BEIRUT: Lebanon on Tuesday condemned smuggling operations and “all that undermines the security and stability of the Kingdom and the safety of its people.”
Saudi Arabia banned the import of agricultural products from Lebanon after authorities seized a narcotic-stuffed pomegranate shipment in Dammam.
Lebanon’s Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmy has been tasked with updating the Saudi side on the measures being taken to tackle smuggling. He called Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and said: “Lebanon condemns the smuggling operation and all that undermines the security and stability of the Kingdom and the safety of its people.”
President Michel Aoun led a high-level meeting in Beirut to deal with the ban’s fallout and address the country’s smuggling problem.
But the statement issued afterwards was criticized for ignoring the smuggling from Syria and the smuggling that took place through legitimate crossings, some of which, it was said, were run by Hezbollah.
The Lebanese Economic Organizations, chaired by former minister Mohamed Choucair, warned that the state and all its institutions were “at stake.” They criticized the methods adopted by the authorities to face challenges, “especially the announcement of flamboyant positions” that no longer had any value on a domestic or international level.
They hoped the recommendations made during the meeting would lead to practical measures on combating drugs and dealers, controlling legal crossings, and closing illegal crossings.
“Then, the state can protect its reputation, dignity, economy, and foreign relations, especially with sister countries.” They feared that “indolence” in seriously addressing the crisis would allow criminals to further “defy the state” and persist with their conduct.
They called for security crackdowns, pursuing drug dealers and smugglers, prosecuting those involved in drugs, assigning the army and security services to prevent smuggling on the border between Lebanon and Syria, controlling ports, developing a list of exporters with a good reputation, and equipping ports and border crossings with scanners.
Naim Khalil, who leads the Syndicate of Fruit and Vegetable Exporters and Importers, said: “We have been working with Saudi Arabia for 40 years without any harassment.”
He demanded the provision of “sophisticated scanners, police dogs, and strong personnel whose eyes are open to the harbor, as things are now out of control.”
Ibrahim Tarshishi, head of the Bekaa Farmers’ Association, repeated that there were 40 trucks loaded with Lebanese products scattered between the port of Jeddah, the port of Beirut, and the Syrian-Lebanese borders.
He demanded sifting through exporters and giving priority to well-known companies. “As for the companies that entered the market recently, they have neither bank balances nor a commercial registration. We also hope that the certificate of origin is verified.”
A number of farmers said that talk of the ban reducing prices was inaccurate.
The farmers hoped that “the measures would lead to stopping shell companies that export agricultural products when we do not know their owners. The Cedar Company, which was responsible for the pomegranate shipment, is one of these companies.”
Lebanon condemns ‘all that undermines’ KSA stability, security
https://arab.news/8wj3q
Lebanon condemns ‘all that undermines’ KSA stability, security
- Saudi Arabia banned the import of agricultural products from Lebanon after authorities seized a narcotic-stuffed pomegranate shipment in Dammam
Four killed in Syria in attack on Aleppo university dorms, state news agency says
- Islamist militants launched an incursion on Wednesday into a dozen towns and villages in the northwestern province of Aleppo
- The attack was the biggest since March 2020 when Russia agreed to a ceasefire to end years of fighting
DUBAI: Four civilians including two students were killed on Friday in the Syrian city of Aleppo in insurgent shelling of university student dormitories, the state news agency SANA reported.
More than 240 people, mostly combatants, were killed as intense fighting approached Syria’s northern Aleppo city after militants launched a major offensive on government-held areas this week, a monitor said Friday.
Rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham launched an incursion on Wednesday into a dozen towns and villages in the northwestern province of Aleppo, which is controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government forces.
“The combatants’ death toll in the ongoing... operation in the Idlib and Aleppo countrysides has risen to 218,” since Wednesday, said the British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
In addition to the fighters, it said 24 civilians were killed.
Syrian ally Russia launched air strikes that killed 19 civilians on Thursday, while another civilian had been killed in Syrian army shelling a day earlier, said the Observatory which on Thursday had reported an overall toll of about 200 dead, including the civilians.
