Lebanese army uses tear gas against retired soldiers protesting against pension cuts

Special Lebanese army uses tear gas against retired soldiers protesting against pension cuts
A retired soldier throws back a tear gas canister at riot police during a pension protest, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo)
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Updated 08 February 2024
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Lebanese army uses tear gas against retired soldiers protesting against pension cuts

Lebanese army uses tear gas against retired soldiers protesting against pension cuts
  • About 2,000 former military personnel attempted to prevent the Cabinet from meeting to approve a new budget law that affects their pensions
  • Meanwhile, the Cabinet appointed Gen. Hassan Awde as the army’s new chief of staff, promoting him to the rank of major general

BEIRUT: Protests on Thursday by retired soldiers over a reduction in the value of their pension escalated into a confrontation with Lebanese army forces, including the Commando Regiment, near the Gran Serail, the offices of the prime minister.

The army used tear gas when the protesters tried to break through a fence at the government headquarters, resulting in a stampede in which two soldiers were injured.

About 2,000 retired military personnel had gathered at Riad Al-Solh Square in downtown Beirut in an attempt to prevent a Cabinet meeting to approve a budget law for managing state affairs that would affect their pensions.

Retired Brig. Gen. George Nader said there was “no time limit” for the protests and they would continue as long as required to prevent the quorum needed for the Cabinet session to take place.

Some ministers began to arrive for the meeting before 7 a.m. in an attempt to avoid the protesters. Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi sought the protection of security forces, while another minister arrived unnoticed on a delivery worker’s motorcycle. The retired soldiers managed to surround the communications minister to prevent him from reaching the Grand Serail but others took less obvious routes.

After a delay of more than an hour the Cabinet managed to convene, much to the anger of the protesters. Tensions rose between the security forces and the protesters, who waved Lebanese flags, army banners and placards detailing their demands. Some set fire to tires in the square and others attempted to breach barbed wire gates. Some succeeded in getting through and moving toward the Grand Serail.

Nader, the protester, said of the politicians: “We are dealing with individuals who lack the slightest shred of responsibility. We will only obtain our rights through force, and whoever feels pain first will lose. We will not feel pain nor will we lose.”

Another retiree said: “They are insulting our dignity. They want to humiliate us. My pension is not more than the equivalent of $100. How can I and my family live on this amount? They have no conscience or honor.”

A fellow protester added: “I served my country for more than 25 years and what was the result? They do not listen to our pain or see the humiliation we are experiencing. They are all liars. Why are we being confronted by all these military forces? Send them to the south where there is a bigger need for them.”

The retired soldiers say that the 2024 budget approved by the parliament at the end of January is not fair to them. With Lebanon mired in a long-running economic crisis, during which the currency has lost about 95 percent of its value, they say that the maximum pension is barely worth the equivalent of $200, which falls far short of what is needed to cover the most basic household bills, never mind food, medicine and other essentials.

Financial incentives provided by the state to public-sector employees during the economic crisis will lose even more of their value as a result of the increases in taxes and other charges as a result of the latest budget, on top of the currency crash and high inflation.

Retired military personnel say they should be granted special status compared with other public-sector workers and receive better pension increases that ensure they can maintain a minimum standard of living. Military service cannot be compared to service in the civilian sector, they argue.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he was aware “of the current reality and social situation of retirees.”

He added: “We are trying to allocate the available funds to the public sector, and active and retired military personnel. However, this was not originally on the Cabinet agenda and we are bound by an expenditure ceiling that we cannot exceed.

“Within this ceiling, some ministers have requested reviewing the possibility of achieving more fairness in the required distributions. Therefore an exceptional session will be held next Saturday to discuss this issue in particular.”

Meanwhile, the Cabinet appointed Gen. Hassan Awde as the army’s new chief of staff, promoting him to the rank of major general. He will replace Gen. Joseph Aoun, whose term has ended.

Mikati said: “This is an essential matter in the current circumstances Lebanon is going through.”

Israeli warplanes flew over Beirut on Thursday and as far as the city of Hermel in the northern Bekaa Valley. On the southern front, along Lebanon’s border with Israel, escalating Israeli military operations continued to target border villages and towns.

Hezbollah said it attacked the Israeli Branit Barracks with a missile and also targeted “the headquarters of the 769th Eastern Brigade of the 91st Galilee Division in the Kiryat Shmona Barracks.” The group later said it struck a “radar site in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms.”

The Israeli army’s radio service reported that “an officer and two soldiers were injured in Hezbollah's targeting of Kiryat Shmona Barracks.”


