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RIYADH: The Kingdom’s aid agency KSrelief has distributed 2,500 food packages for vulnerable people in Turkiye and Sudan, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Friday.
There were 2,000 delivered for earthquake victims in Turkiye’s city of Gaziantep.
A further 500 were distributed in Sudan’s Blue Nile State for 3,425 people.
KSrelief operates aid programs for vulnerable communities across the world.
BEIRUT, Lebanon: A source close to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said late Friday that Israel carried out strikes on a convoy of trucks entering Lebanon from Syria.
“Three Israeli strikes targeted a convoy of tanker trucks on the Syrian-Lebanese border in the Hawsh el-Sayyed Ali area, injuring one Syrian driver,” the source told AFP.
It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes in the border area, the source added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor also reported Israeli strikes inside Syria near the border with Lebanon, without mentioning any casualties.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has a strong presence on both sides of the eastern stretch of the Lebanese-Syria border, where it supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The group has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, sparking war in Gaza.
The group had muted its attacks following the killing of its military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut on Tuesday and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday.
The Lebanese group claimed responsibility for five attacks on military positions in northern Israel on Friday.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah addressed the funeral of Shukr on Friday, warning that Israel and “those who are behind it must await our inevitable response” to the twin killings.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since October has killed at least 542 people on the Lebanese side, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
At least 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, according to army figures.
ISTANBUL: Turkish Airlines postponed its flights to Iran on Friday night due to tensions between Israel and Iran, Turkiye’s state-owned Anadolu news agency reported, without specifying its source.
It said flights planned to different cities in Iran would resume starting Saturday morning.
Turkish Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue.
WASHINGTON: Reuters denied on Friday that it had reported on imminent preparations for a ballistic missile attack against Israel, after reports circulated on social media citing the news agency as saying this.
“Any claims that Reuters reported imminent preparations for a ballistic attack by Iran, including that satellites and radars have picked up ballistic missiles and drones leaving Iran, Yemen and Iraq toward Israel, or that Turkiye and Iraq have closed their airspace, are false. Reuters did not report this,” a spokesperson said.
JERUSALEM: Israel advanced last year the highest number of settlements in the occupied West Bank since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, the European Union’s representative office in the Palestinian territories said on Friday.
Plans for 12,349 housing units moved toward approval in the West Bank, the EU office said, warning of the impact on a potential two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Another 18,333 units moved forward in the planning process in annexed east Jerusalem, the EU office said.
The total — 30,682 units in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem — is the highest since 2012, it added.
The report comes at a time of heightened tensions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has been raging since October 7.
“The EU has repeatedly called on Israel not to proceed with plans under its settlement policy and to halt all settlement activities,” the EU office said.
“It remains the EU’s firm position that settlements are illegal under international law.
“Israel’s decision to advance plans for the approval and construction of new settlement units in 2023 further undermines the prospects of a viable two-state solution.”
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
Dozens of unauthorized settlements have sprung up in the territories — ranging from a few tents grouped together to prefabricated huts that have been linked to public electricity and water supplies.
Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank alongside some three million Palestinians. Far-right parties in Israel’s governing coalition have pressed for an acceleration of settlement expansion.
Since the start of the Gaza war, violence between Palestinians and Israeli troops and settlers has intensified.
At least 594 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.
At least 17 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
The landmark Oslo Accords codified mutual recognition of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, as well as interim Palestinian self-government.
Last year Norwegian peace worker Jan Egeland, one of the deal’s architects, told AFP that he now considered the accords dead.
BEIRUT, Lebanon: As Hezbollah’s leader threatened Israel with crushing retaliation for killing their top commander, thousands in Beirut flocked to a dance extravaganza in a stark illustration of Lebanon’s deep divisions.
In the capital’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah stronghold — tens of thousands of black-clad women and men in military uniform joined Thursday’s funeral procession for slain commander Fuad Shukr.
Across the city on the Beirut waterfront, nearly 8,000 people attended a spectacular dance show that evening by the Mayyas troupe that won the “America’s Got Talent” television contest in 2022.
“I am sad people are dying in southern Lebanon and Gaza, but resistance is not just about carrying a gun and fighting,” said 45-year-old Olga Farhat.
“Joy, art and celebrating life is also a form of resistance,” the human rights activist told AFP.
Fireworks opened the dance show, hours after Hezbollah buried Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern suburbs on Tuesday.
The show entitled ‘Qumi’ — rise up in Arabic — was an ode to the Lebanese capital that has endured decades of conflict, upheaval and a years-long economic crisis.
“There is a split in the country between those who don’t care for war and feel that... Hezbollah wants to impose its collective identity on them, while the other group is fighting,” Farhat said.
“I understand both points of view, but we are tired of wars and crises, we want to enjoy life.”
In the southern suburbs, thousands of Hezbollah supporters chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
Across the city, dozens of Mayyas dancers performed a moving tribute to war-battered south Lebanon, from where Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with the Israel army since the Gaza war began on October 7.
“I grew up during Lebanon’s (1975-1990) civil war and I was raised to believe in the Palestinian cause,” Farhat said.
“But today I say ‘Lebanon first’.”
The raid that killed Shukr and an Iranian military adviser also cost the lives of three women and two young siblings, authorities said.
In a video clip circulating online, their bereaved mother said their lives were a “sacrifice for you, Sayyed (Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah).”
Speaking from the southern suburbs, Hussein Nasreddine, 36, said: “We love life like everyone else... but if Israel drags us into war, it is our duty to die as martyrs.”
The cross-border violence since October has killed at least 542 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, the army reports 47 dead, including on the annexed Golan Heights.
In June, the head of the Hezbollah bloc in the Lebanese parliament, Mohammad Raad, who lost a son in the border clashes, lambasted Lebanese “who want to go to night clubs... beaches, and enjoy their lives” as war rages in the south.
This week, independent lawmaker Mark Daou angered Hezbollah supporters by posting a photograph of Thursday night’s show with the comment: “The strongest response to Israel is the culture of life and beauty.”
Daou, who was elected after mass protests against the political leadership responsible for the country’s slide into economic crisis, told AFP he refused to “reduce Lebanon to a battlefield.”
Many politicians, especially from Lebanon’s Christian community, have criticized Hezbollah for risking war with Israel.
Peace-building expert Sonia Nakad said “the bigger the tragedy, the greater the division” in Lebanon.
In Lebanon, power is shared according to sectarian quotas, with communities so divided about the country’s past that events following 1943 are missing from official history books.
Each party “wants the other to be an exact copy of them to be able to co-exist, while they are opposites in everything,” she said.
“The Lebanese have yet to renounce using violence against each other, no matter how big their disagreements,” she said.
Foreign airlines have suspended or canceled flights to Beirut but many Lebanese expatriates are still pouring in, although some have cut their holidays short.
Rabab Abu Hamdan said she planned to go back to the Gulf after feeling “very stressed in the past few days.”
“Despite the difficult circumstances, Lebanon remains the best vacation destination,” she said.
