DUBAI: Lebanon’s garbage crisis resurfaced Monday as rubbish was found strewn across a Lebanese beach, believed to have been washed down by stormy weather from a nearby landfill site on the coast – a claim the government denies.
Images of the beach, covered in a blanket of rubbish were shared across social media prompting outcries from residents and politicians alike. It comes as Human Rights Watch (HRW) launched a campaign over health and environmental concerns prompted by the decision to burn the vast amounts of trash that have built up in the country’s landfills.
“The sea has filled with garbage because officials who lack conscience and competency are in charge of the waste file,” Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel told local news channels.
The rubbish on the beach, near the Zouk Mosbeh/Nahr Al-Kalb river, is believed to have been washed down from the Burj Hammoud landfill during a storm the day before.
“The Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) is in charge of overseeing these works and there is an environment minister and a government. They are all to blame and they must be held responsible for what we are witnessing today [Monday],” Gemayel said.
The politician said the council had not taken measures to prevent such an incident from occurring, sighting the absence of wave breakers as the main reason for the landfill’s garbage spewing onto the beach and into the sea.
However the CDR issued a statement denying the landfill’s role in the beach pollution, but videos shared on social media appear to show otherwise.
The statement, translated from Arabic, read: “This news is completely false, in our knowledge the garbage disposal os surrounded by concrete and there is no way for the sea to enter. It is strange that the waves took the garbage from Ghadeer and Burj Hammoud and put them in Keserwan [Zouk Mosbeh/Nahr el-Kalb] without them having any effect on the coast in between.”
Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri has since ordered an immediate clean-up of the coast.
The Lebanese garbage crisis began in the summer of 2015 after the closure of the Naamah landfill site after it had reached capacity. For months after, with no alternative site, Beirut’s streets became filled with large piles of rubbish that stretched for miles.
Eventually the Burj Hammoud landfill was expanded – but even that was insufficient to cope with the increase bulk of waste produced by the nation and HRW says illegal sites were created by the Lebanese government.
#StopTheBurning
But the beach incident is just the latest in the ongoing crisis. HRW launched #StopTheBurning campaign last week after it was revealed that staff at the landfills had been instructed to burn the vast amounts of garbage leftover by the 2015 crisis.
And HRW is now calling on the Lebanese government to cease the burning, and is rallying support through online messages and billboards across the country.
“We are pressing the government to end the dangerous practice of open burning, and finally pass a national waste management law and strategy that fulfills the right to health and a clean environment and comply with international law,” HRW researcher Bassam Khawaja told Arab News.
The government had resorted to burning large quantities of rubbish in landfills in a short-term plan to rid the Mediterranean country of its trash, but the health consequences are severe, according the HRW report.
“Human Rights Watch has found that government’s failure to stop the widespread open burning of waste at more than 150 dumps violates Lebanon’s obligation to protect the health of its residents under international human rights law,” Khawaja added.
Open burning has increased in Beirut and Mount Lebanon after the waste management system collapsed in 2015, with a 330 percent increase at the latter site alone, according to the Civil Defense and Lebanon’s fire department.
“Open burning of waste is harming nearby residents’ health one garbage bag at a time, but authorities are doing virtually nothing to bring this crisis under control,” said Nadim Houry, interim Beirut director at HRW.
“People may think the garbage crisis started in 2015, but this has been going on for decades as the government jumps from one emergency plan to the next while largely ignoring the situation outside Beirut and surrounding areas,” Houry added.
Lebanon’s trash crisis returns, but did it ever disappear in the first place?
Lebanon’s trash crisis returns, but did it ever disappear in the first place?
Fight against disinformation to continue, says Turkish official
ANKARA: Following the decision to detain Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality officials and other suspects within the scope of a series of investigations conducted by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor's Office, we note that some parties, especially leaders of the main opposition party, are making efforts to undermine the integrity of the investigations with political and ideological motives.
Among the political and ideological assessments made without familiarity with the content and details of the investigations that have begun, we are also witnessing irrational slanders against our president.
We will continue to stand firmly against such endeavors aimed at undermining the independence of our judiciary, which exercises its authority on behalf of the Turkish nation, as well as putting our president under suspicion, and will continue to protect the rights of our president against these ideological slander campaigns.
We emphasize our belief that all decisions of an impartial judiciary should be respected by all groups, and we would like to state that we will continue our fight against disinformation as the Communication Directorate in this process.
We ask our valued citizens to support this fight by dealing cautiously with unconfirmed and suspicious content and, as always, please rely on the statements of official institutions and authorities.
- Prof. Dr. Fahrettin Altun is Head of the Communications Directorate of the Republic of Turkiye.
Houthi militant media reports fresh US strikes on Yemen
- Four strikes hit Hodeida governorate on the Red Sea
- The Houthis have reported several rounds of US attacks since Saturday
SANAA: Fresh attacks hit two areas of militant-held Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV station reported on Thursday, blaming “US aggression.”
Four strikes hit Hodeida governorate on the Red Sea, and a further attack hit Saada in the north, the birthplace of the Houthi movement, Al-Masirah said.
The attacks came around the same time that Israel’s military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen for the second time in a day.
The Houthis have reported several rounds of US attacks since Saturday, when a heavy bombardment targeting senior figures killed 53 people, according to the militant group.
In return, the Houthis have repeatedly attacked a US aircraft carrier battle group and twice announced missile launches at Israeli targets.
The US attacks are aimed at stamping out months of strikes by the Houthis on Red Sea shipping during the Gaza war that have crippled the vital trade route.
