity to return a large number of displaced Syrians to their country, because the situation there is now better than here.”
A political opening for Syria?
Officials in Damascus point to increasing economic pressure from the masses fleeing Lebanon as an argument for loosening western sanctions on President Bashar Assad’s government.
Syria was already suffering from spiraling inflation, and the sudden influx of refugees has driven prices up even more, as have Israeli strikes on border crossings that have slowed legal cross-border trade and smuggling.
“Everyone knows that Syria is suffering from difficult economic conditions: hyperinflation, import inflation, and an economic blockade,” said Abdul-Qader Azzouz, an economic analyst and professor at Damascus University. The influx of refugees just “increases the economic burden,” he said.
Alaa Al-Sheikh, a member of the executive bureau in Damascus province, urged the US to lift sanctions on Syria because of the huge number of arrivals.
“The burden is big and we are in pressing need of international assistance,” she said.
Rights groups have raised concerns about the treatment of returning refugees. The Jordan-based Syrian think tank ETANA estimates at least 130 people were “arbitrarily arrested at official border crossings or checkpoints inside Syria, either because they were wanted for security reasons or military service,” despite a government-declared amnesty for men who dodged the draft.
Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and professor at the European University Institute in Florence, noted the number of arrests is small and that Assad’s government might not view the returnees as a threat because they are mostly women and children.
Still, Daher labeled government attempts to show the returning refugees are welcome as “propaganda,” saying, “they’re unwilling and not ready in terms of economics or politics to do it.”
UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said this week that his agency is working with the Syrian government “to ensure the safety and security of all those arriving,” and he urged donors to provide humanitarian aid and financial assistance to help Syria recover after 13 years of war.
A temporary return
UNHCR regional spokeswoman Rula Amin said if people leave the country where they are registered as refugees, they usually lose their protected status.
Whether and how that will be applied in the current situation remains unclear, Amin said, underscoring the exodus from Lebanon took place “under adverse circumstances, that is under duress.”
“Given the current situation, the procedure will need to be applied with necessary safeguards and humanity,” she said.
Jeff Crisp, a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center and a former UNHCR official, said he believes Syrians are entitled to continued international protection “because of the grave threats to their life and liberty in both countries.”
Some refugees have entered Syria via smuggler routes so their departure from Lebanon is not officially recorded, including Um Yaman, who left Beirut’s heavily bombarded southern suburbs with her children for the city of Raqqa in eastern Syria.
“When I went to Syria, to be honest, I went by smuggling, in case we wanted to go back to Lebanon later when things calm down, so our papers would remain in order in Lebanon,” she said. She asked to be identified only by her honorific (“mother of Yaman”) to be able to speak freely.
If the war in Lebanon ends, Um Yaman said, they may return, but “nothing is clear at all.”

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Syrian refugees UN Lebanon Israel

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More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say

More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say
Updated 09 November 2024
Reuters
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More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say

More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say
  • At least 16 more people were killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday across the eastern plains around the historic city of Baalbek
  • The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,136 people and wounded 13,979 in Lebanon over the last year
Updated 09 November 2024
Reuters

BEIRUT: Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon over the last day have killed more than 20 people including several children, Lebanese authorities said on Saturday, after heavy Israeli bombardment pounded the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut overnight.
At least seven people were killed in the coastal city of Tyre late on Friday, Lebanon’s health ministry said. The Israeli military has previously ordered swathes of the city to evacuate but there were no orders published by the Israeli military spokesperson on social media platform X ahead of Friday’s strikes.
The ministry said two children were among the dead. Rescue operations were ongoing and other body parts retrieved in the aftermath of the attack would undergo DNA testing to identify them, the ministry added.
At least 16 more people were killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday across the eastern plains around the historic city of Baalbek, the area’s governor said in a post on social media platform X.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,136 people and wounded 13,979 in Lebanon over the last year. The toll includes 619 women and 194 children.
Israel has been locked in fighting with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah since October 2023, but fighting has escalated dramatically since late September of this year. Israel has intensified and expanded its bombing campaign, and Hezbollah has ramped up daily rocket and drone attacks against Israel.
The Iran-backed group announced more than 20 operations on Saturday, as well as one that it said fighters carried out the previous day against a military factory south of Tel Aviv.
More than a dozen Israeli strikes also hit the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight, once a bustling collection of neighborhoods and a key stronghold of Hezbollah.
Now, many buildings have been almost entirely flattened, with Hezbollah’s yellow flags jutting out from the ruins, according to Reuters reporters who were taken on a tour of the area by Hezbollah.
Some buildings were partially damaged by the strikes, leading some floors to collapse and sending furniture and other personal belongings spilling onto parked cars below.
Men and women were picking through the rubble for their belongings, shoving blankets and mats under their arms or into black plastic bags.
“We are trying to gather as many (of our possessions) as we can, so we can manage to live off them, nothing more,” said Hassan Hannawi, one of the men looking for his belongings.

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Israel Ras Baalbek tyre Lebannon Hezbollah

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While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
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