BEIRUT: A Lebanese General Security Center is being opened at the Qaa border crossing with Syria after the Syrian side opened the opposite Jusiyah crossing after a five-year closure.
A Lebanese security official told Arab News that the passage of individuals and cars would start at 6 a.m. on Friday, “but the expectations are not big.”
The security official said that “the whole issue could be limited to local residents only, because there are Lebanese citizens who have properties in Syria, and there are Syrian citizens who have relatives in Lebanon, otherwise we do not expect the return of Syrian refugees to inland Syria.”
The Lebanese-Syrian border crossing links the Syrian city of Homs with the Lebanese Baalbek-Hermel governorate. The Lebanese official said that “both the Lebanese and Syrian sides intentionally brought the border points closer to a great extent, because some Syrian refugees who fled from Homs to Lebanon set up their tents in no-man’s land, which is about 12 kilometers away. And following the latest arrangement, the refugees have become inside Lebanese territories.”
The security source estimated the number of Syrian refugees in this area to be about 30,000.
The security source noted that “the goal of this move is to control the movement of refugees in this area between the Lebanese and Syrian sides,” adding that “the actual return of refugees is still awaiting a political solution for the war in Syria, which involves tackling the issue of refugees.” However, the source said that “opening the border crossing is part of field preparations for any future step in this direction.”
Meanwhile, the press office of Prime Minister Saad Hariri released a statement by the prime minister stressing that “those who think the war in Syria is over are mistaken.”
Opening the border crossing was not accompanied by any official Syrian-Lebanese rapprochement.
However, two members of the Lebanese Parliament, one from Hezbollah and another from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who participated in the ceremony on the Lebanese side, came to the Syrian crossing point, where General Mohammad Al-Sha’ar, the Syrian Minister of the Interior, Talal Al-Barazi, the governor of Homs, and some Syrian General Security officers were standing with representatives of the Syrian media.
Al-Sha’ar said: “We are with anything that may serve the normal relations and the natural context between Lebanon and Syria, and there are no hurdles impeding anyone who wants to return to Syria.”
Al-Barazi noted that “the situation will go back to normal, and hopefully the transit activity to and from Lebanon will return to what it used to be before 2012.”
On the Lebanese side of the border crossing, the general director of the Lebanese General Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, inaugurated the new General Security center without coming to the Syrian side. He said in a speech that the inauguration of the center “is of great importance at these exceptional sensitive times. We are here to set the borders of our homeland with efforts and sacrifice.”
Ibrahim noted that the center “is furnished with men and equipment to be, first and foremost, a station for safety and security for the Qaa and Lebanese people and, secondly, a guarantee for the freedom of movement for people to and from Lebanon, within the limits of law and mutual agreements, so that the residents of Qaa and its neighboring areas can protect their property and invest their lands without any hurdles or difficulties.”
He also said that “the cooperation with the Syrian side is within the limits imposed by the procedures and laws,” stressing that “the policy of dissociation has nothing to do with opening the border crossing.”
The Qaa-Jusiyah crossing is one of five official border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, all of which are now under the control of the forces of the Syrian regime. These borders include Jdidat Yabus-AlMasna’ (Beqaa), which is open for individuals and vehicles; Dabbusiah-Abbudiah (in the north), which has never been closed; Talkalakh-Albuqeiha, which is still closed; and Tartus-Arida, which is open.
There are many “illegal border crossing points along the Lebanese-Syrian border used by smugglers and people moving between the two countries illegally,” according to the same security source.
Border crossing between Lebanon and Syria reopens
Border crossing between Lebanon and Syria reopens
UN peacekeepers say Israel troops fired at Lebanon post
“The duty guards withdrew to avoid being shot“
BEIRUT: United Nations peacekeepers said Friday that Israeli soldiers fired at one of their observation posts in south Lebanon this week, adding the security situation was “extremely challenging” amid other unidentified attacks.
“IDF (Israeli army) soldiers fired at” an observation post near the border village of Dhayra on Friday, a statement from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said, adding “the duty guards withdrew to avoid being shot.”
Separately, it reported three incidents of unidentified fire impacting UNIFIL positions, teams and vehicles this week, adding no peacekeepers were hurt but calling the security situation “extremely challenging.”