Israeli military neutralizes ‘number of terrorists’ crossing from Jordan

Israeli military neutralizes ‘number of terrorists’ crossing from Jordan
Updated 54 sec ago
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Israeli military neutralizes ‘number of terrorists’ crossing from Jordan

Israeli military neutralizes ‘number of terrorists’ crossing from Jordan
  • Two of them were killed after they opened fire on Israeli forces
DUBAI: The Israeli military identified what it called “a number of terrorists” crossing from Jordan into the south of the Dead Sea region and neutralized two of them after they opened fire on Israeli forces, it said in a statement on Friday.

PM Najib Mikati rejects Iranian interference in Lebanese matter

PM Najib Mikati rejects Iranian interference in Lebanese matter
Updated 12 min 11 sec ago
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PM Najib Mikati rejects Iranian interference in Lebanese matter

PM Najib Mikati rejects Iranian interference in Lebanese matter
  • Speaker of Iran’s parliament said Tehran was ready to negotiate with France on implementing a UN resolution concerning southern Lebanon
  • Prime Minister Najib Mikati: ‘We are surprised by this position, which constitutes a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs’
DUBAI: Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister said on Friday he rejected Iranian interference in a Lebanese matter, after the speaker of Iran’s parliament said Tehran was ready to negotiate with France on implementing a UN resolution concerning southern Lebanon.
UN Resolution 1701, adopted in 2006, calls for the border area of southern Lebanon to be free of weapons or troops other than those of the Lebanese state, with the aim of keeping peace on the border with Israel.
The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, made his comments in an interview published on Thursday.
“We are surprised by this position, which constitutes a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs and an attempt to establish a rejected guardianship over Lebanon,” a government statement quoted Prime Minister Najib Mikati as saying.
Mikati added that negotiating to implement UN resolution 1701 was a matter for the Lebanese state.
Under Resolution 1701, the United Nations Security Council authorized a UN peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL “to assist” Lebanese forces in ensuring southern Lebanon is “free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon.”
Israel says the Lebanese army and UNIFIL have failed to secure the area. It started a ground operation in Lebanon on Oct. 1 after almost a year of ongoing hostilities with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in parallel with the war in Gaza.
The UN Security Council has expressed strong concerns after several UN peacekeeping positions in southern Lebanon came under fire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that it is time to withdraw UNIFIL.
Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon told Reuters on Monday he wanted to see “a more robust mandate for UNIFIL to deter Hezbollah.”
The peacekeeping mission is currently authorized until Aug. 31, 2025.

Israeli drone video captures last minutes of Hamas leader Sinwar’s life

Israeli drone video captures last minutes of Hamas leader Sinwar’s life
Updated 18 October 2024
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Israeli drone video captures last minutes of Hamas leader Sinwar’s life

Israeli drone video captures last minutes of Hamas leader Sinwar’s life
  • Israeli troops were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy

JERUSALEM: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.
As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation.
After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gunbattle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.
Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where he could operate, the military said on Thursday, after dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death.


But unlike other militant leaders tracked down and killed by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the operation which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
Instead, officials said he was found by infantry soldiers from the Bislach Brigade, a unit that normally trains future unit commanders. The soldiers were searching an area in the Tal El Sultan area of southern Gaza on Wednesday, where they believed senior members of Hamas were located.
The troops saw three suspected militants moving between buildings and opened fire, leading to a gunfight during which Sinwar escaped into a ruined building.
According to accounts in Israeli media, tank shells and a missile were also fired at the building.
On Thursday, the military released footage from a mini drone that it said showed Sinwar, badly wounded in the hand, sitting on a chair, his face covered in a scarf. The film shows him attempting to throw a stick at the drone, in a futile effort to knock it down.
At this stage, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, Sinwar was only identified as a fighter, but troops entered and found him with a weapon, a flak jacket and 40,000 shekels ($10,731.63).
“He tried to escape and our forces eliminated him,” he told reporters in a televised briefing.
Hamas has not made any comment itself, but sources within the group have said that the indications they have seen suggest Sinwar was indeed killed by Israeli troops.
“The dozens of operations carried out by the IDF and the ISA over the last year, and in recent weeks in the area where he was eliminated, restricted Yahya Sinwar’s operational movement as he was pursued by the forces and led to his elimination,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
In the last months of his life, Sinwar, the main architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza, appears to have stopped using telephones and other communication equipment that would have allowed Israel’s powerful intelligence services to track him down.
Israeli officials said they believed he was hiding in one of the vast network of tunnels that Hamas dug beneath Gaza over the past two decades, but as more and more have been uncovered by Israeli troops, even the tunnels were no guarantee of escaping capture.
The head of Israel’s military, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Israel’s pursuit of Sinwar over the past year drove him “to act like a fugitive, causing him to change locations multiple times.”
Israeli officials, who knew Sinwar as a ruthless and committed enemy, were long concerned that he had surrounded himself with some of the 101 Israeli and foreign hostages still held in Gaza as a human shield to protect himself from Israeli attacks.
But no hostages were found nearby when he was finally trapped on Wednesday, although Hagari said samples of his DNA were located in a tunnel a few hundred meters from where six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas at the end of August.


