BEIRUT: A quarry explosion caused an earthquake in Lebanon that was felt by the residents of Zahle in the Bekaa Valley on June 3, according to the internal security forces.
They had opened a probe to determine the cause of the tremor and found that its epicenter was the Qaa Al-Rim region, 4 km from the city of Zahle.
According to the investigation, the quake at 2:15 p.m. was “caused by an explosion in quarries in the Tweiti area, owned by two people from the Abu Hamdan family.”
The quake measured magnitude 3 on the Richter scale, according to Marleine Brax, director of the National Center for Geophysics, who added that the tremor “was preceded by the sound of an explosion.”
Nasser Yassin, minister of environment in the caretaker government, said: “We had issued a decision to close this quarry, in particular, some time ago, and there is a judicial order to seal it with red wax.”
According to the investigation carried out by a technical expert, “the explosion was caused by the use of large quantities of explosive materials that were introduced deep into the ground in the area of these quarries.”
Geological expert Dr. Nelson Rizk told Arab News: “Those who carry out the work of blasting quarries use a type of dynamite that gives medium but consecutive explosions, which affects the geological layers. It has nothing to do with ammonium nitrate. This type of dynamite is considered very strong and is prohibited globally, but in Lebanon, all prohibited materials can be found.”
Rizk added: “The use of these prohibited substances generates vibrations, has a bad effect on the environment and leaves toxic substances that threaten health.
“The quarries violate areas that may be close to the Yammouneh fault, which is an active and movable fault. Explosions may affect it and increase seismic movements. So far, the effect is very limited, and moving the fault requires vibrations of about magnitude 4 or 4.5 on the Richter scale.”
The Zahle tremors follow the destructive earthquake that struck Turkiye and Syria on Feb. 6.
Seismologist Dr. Tony El-Nemr said: “The tremor that occurred in the Zahle is suspiciously similar to the tremor that occurred in Keserwan (Mount Lebanon) on May 6 of last year in terms of timing (Saturday afternoon) and location (a quarry).”
The National Center for Geophysics, in collaboration with the National Institute of Earth Sciences in Grenoble, France, in a report on the movements of the earth’s crust in the eastern Mediterranean basin, drew the attention of geologists to “the concentration of earthquakes observed in Lebanon during the daytime and on official holidays.”
Minister Yassin said: “There are 1,235 sites where rock extraction is taking place on Lebanese territory, based on the survey conducted by the Lebanese army, dozens of which are in violation, and some are operating on critical seismic points. However, law enforcement on the ground is the responsibility of the security forces and local administrations.”
Yassin told Arab News that the quarries, crushers and sand quarries sector owed the state treasury at least $2.4 billion for materials extracted between 2007 and 2018, including about $1 billion in fees and taxes. “This does not include the cost of the suffering and encroachments that are left for the judiciary to determine, and what the affected individuals are supposed to claim in compensation,” he said.
He added that the Environment Ministry was working with the Justice Ministry “to study the most appropriate legal methods to pursue the case, as this is a fundamental step toward collecting treasury funds and stopping previous practices in this sector and thus reforming it.”
However, Ghayath Yazbek, head of the parliamentary environment committee, said that authorities were yet to decide 10 days after the quake “whether it was a natural earthquake or a human act.”
At a parliament meeting on Tuesday, the committee listened to representatives of the agencies in the Ministries of Environment, Public Works and Finance. It also heard accounts from the army and internal security forces.
Yazbek said: “The investigations are still underway, and we have not yet been able to know the nature of this explosion. Was it a seismic move or the product of human activity? What we heard is very disturbing, because the quarries in the Zahle area are supposed to be sealed with red wax.”
Quarry owners in the area were quick to deny that any work had taken place. But Yazbek said that an official in the internal security forces “confirmed intermittent activity.”
The National Authority for the Litani River was tasked by the government to prepare a report on sand quarries and mines within the Litani River Basin, revealing embezzled funds resulting from quarry operations.