The attack was the biggest since March 2020 when Russia, which backs Assad, and Turkiye, which supports the rebels, agreed to a ceasefire to end years of fighting that had uprooted millions of Syrians opposed to Assad’s rule.
Israeli military says Lebanese prohibited from moving south to several villages
- Israel opened fire on Thursday toward what it called ‘suspects’ with vehicles arriving at several areas in the southern zone
DUBAI: Lebanese residents are prohibited from moving south to a line of villages and their surroundings until further notice, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X on Friday.
Israel said it opened fire on Thursday toward what it called “suspects” with vehicles arriving at several areas in the southern zone, saying it was a breach of the truce with Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, which came into effect on Wednesday.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah in turn accused Israel of violating the deal.
“The Israeli enemy is attacking those returning to the border villages,” Fadlallah told reporters, adding “there are violations today by Israel, even in this form.”
The Israeli military also said on Thursday the air force struck a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets in southern Lebanon, the first such attack since the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday morning.
In his recent post, Adraee called on Lebanese residents to not return to more than 60 southern villages, saying anyone who moves south of the specified line “puts themselves in danger.”
The Lebanese army earlier accused Israel of violating the ceasefire several times on Wednesday and Thursday.
The exchange of accusations highlighted the fragility of the ceasefire, which was brokered by the United States and France to end the conflict, fought in parallel with the Gaza war. The truce lasts for 60 days in the hope of reaching a permanent cessation of hostilities.
Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations
- The Iraqi labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers
- Authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers as Iraq seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector
KARBALA: Rami, a Syrian worker in Iraq, spends his 16-hour shifts at a restaurant fearing arrest as authorities crack down on undocumented migrants in the country better known for its own exodus.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of foreigners working without permits in Iraq, which after emerging from decades of conflict has become an unexpected destination for many seeking opportunities.
“I’ve been able to avoid the security forces and checkpoints,” said the 27-year-old, who has lived in Iraq for seven years and asked that AFP use a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Between 10 in the morning and 2:00 am the next day, he toils at a shawarma shop in the holy city of Karbala, where millions of Shiite pilgrims congregate every year.
“My greatest fear is to be expelled back to Syria where I’d have to do military service,” he said.
The labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers.
Now the authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers, as the country seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector.
Many like Rami work in the service industry in Iraq.
One Baghdad restaurant owner admitted to AFP that he has to play cat and mouse with the authorities during inspections, asking some employees to make themselves scarce.
Not all those who work for him are registered, he said, because of the costly fees involved.
Some of the undocumented workers in Iraq first came as pilgrims. In July, Labour Minister Ahmed Assadi said his services were investigating information that “50,000 Pakistani visitors” stayed on “to work illegally.”
Despite threats of expulsion because of the scale of issue, the authorities at the end of November launched a scheme for “Syrian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers” to regularise their employment by applying online before December 25.
The ministry says it will take legal action against anyone who brings in or employs undocumented foreign workers.
Rami has decided to play safe, even though “I really want” to acquire legal employment status.
“But I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m waiting to see what my friends do, and then I’ll do the same.”
Current Iraqi law caps the number of foreign workers a company can employ at 50 percent, but the authorities now want to lower this to 30 percent.
“Today we allow in only qualified workers for jobs requiring skills” that are not currently available, labor ministry spokesman Nijm Al-Aqabi told AFP.
It’s a sensitive issue — for the past two decades, even the powerful oil sector has been dominated by a foreign workforce. But now the authorities are seeking to favor Iraqis.
“There are large companies contracted to the government” which have been asked to limit “foreign worker numbers to 30 percent,” said Aqabi.
“This is in the interests of the domestic labor market,” he said, as 1.6 million Iraqis are unemployed.
He recognized that each household has the right to employ a foreign domestic worker, claiming this was work Iraqis did not want to do.
One agency launched in 2021 that brings in domestic workers from Niger, Ghana and Ethiopia confirms the high demand.
“Before we used to bring in 40 women, but now it’s around 100” a year, said an employee at the agency, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
It was a trend picked up from rich countries in the Gulf, the employee said.
