BEIRUT: Lebanese lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to extend their mandate by another two years and seven months, skipping scheduled elections for the second consecutive time amid deteriorating security conditions.
The vote to extend the mandate of the Parliament until June 2017 was held despite a boycott by two major Christian parties. Protesters also blocked roads to Lebanon’s Parliament Wednesday in a last-ditch attempt to halt the session.
The demonstrators hurled tomatoes at the vehicles of lawmakers in downtown Beirut, but were held back by Lebanese security forces, and the vote went ahead.
Ninety-five lawmakers among those who showed up voted in favor of the extension Wednesday, while two opposed.
It is yet another symptom of the country’s political paralysis amid regional and local turmoil resulting from the Syrian civil war.
The parliamentarians claim they need to extend their own term in office because Lebanon’s security situation is too dire to allow holding elections. The 128-seat legislature’s current term expires on Nov. 20.
It was the second consecutive time this Parliament extended its own term, giving it a full eight years in power— double its allowed mandate.
Parliament extended its term in May last year, skipping scheduled elections also because of the country’s deteriorating security. It marked the first time that Parliament has had to extend its term since Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war ended in 1990.
Clashes tied to Syria’s war have broken out with increasing regularity in Lebanon, a country with a religious and political divide that mirrors that of its neighbor.
Lebanon Parliament extends term despite protests
Lebanon Parliament extends term despite protests
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
Shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank kills 3
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory
JERUSALEM: A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people and wounded seven others on Monday, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said those killed included two women in their 60s and a man in his 40s.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory. The identities of the attackers and those killed were not immediately known. The military said it was looking for the attackers, who fled.
Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 835 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in scores of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is raging with no end in sight, though there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are enduring a cold, rainy winter in tent camps along the windy coast. At least seven infants have died of hypothermia because of the harsh conditions, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance.
New Syria foreign minister begins first visit to UAE: state media
Damascus: Syria’s new foreign minister Asaad Al-Shaibani landed in the United Arab Emirates Monday on his first visit to the country since rebels toppled president Bashar Assad last month, official news agency SANA said.
“Shaibani, accompanied by defense minister Murhaf Abu Qasra and intelligence chief Anas Khattab, has arrived in the United Arab Emirates,” SANA reported.
Shaibani also posted a picture of himself on X stepping off a plane, and said he looked forward “to building constructive bilateral relations.”
The officials took office after Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus in early December, toppling Assad after more than 13 years of civil war.
Their trip to the UAE comes after they visited its Gulf neighbors Qatar on Sunday and Saudi Arabia last week.
Both Qatar and Turkiye, which backed the anti-Assad opposition, reopened their embassies in Damascus in the aftermath of Assad’s flight to Moscow.
Turkiye has long maintained a working relationship with the HTS rebels, leaving it with a direct line to Damascus.
