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Battlefield Lebanon

Lebanon asks those who lost relatives in recent airstrikes for DNA samples to match with unidentified remains

Lebanon asks those who lost relatives in recent airstrikes for DNA samples to match with unidentified remains
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike on a village near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on September 29, 2024.(AFP)
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Updated 30 September 2024
AP
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Lebanon asks those who lost relatives in recent airstrikes for DNA samples to match with unidentified remains

Lebanon asks those who lost relatives in recent airstrikes for DNA samples to match with unidentified remains
  • A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon have killed more than 1,030 people
Updated 30 September 2024
AP
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BEIRUT — Lebanese officials have asked people who lost relatives in recent Israeli airstrikes to provide DNA samples to match with unidentified remains.
Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces on Monday called on residents across the country to visit police stations with an identity card to give their samples. It said more than one person from each family should provide a sample, if possible.
A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon have killed more than 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
Satellite images show site of Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader
Satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press show the site of the Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The images, taken Sunday by Planet Labs PBC, show the site just some 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) northeast of Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport.
The images show multi-story buildings at the site now cratered in the densely populated predominantly Shiite southern Beirut suburb known as Dahiyeh.
Israel said the Friday night strike targeted a meeting at an underground Hezbollah compound located beneath the towers and at least one empty lot at the site.

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Hezbollah Israel Lebanon

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Yemeni government condemns Israeli airstrikes on Hodeidah

A view of the wreckage of a power station destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, in Hodeidah, Yemen.
A view of the wreckage of a power station destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, in Hodeidah, Yemen.
Updated 5 sec ago
Saeed Al-Batati
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Yemeni government condemns Israeli airstrikes on Hodeidah

A view of the wreckage of a power station destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, in Hodeidah, Yemen.
  • Warns the ‘Iranian regime, its agent militias’ and Israel not to use Yemen as a battleground
Updated 5 sec ago
Saeed Al-Batati

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s internationally recognized government on Monday condemned Israeli airstrikes on the Houthi-held west-coast city of Hodeidah, and warned Israel and Iran not to use the country as a battleground.

It said the attack on Sunday was a violation of Yemen’s territorial sovereignty, as well as international norms and charters, and made the already dire humanitarian situation in the country even worse.

The Yemeni government “warns the Iranian regime, its agent militias and the Zionist entity that they risk escalating the situation and turning the region into a staging ground for their absurd wars and destructive projects,” the official Yemeni state news agency SABA reported.

The strikes caused large explosions and smoke hung over the area in the aftermath. The Houthi Ministry of Health said that four people were killed and 40 wounded, many of whom were in critical condition.

The attack came a day after the Israeli military said it shot down a ballistic missile outside Israel’s borders that had been launched by the Houthi militia in Yemen.

The Houthis said they had targeted Ben Gurion International Airport with the missile as part of their ongoing campaign, in support of the Palestinian people, to put pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza. This campaign has also included months of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and other waters off the coast of Yemen.

The attack on Sunday was the second time Israeli forces have targeted Hodeidah. The first was on July 20, when power plants and port facilities, including one with an oil terminal, were hit in response to a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv in which 10 Israelis were killed or injured.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Houthis

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Israel defense minister says ground troops could join Hezbollah fight

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said ground forces could be used against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. (AFP)
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said ground forces could be used against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. (AFP)
Updated 17 min 36 sec ago
AFP
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Israel defense minister says ground troops could join Hezbollah fight

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said ground forces could be used against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. (AFP)
  • “We will use all the means that may be required — your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land,” Gallant said
  • “The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one,” he said
Updated 17 min 36 sec ago
AFP

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said ground forces could be used against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, adding military operations will go on despite the killing of the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Gallant made the comments while speaking to Israeli troops deployed to the northern border where cross-border fire with Hezbollah continued for nearly a year but escalated this month.
“We will use all the means that may be required — your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land,” Gallant said.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one.”
Israel killed Nasrallah on Friday in an air strike on the Iran-backed group’s southern Beirut stronghold.
Israel had intensified air raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon from September 23, when Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 558 people were killed, in the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.
Israeli officials have been hinting at a potential ground invasion into Lebanon, following attacks which decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and communications this month.
After Hamas Palestinian militants’ unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing at Israeli military positions and communities along the border, in what it called “support” for Hamas.
Fighting had been relatively contained until the current escalation.
Tens of thousands of Israeli residents were evacuated from their country’s northern border area nearly a year ago.
“Our goal is to ensure the (safe) return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes. We are prepared to make every effort necessary to accomplish this mission,” said Gallant.
Israel said earlier this month that it was shifting its focus from Gaza to securing the northern border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said Monday the movement was ready to face any Israeli ground operation, and warned that the battle could last a long time.