The report provided a detailed account of all quarry, mine, and crusher sites in all Lebanese territories, revealing huge profits, damaged areas and widespread tax evasion.
According to the report, about 65,000,000 square meters across Lebanon has been damaged by activity from 1,356 quarries, crushers and sand mines. About 1.6 billion cubic meters of raw materials are estimated to have been extracted from the sites, resulting in profits of $24 billion.
Probe into Lebanon’s Zahle quake points to quarry blast
https://arab.news/8uq2e
Probe into Lebanon’s Zahle quake points to quarry blast
- According to the investigation, the quake at 2:15 p.m. was “caused by an explosion in quarries in the Tweiti area, owned by two people from the Abu Hamdan family”
- The quake measured magnitude 3 on the Richter scale, according to Marleine Brax, director of the National Center for Geophysics
Grandmother files war crimes case in Paris over Gaza killings
- The complaint argues the “genocide” allegation is based on the air strike being part of a larger Israeli project to “eliminate the Palestinian population and submit it to living conditions of a nature to entail the destruction of their group”
PARIS: The grandmother of two children with French nationality killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza has filed a legal complaint in Paris, accusing Israel of “genocide” and “murder,” her lawyer said on Friday.
Jacqueline Rivault filed her complaint with the “crimes against humanity” section of the Court of Paris, lawyer Arie Alimi said.
Rivault hopes the fact that her daughter’s children, aged six and nine, were French citizens means the country’s judiciary will decide it has jurisdiction to designate a magistrate to investigate the allegations.
Rights groups, lawyers, and some Israeli historians have described the Gaza war as “genocide.”
FASTFACT
Jacqueline Rivault filed her complaint with the ‘crimes against humanity’ section of the Court of Paris, lawyer Arie Alimi said.
The complaint states that “two F16 missiles fired by the Israeli army” killed Janna, six, and Abderrahim Abudaher, nine, in northern Gaza on October 24, 2023.
They and their family had sought refuge in another home “between Faluja and Beit Lahia” after leaving their own two days earlier due to heavy bombardment, the 48-page document stated.
One missile entered “through the roof and the second directly into the room where the family was,” it said.
Abderrahim was killed instantly, while his sister Janna died shortly after being taken to the hospital.
The complaint argues the “genocide” allegation is based on the air strike being part of a larger Israeli project to “eliminate the Palestinian population and submit it to living conditions of a nature to entail the destruction of their group.”
Though formally against unnamed parties, the complaint explicitly targets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government, and the military.
The children’s brother Omar was severely wounded but still lives in Gaza with their mother, identified as Yasmine Z., the complaint said.
A French court in 2019 convicted Yasmine Z. in absentia of having funded a “terrorist” group by distributing money in Gaza to members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed 54,677 people, mostly civilians, according to the Health Ministry there, figures the UB deems reliable.
No court has so far ruled that the ongoing conflict is a genocide.
But in rulings in January, March, and May 2024, the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest judicial organ, told Israel to do everything possible to “prevent” acts of genocide during its military operations in Gaza.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
‘No Eid’ for West Bank residents who lost sons in Israeli raids
- An armored car arrived at the site shortly after, unloading soldiers to clear the cemetery of its mourners, who walked away solemnly without protest
JENIN: Abeer Ghazzawi had little time to visit her two sons’ graves for Eid Al-Adha before Israeli soldiers cleared the cemetery near the refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
The Israeli army has conducted a months-long operation in the camp, which has forced Ghazzawi, along with thousands of other residents, from her home.
For Ghazzawi, the few precious minutes she spent at her sons’ graves still felt like a small victory.
“On the last Eid — Eid Al-Fitr, celebrating the end of Ramadan in March — they raided us. They even shot at us. But this Eid, there was no shooting, just that they kicked us out of the cemetery twice,” said the 48-year-old.
“We were able to visit our land, clean up around the graves, and pour rosewater and cologne on them,” she added.
As part of the Eid celebrations, families traditionally visit the graves of their loved ones.