At least 28 dead in Gaza strike on school-turned-shelter

At least 28 dead in Gaza strike on school-turned-shelter
Updated 18 October 2024
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At least 28 dead in Gaza strike on school-turned-shelter

At least 28 dead in Gaza strike on school-turned-shelter
  • Israeli said the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups
  • Hamas said allegations about fighters present at school were 'nothing but lies'

CAIRO: At least 28 Palestinians including children were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on a shelter in the northern Gaza Strip, a Gaza health ministry official said, while Israel said the attack targeted tens of militants at the site.
Dozens were also injured in the strike, said the official, Medhat Abbas, adding: “There is no water to extinguish the fire. There is nothing. This is a massacre.”
“Civilians and children are being killed, burned under fire,” said Abbas.
The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, who operated from within the Abu Hussein School in Jabalia that had been serving as a shelter for displaced people.
It said dozens of militants were present inside the compound when the strike took place, and provided the names of at least 12 of them, which Reuters could not immediately verify.
The military said it took precautions to mitigate harm to civilians and accused Hamas of using them as human shields — a practice Hamas denies.
Hamas said in a statement that allegations there were fighters at the school were “nothing but lies,” adding this was “a systematic policy of the enemy to justify its crime.”
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of dead at the school at 28. It said 160 people were wounded in the attack.
Earlier on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said at least 11 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli strikes in Gaza City, while several others were killed in central and southern Gaza areas.
Footage circulated by Palestinian media of the Abu Hussein School and which Reuters couldn’t immediately verify, showed smoke coming from tents that caught fire, as many displaced people evacuated casualties including children to ambulances.
Residents of Jabalia, in northern Gaza, said Israeli forces blew up clusters of houses firing from the air, from tanks and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely.
The area has been a focus for the Israeli military for the past two weeks, which says it is trying to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping for more attacks.
Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya in the far north of the enclave from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns.
“We have written our death notes, and we are not leaving Jabalia,” one resident told Reuters via a chat app.
“The occupation (Israel) is punishing us for not leaving our houses in the early days of the war, and we are not going now either. They are blowing up houses, and roads, and are starving us but we die once and we don’t lose our pride,” the father of four said, refusing to give his name, fearing Israeli reprisal.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it seized many weapons in the area, some of which were stashed in a school, and that its forces have killed dozens of militants in airstrikes and combat at close quarters, as troops try to root out Hamas forces operating in the rubble.
Northern Gaza, which had been home to well over half the territory’s 2.3 million people, was bombed to rubble in the first phase of Israel’s assault on the territory a year ago, after the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas-led fighters, who killed 1,200 people and captured 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel’s offensive so far, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
The United States has told Israel that it must take steps to improve the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza in 30 days or face potential restrictions on military aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss expanding humanitarian aid to Gaza, officials said, with aid likely to increase soon.


Egypt raises gasoline, diesel prices for third time this year

Egypt raises gasoline, diesel prices for third time this year
Updated 18 October 2024
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Egypt raises gasoline, diesel prices for third time this year

Egypt raises gasoline, diesel prices for third time this year
  • Prices for diesel fuel, one of the most commonly used fuels in the country, were raised by 17 percent to 13.50 Egyptian pounds

CAIRO: Egypt raised prices on a wide range of fuel products early on Friday, the petroleum ministry said, marking the third such increase this year.
Prices for diesel fuel, one of the most commonly used fuels in the country, were raised by 17 percent to 13.50 Egyptian pounds ($0.2779) per liter from 11.50 pounds.
Gasoline prices increased from 11 percent to 13 percent depending on the grade, with 80 octane gasoline rising to 13.75 Egyptian pounds, 92 octane to 15.25 pounds, and 95 octane to 17 pounds.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in July that prices of petroleum products will gradually increase until the end of 2025, adding that the government could no longer bear the burden of paying the subsidies on fuels amid increasing consumption.
But the government’s fuel pricing committee, which typically convenes each quarter, said on Friday its next meeting will be held in six months.