Topics: War on Gaza Hezbollah Israel

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Iran says will not send forces to confront Israel

A billboard bearing a picture of Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on Beirut.
A billboard bearing a picture of Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on Beirut.
Updated 30 September 2024
AFP
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Iran says will not send forces to confront Israel

A billboard bearing a picture of Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on Beirut.
  • “There is no need to send extra or volunteer forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani
  • He added that Lebanon and fighters in the Palestinian territories “have the capability and strength to defend themselves against the aggression”
Updated 30 September 2024
AFP

TEHRAN: Iran will not deploy forces to Lebanon or Gaza to confront Israel, its foreign ministry said on Monday, as Israeli strikes target its allies in the region.
“There is no need to send extra or volunteer forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani, adding that Lebanon and fighters in the Palestinian territories “have the capability and strength to defend themselves against the aggression.”
Israel has in recent days been mounting heavy air strikes in Lebanon against the so-called “axis of resistance,” a network of Iran-aligned militant groups in the region, including in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
An Israeli strike on Beirut Friday killed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that has been armed and financed by the Islamic republic for years.
“We have not received any request in this regard from any side, on the contrary, we are informed and are sure that they do not need the help of our forces,” Kanani told reporters in Tehran.
Kanani nonetheless vowed that Israel “will not remain without reprimand and punishment for the crimes it has committed against the Iranian people, military personnel and the resistance forces.”
Also on Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visited Hezbollah’s office in Tehran “to pay tribute” to Nasrallah, according to the government’s website.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of the state, has vowed that Nasrallah’s death “will not be in vain,” and First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said it would bring about Israel’s “destruction.”
Iran has also vowed to avenge the killing of Abbas Nilforoushan, a top commander of the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm, who died alongside the Hezbollah leader.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Iran

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Hezbollah says it is ready for any Israeli land invasion in Lebanon

People watch a televised speech by Hezbollah’s deputy chief Naim Qassem in a cafe in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 30.
People watch a televised speech by Hezbollah’s deputy chief Naim Qassem in a cafe in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 30.
Updated 30 September 2024
Reuters
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Hezbollah says it is ready for any Israeli land invasion in Lebanon

People watch a televised speech by Hezbollah’s deputy chief Naim Qassem in a cafe in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 30.
  • “We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” Qassem said
Updated 30 September 2024
Reuters

BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters are primed to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said on Monday in his first public speech since Israeli airstrikes killed its veteran chief Hassan Nasrallah last week.
Israel will not achieve its goals, he said.
“We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said in an address from an undisclosed location.
He was speaking as Israeli airstrikes on targets in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon continued, extending a two-week long wave of attacks that has eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1,000 Lebanese and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
Nasrallah’s killing, along with the series of blows against the organization’s communications devices and assassination of other senior commanders, constitute the biggest blow to the organization since Iran created it in 1982 to fight Israel.
He had built it up into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with wide sway across the Middle East.
Now Hezbollah faces the challenge of replacing a charismatic, towering leader who was a hero to millions of supporters because he stood up to Israel even though the West branded him a terrorist mastermind.
“We will choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity...and we will fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis,” Qassem said.
Qassem said Hezbollah’s fighters had continued to fire rockets as deep as 150 km (93 miles) into Israeli territory and were ready to face any possible Israeli ground incursion.
“What we are doing is the bare minimum...We know that the battle may be long,” he said. “We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006 in the face of the Israeli enemy,” he added, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes.
Israel, which has also assassinated leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza war, says it will do whatever it takes to return its citizens to evacuated communities on its northern border safely.
It has not ruled out a ground invasion and its troops have been training for one.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one. In order to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops deployed to the country’s northern border.
Other militants hit
Hours before Hezbollah’s Qassem spoke, Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his wife, son and daughter in the southern city of Tyre on Monday.
Another faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said three of its leaders died in a strike in Beirut’s Kola district — the first such hit inside the city limits.
The wave of Israeli attacks on militant targets in Lebanon are part of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, to Yemen, Iraq and within Israel itself. The escalation has raised fears that the United States and Iran will be sucked into the conflict.
Multiple fronts
The latest actions indicated Israel has no intention of slowing down its offensive even after eliminating Nasrallah, who was Iran’s most powerful ally in its “Axis of Resistance” against Israeli and US influence in the region.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Tehran would not let any of Israel’s “criminal acts” go unanswered. He was referring to the killing of Nasrallah and an Iranian Guard deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes on Friday.
Russia said Nasrallah’s death had led to a serious destabilization in the broader region.
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain called for a ceasefire, although they added that its support for Israel’s right to self-defense was “ironclad.”
Close ally the United States has shown unwavering support for Israel despite concerns over heavy civilian casualties.

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Lebanon Israel Hezbollah

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Libya’s eastern parliament approves new central bank governor, deputy

Libya’s eastern parliament approves new central bank governor, deputy
Updated 30 September 2024
Reuters
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Libya’s eastern parliament approves new central bank governor, deputy

Libya’s eastern parliament approves new central bank governor, deputy
Updated 30 September 2024
Reuters

CAIRO: Libya’s eastern-based parliament agreed on Monday to approve the nomination of Naji Mohamed Issa Belqasem as the new governor of the central bank, part of efforts to end a crisis which has slashed the country’s oil output.
In a televised session, the parliament also approved Mari Muftah Rahil Barrasi as his deputy.
The two names were nominated in a recent UN-facilitated meeting. Belqasem was previously the central bank’s director of banking and monetary control. 

Topics: Libya Central Bank Parliament

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