In the Jenin camp cemetery, women and men had brought flowers for their deceased relatives, and many sat on the side of their loved ones’ graves as they remembered the dead, clearing away weeds and dust.
An armored car arrived at the site shortly after, unloading soldiers to clear the cemetery of its mourners, who walked away solemnly without protest.
Ghazzawi’s two sons, Mohammed and Basel, were killed in January 2024 in a Jenin hospital by undercover Israeli troops.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group claimed the two brothers as its fighters after their deaths.
Like Ghazzawi, many in Jenin mourned sons killed during one of the numerous Israeli operations that have targeted the city, a known bastion of Palestinian armed groups fighting Israel.
In the current months-long military operation in the north of the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, Israeli forces looking for militants have cleared three refugee camps and deployed tanks in Jenin.
Mohammed Abu Hjab, 51, went to the cemetery on the other side of the city to visit the grave of his son, killed in January by an Israeli strike that also killed five other people.
“There is no Eid. I lost my son — how can it be Eid for me?” he asked as he stood by the six small gravestones of the dead young men.
16 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza
- Palestinians collecting aid from GHF sites said there was no clear distribution system, describing the process as disorganized and chaotic
JERUSALEM: Sixteen Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military in Gaza on Friday, according to local health authorities, as a US- and Israeli-backed group said it had handed out aid in the enclave after earlier saying that its distribution sites were closed.
Health authorities said strikes had killed people in Gaza’s Jabalia, Tuffah, and Khan Younis areas.
Witnesses and medics said that Israeli planes and tanks had intensified strikes on Jabalia and nearby Beit Hanoun since the early hours.
The Israeli military issued an evacuation order for residents of parts of Gaza City on Friday ahead of an attack, as it presses an intensified campaign in the battered Palestinian territory.
“This is a final and urgent warning ahead of an impending strike,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee said.
The army “will strike all areas from which rockets are launched.”
The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said by email it had delivered aid on Friday, despite earlier announcing on its official Facebook page that its distribution sites were closed until further notice and that people should stay away from the sites “for their safety” after a series of deadly shootings.
The GHF opened two sites in southern Gaza on Thursday after closing all of its centers the previous day in the wake of shootings in the vicinity of its operations. It has so far operated four distribution centers.
The organization bypasses traditional relief agencies and has been criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the UN, for alleged lack of neutrality, which it denies.
Palestinians collecting aid from GHF sites said there was no clear distribution system, describing the process as disorganized and chaotic.
Footage released this week by the organization has shown similar scenes at one of its sites.
GHF halted distributions on Wednesday and said it was pressing Israeli forces to improve civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its operations after dozens of Palestinians were shot dead near the Rafah site over three consecutive days.
The Israeli military said on Sunday and Monday that its soldiers had fired warning shots.
On Tuesday, it said, forces also fired warning shots before firing toward Palestinians that it said were advancing toward troops. GHF has said that aid was safely handed out from its sites without any incident.
Israel army announces 4 soldiers killed in Gaza, thousands more troops needed
- News of the soldiers’ deaths came as Gaza’s civil defense agency reported 38 killed Friday in Israeli attacks across the territory
- The conscription issue has threatened to sink Netanyahu’s government
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military announced Friday the deaths of four soldiers in Gaza, saying it needed thousands more troops to press its offensive, just as the premier’s coalition faces the prospect of collapse over ultra-Orthodox conscription.
News of the soldiers’ deaths came as Gaza’s civil defense agency reported 38 killed Friday in Israeli attacks across the territory, where Palestinians observed the Eid Al-Adha holiday under the shadow of war for a second consecutive year.
Military spokesman Effie Defrin said the four soldiers were killed as they “were operating in the Khan Yunis area, in a compound belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization.”
“Around six in the morning, an explosive device detonated, causing part of the structure to collapse,” he said, adding that five other soldiers were wounded, one of them severely.
The deaths bring to 429 the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the start of the ground offensive in late October 2023.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended his condolences to the soldiers’ families, saying they “sacrificed their lives for the safety of all of us.”