Israel says it intercepts two missiles launched from Yemen
- There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the launch, but it comes after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis had threatened to escalate attacks in support of Palestinians
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said it intercepted two missiles launched from Yemen on Thursday after US President Donald Trump threatened to punish Iran over its perceived support for Yemeni Houthi militants.
Warning sirens sounded in Jerusalem and the nearby Israeli-occupied West Bank after the second missile was fired later in the day, the military said, adding that it was intercepted before it entered Israeli territory.
The military said it also downed a missile launched from Yemen earlier in the day after sirens blared in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Israel’s national ambulance service Magen David Adom said it received no reports of casualties following both launches.
The Houthis, undeterred by waves of US strikes since Saturday, fired a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the group’s military spokesperson said in a televised statement earlier on Thursday.
The group has recently vowed to escalate attacks, including those targeting Israel, in response to the US campaign.
US strikes that began on Saturday over Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping amount to the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January. The US attacks have killed at least 50 people.
Yemen’s Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported at least four US strikes on the Al Mina district of the Red Sea city of Hodeidah on Thursday, an area which houses a major port and the headquarters of Houthi naval forces.
Al Masirah TV reported another strike on Al-Safra district of Saada which, according to Yemeni sources, houses weapons storage and training sites, and is considered one of the group’s most important and heavily fortified military strongholds.
Trump threatened on Monday to hold Iran accountable for any future Houthi attacks, warning of severe consequences. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the Houthis were independent and took their own strategic and operational decisions.
On Tuesday, the Houthis said they had fired a ballistic missile toward Israel and would expand their range of targets in that country in coming days in retaliation for renewed Israeli airstrikes in Gaza after weeks of relative calm.
The Houthis have carried out over 100 attacks on shipping since Israel’s war with Hamas began in late 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinians.
The attacks have disrupted global commerce and prompted the US military to launch a costly campaign to intercept missiles.
The Houthis are part of what has been dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” — an anti-Israel and anti-Western alliance of regional militias including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and armed groups in Iraq, all backed by Iran.
EU leaders deplore breakdown of the ceasefire in Gaza
- The European Council deplores the breakdown of the ceasefire in Gaza
BRUSSELS: EU leaders said on Thursday that they deplore the breakdown of the ceasefire in Gaza and Hamas’ refusal to hand over remaining hostages.
“The European Council deplores the breakdown of the ceasefire in Gaza, which has caused a large number of civilian casualties in recent air strikes. It deplores the refusal of Hamas to hand over the remaining hostages,” it said in a statement.
A month-old girl is pulled from the rubble in Gaza after an airstrike killed her parents
- A man sprinted away from the wreckage carrying a living infant swaddled in a blanket and handed her to a waiting ambulance crew
- The baby girl stirred fitfully as paramedics checked her over
GAZA: As rescuers dug through the remains of a collapsed apartment building in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday, they could hear the cries of a baby from underneath the rubble.
Suddenly, calls of “God is great” rang out. A man sprinted away from the wreckage carrying a living infant swaddled in a blanket and handed her to a waiting ambulance crew. The baby girl stirred fitfully as paramedics checked her over.
Her parents and brother were dead in the overnight Israeli airstrike.
“When we asked people, they said she is a month old and she has been under the rubble, since dawn,” said Hazen Attar, a civil defense first responder. “She had been screaming and then falling silent from time to time until we were able to get her out a short while ago, and thank God she is safe.”
The girl was identified as Ella Osama Abu Dagga. She had been born 25 days earlier, in the midst of a tenuous ceasefire that many Palestinians in Gaza had hoped would mark the end of a war that has devastated the enclave, killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly its entire population.
Only the girl’s grandparents survived the attack. Killed were her brother, mother and father, along with another family that included a father and his seven children. Rescuers digging through the rubble could be seen pulling out the small body of a child sprawled on the mattress where he had been sleeping.
The girl’s grandmother, Fatima Abu Dagga, sat with a group of other women in a relative’s house Thursday, taking turns cradling the infant. Her sons and their wives and eight grandchildren died in the bombing, and only the baby survived. She wept over the loss, and the return to the devastation of war.
“We weren’t really living in a truce,” she said. “We knew that at any moment the war might return. We never felt that there was stability, not at all.”
Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages. Israel blamed the renewed fighting on Hamas because the militant group rejected a new proposal for the second phase of the ceasefire that departed from their signed agreement, which was mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including more than 400 on Tuesday alone, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Health officials said most of the victims were women and children.
The strike that destroyed the infant girl’s home hit Abasan Al-Kabira, a village just outside of Khan Younis near the border with Israel, killing at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead.
It was inside an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
Nabil Abu Dagga, a relative of Ella’s family who lives nearby, rushed to the scene of the strike.
“People were sitting together and enjoying themselves on a Ramadan night, staying up together as a family,” he said. “... No one was expecting it and no one would imagine that a human could kill another human in this way.”
He and others started pulling out bodies. Then they heard the baby girl’s cries.
The Israel military says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it is deeply embedded in residential areas. The military did not immediately comment on the overnight strikes.
Hours later, the Israeli military restored a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, that it had maintained for most of the war, but which had been lifted under the ceasefire deal.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to what remains of their homes in the north after a ceasefire took hold in January.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.
Israel’s blistering retaliatory air and ground offensive has killed nearly 49,000 Palestinians since then, more than half of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not say how many were militants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