“Since early October, peacekeepers have observed clashes on the ground in or around” a dozen south Lebanon villages and towns, UNIFIL said, noting “rocket fire from Lebanon and heavy air and artillery strikes from Israel have continued.”
The Israeli military “has repeatedly demanded that UNIFIL vacate its positions... and has deliberately damaged camera, lighting, and communications equipment” at some positions, the UN force said.
“Despite the pressure being exerted on the mission and our troop-contributing countries, peacekeepers remain in position and on task,” it added.
“All actors are reminded of their obligation to avoid actions putting peacekeepers or civilians in danger.”
Initially set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon, UNIFIL has around 10,000 peacekeepers from some 50 countries deployed in south Lebanon.
Also Friday, UNIFIL said two Indonesian peacekeepers who were wounded on October 10 when “an observation tower at UNIFIL’s Naqura headquarters was hit by Israeli tank fire” were back on duty after having “spent three days in intensive care.”
Five killed in Turkish strikes on PKK allies: Iraqi local sources
- Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria in a 24-hour military escalation, after an attack on Wednesday at state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) near Ankara
- “A series of Turkish air strikes targeted the Sinjar Resistance Units,” a security official told AFP
BAGHDAD: Turkish air strikes on northern Iraq targeting a group affiliated with Turkiye’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed five people on Friday, local sources said.
The strikes came after a Syria war monitor said Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria in a 24-hour military escalation, after an attack on Wednesday at state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) near Ankara, which Turkiye said killed five people.
After the Ankara attack, Turkiye’s defense ministry had announced strikes against sites linked to the PKK in Iraq and Syria.
“A series of Turkish air strikes targeted the Sinjar Resistance Units,” a security official told AFP, reporting a total of five people killed, as the PKK claimed Wednesday’s attack.
The official spoke from Nineveh province, where Sinjar is located, under cover of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Speaking under similar ground rules, a second official in Sinjar gave the same toll for the “Turkish aerial bombardments targeting positions of the Sinjar Resistance Units.”
In a statement, the anti-terrorist service of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, adjacent to Nineveh, gave a lower toll of “three fighters killed” in Sinjar.
It said the strikes by Turkish drones and warplanes targeted PKK positions.
Turkiye frequently carries out ground and air offensives on positions of the PKK — which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state — in northern Iraq, the autonomous Kurdistan region and the mountains of Sinjar.
Turkiye has also over the past 25 years operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK.
Israel army confirms strike on Syria-Lebanon crossing
- Israeli military statement: Hezbollah ‘exploits the Jousieh civilian crossing … to transfer weapons’
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military confirmed on Friday that it had struck a border crossing between Syria and Lebanon that it said was being used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons.
“Overnight ... the IAF (air force) struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites at the Jousieh border crossing in the northern Bekaa area (of Lebanon), the military said in a statement, adding that Hezbollah “exploits the Jousieh civilian crossing, which is under the control of the Syrian regime and is operated by Syrian military security, to transfer weapons.”
Gaza rescuers say children among 20 killed in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis
- Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the home of the Al-Fara family
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes hit two homes at dawn on Friday in Khan Younis, the territory’s main southern city, killing at least 20 people including children.
Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the home of the Al-Fara family, and a separate air raid killed another six, according to agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
Bassal said the 14 included nine children under the age of 16.
AFP photographs showed relatives at the European hospital in Khan Younis mourning the deaths of children, the bodies of several of them wrapped in white shrouds.
The military, in a statement giving an operational update, said that “a number of terrorists were eliminated from the air and ground” in southern Gaza.
While Israeli forces continue to operate across Gaza, recent weeks have seen an intensified air and ground assault in the territory’s north, where the military reports Hamas militants are regrouping.
Kurdish rebels claim deadly Ankara attack
- ‘The act of sacrifice at TAI campus in Ankara at around 15:30 local time on Wednesday was carried out by a team of the immortals battalion’
ISTANBUL: The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Friday claimed a deadly attack on a state-run Turkish defense firm in the capital Ankara.
“The act of sacrifice at TAI campus in Ankara at around 15:30 local time on Wednesday was carried out by a team of the immortals battalion” of the PKK, it said on Telegram, referring to Turkish Aerospace Industries.