Israel recently stepped up its Gaza campaign in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack sparked the war.
Asked by a reporter about the issue of ultra-Orthodox conscription, which has emerged as a thorn in the side of Netanyahu’s government, Defrin said “this is the need of the moment, an operational necessity.”
The army was short around 10,000 soldiers, he added, including about 6,000 in combat roles, adding that “tens of thousands more notices will be issued in the upcoming draft cycle.”
The conscription issue has threatened to sink Netanyahu’s government, with ultra-Orthodox religious parties warning they will pull out of his coalition if Netanyahu fails to make good on a promise to codify the military exemption for their community in law.
At the same time, much of the public has turned against the exemption amid the increasing strain put on reservists’ families by repeated call-up orders during the war.
In April, a military representative told a parliamentary committee that of 18,000 draft notices sent to ultra-Orthodox individuals, only 232 received a positive response.
Netanyahu’s office announced shortly after 1:00 am on Friday that he had met with a lawmaker from his Likud party who has recently pushed for a bill aimed at increasing the ultra-Orthodox enlistment and toughening sanctions on those who refuse.
The premier’s office said “significant progress was made,” with “unresolved issues” to be ironed out later.
Netanyahu also faced scrutiny after he admitted to supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes Hamas.
Knesset member and ex-defense minister Avigdor Liberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu’s direction, was “giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons.”
The European Council on Foreign Relations think tank describes the group a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks.”
The humanitarian situation in Gaza, meanwhile, has reached dire lows, with residents enduring severe shortages of food and other essentials, even after a more than two-month Israeli blockade on aid was recently eased.
The shortages have made it all but impossible for many Gazans to celebrate Eid Al-Adha, which fell on Friday and is traditionally marked with huge family meals and gifts of new clothes.
Suad Al-Qarra told AFP from Nasser Hospital on Friday that her son never got a chance to wear his new clothes.
“He went to get dressed and there was an explosion,” she said, her soft voice breaking. “I took him to the hospital and (they) found him dead.”
“They took the children from us,” she continued. “I bought him Eid clothes yesterday and he didn’t wear them, instead he wears a white shroud.”
In the Muslim faith, Eid commemorates the sacrifice Ibrahim — known to Christians and Jews as Abraham — was about to make by killing his son, before the angel Gabriel intervened and offered him a sheep to sacrifice instead.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s strikes.
Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 4,402 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18 after a brief truce, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,677, mostly civilians.
Israel army issues evacuation warning for parts of Gaza City
- The evacuation order comes at the beginning of the Eid Al-Adha holiday
- Israel has faced mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The Israeli military issued an evacuation order for residents of parts of Gaza City on Friday ahead of an attack, as it presses an intensified campaign in the battered Palestinian territory.
“This is a final and urgent warning ahead of an impending strike,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee said.
The army “will strike all areas from which rockets are launched.”
The evacuation order comes at the beginning of the Eid Al-Adha holiday, one of the main religious festivals of the Muslim calendar.
The Israeli military has recently stepped up its campaign in Gaza in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war.
International calls for a negotiated ceasefire have grown in recent weeks.
Hamas’s lead negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya said on Thursday that the Palestinian Islamist group was ready to enter a new round of talks aimed at sealing a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Talks aimed at brokering a new ceasefire have failed to yield a breakthrough since the last brief truce fell apart in March with the resumption of Israeli operations in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas appeared close to an agreement late last month, but a deal proved elusive, with each side accusing the other of scuppering a US-backed proposal.
Israel has faced mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, after it imposed a more than two-month blockade that led to widespread shortages of food and other essentials.
It recently eased the blockade and has worked with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to implement a new aid distribution mechanism via a handful of centers in south and central Gaza.
But since its inception, the GHF has been a magnet for criticism from the UN and other members of the aid world — which only intensified following a recent string of deadly incidents near its facilities.
Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 4,402 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,677, mostly civilians.