“The situation in Iraq is getting better, and with salaries now higher, Iraqi home owners are looking for comfort.”
A domestic worker earns about $230 a month, but the authorities have quintupled the registration fee, with a work permit now costing more than $800.
In the summer, Human Rights Watch denounced what it called a campaign of arbitrary arrests and expulsions targeting Syrians, even those with the necessary paperwork.
HRW said that both homes and work places had been targeted by raids.
Ahmed — another pseudonym — is a 31-year-old Syrian who has been undocumented in Iraq for the past year and a half.
He began as a cook in Baghdad and later moved to Karbala.
“Life is hard here — we don’t have any rights,” he told AFP. “We come in illegally, and the security forces are after us.”
His wife did not accompany him. She stayed in Syria.
“I’d go back if I could,” said Ahmed. “But life there is very difficult. There’s no work.”
Gaza journalists win video award for ‘powerful’ war coverage
- Belal Alsabbagh and Youssef assouna were presented the “News” award for their work on the devastating conflict set off by last year’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel
- The prize has been awarded since 1995 in memory of video journalist Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow in 1993, to highlight the work of freelance video journalists
LONDON: Gaza video correspondents Belal Alsabbagh and Youssef Hassouna on Thursday won a Rory Peck award for their “powerful” coverage of the brutal war in the Palestinian territory for Agence France-Presse.
The prize has been awarded since 1995 in memory of video journalist Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow in 1993, to highlight the work of freelance video journalists.
Alsabbagh, 33, and Hassouna, 47, were presented the “News” award for their work on the devastating conflict set off by last year’s October 7 attack on Israel.
“Belal and Youssef’s work is remarkable for its range of emotions, we understood the dreadful scale of destruction in their drone shots and in the relentless attack,” the jury said in a tribute.
“This is visual reporting of the highest order. It’s not just a checklist of breaking news events, but powerful storytelling with empathy, courage and talent,” it added.
Among the heart-wrenching images entered in the contest were sequences of a man desperately searching for a relative in the debris after a strike, a woman howling in grief over a body in a hospital and Gaza residents queuing for food.
Alsabbagh, who left Gaza in April with his wife and daughter, was in London for the ceremony. In September, he was also awarded a prestigious Bayeux-Calvados prize for war correspondents.
“Despite my overflowing joy tonight, I have a heavy heart because members of my family and friends are still in Gaza, facing hunger, fear and still facing bombs,” said Alsabbagh, who has worked for AFP since 2017.
Hassouna, who has contributed to AFP since 2014 and is still in Gaza, has had to move home 10 times since the start of the war.
He has been one of the key independent video journalists working for AFP during the conflict.
“Everybody at AFP is tremendously proud of Belal and the work of his colleagues in Gaza. This award is a deserved recompense for his excellent journalism under seemingly impossible conditions,” said AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd.
“This prize rewards the courage of Belal and Youssef whose images for AFP showed television stations around the world the reality of the conflict in Gaza and the consequences for its civilian population,” said Guillaume Meyer, deputy news director for video and audio.
“I am very happy that their commitment and the quality of their work in incredibly difficult conditions has been recognized,” Meyer added.
“The Rory Peck award gives a precious support to freelance journalists without whom we could not work in numerous countries,” he said.
This is the sixth time since 2014 that an AFP correspondent has won a Rory Peck prize.
Among this year’s three finalists was Luckenson Jean, a freelancer for AFP covering the crisis in Haiti, where armed gangs have run amok.
44,330 Gazans killed in more than 13 months of war
- Medics said Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday
GAZA CITY: The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 44,330 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 48 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,933 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Medics said Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday as forces stepped up bombardments on central areas and pushed tanks deeper in the north and south of the enclave.
Six people were killed in two separate airstrikes on a house and near the hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, while four others were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south.
In Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out several airstrikes, destroying a multi-floor building and hitting roads outside mosques.
At least seven people were killed in some of those strikes, health officials said.
Medics said at least two people, a woman and a child, were killed in tank shelling that hit western areas of Nuseirat, while an air strike killed five others in a house nearby. In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, tanks pushed deeper into the northern-west area of the city, residents said.
Months of attempts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.
