BEIRUT: Hostilities on the southern Lebanese front decreased on Thursday as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah entered its 110th day.
The displacement of people from the border area played a significant role in reducing civilian casualties, especially after Israeli shelling began targeting homes in Lebanese villages.
At noon, an Israeli strike on the town of Bazouriye — 7 km east of the city of Tyre — targeted a house, injuring two people, one of them a woman.
An Israeli warplane, meanwhile, struck the home of Radwan Ataya in the town of Tayr Harfa during a funeral procession for the mother of a dead Hezbollah member. No one was inside the house, which has now been targeted four times since the start of hostilities.
The Israel Defense Forces violated the rules of engagement as a strike targeted Birket Jabbour in the Jezzine area, which is a highland located north of the Litani River, above the village of Kfar Houneh, outside UNIFIL’s area of operations and not subject to the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had previously spoken in September of “the presence of a Hezbollah military airport in the Birket Jabbour area.”
The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation later confirmed that the IDF attacked Hezbollah positions, including a military landing strip 20 km north of Metula.
Northern Israeli settlements woke up to media stories, including in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, reporting “infiltration of three individuals from Lebanon,” prompting IDF personnel to rush to the area.
The IDF asked the residents of the Hanita settlement — on the border area with Lebanon — to barricade themselves in their homes.
Roads were closed and checkpoints set up in several border areas.
The Israeli military also declared a state of alert in nine settlements near the border with Lebanon.
Israeli Channel 13 said military helicopters carried out search operations over the Shlomi settlement while soldiers combed the border area.
In a brief statement issued later, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee denied any infiltration had occurred.
The IDF claimed that two drones crossed from Lebanese territory into Israel and landed in Kfar Blum with no casualties reported.
Hezbollah announced that it carried out an aerial attack with two dive bombers against an air defense system site and Iron Dome platforms near the Kfar Blum settlement, causing direct hits.
The outskirts of the Tayr Harfa, Alma Al-Shaab, and Dhahira villages were subject to concentrated artillery bombardment from early morning, following cautious calm in the western and central sectors the previous night.
At the same time, the IDF carried out a sweep operation in the surroundings of the Israeli Al-Hadeb military outpost using medium and heavy machine guns.
It also launched flares over the surrounding area and adjacent forests to protect it.
Hezbollah announced targeting Al-Radar outpost in the occupied Shebaa Farms area with missiles, causing direct hits.
Israeli reconnaissance planes continued to fly over southern Lebanon amid foggy and rainy weather.
Lebanon will likely experience a polar storm from the Black Sea on Friday, and snow is expected to fall in some areas.
Israel targets Hezbollah’s ‘landing strip north of Litani River’
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Israel targets Hezbollah’s ‘landing strip north of Litani River’
- Two civilians wounded in Israeli raid on house in southern Lebanon
- The Israel Defense Forces violated the rules of engagement as a strike targeted Birket Jabbour in the Jezzine area
Macron says West must be cautious over new Syria rulers
“We must regard the regime change in Syria without naivety,” Macron said in a speech to French ambassadors after Islamist-led forces toppled Assad last month, adding France would not abandon “freedom fighters, like the Kurds” who are fighting extremist groups in Syria.
UN: Over 30 million in need of aid in war-torn Sudan
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced
- Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: More than 30 million people, over half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the United Nations said on Monday.
The UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of 30.4 million people it said are in need in what it called “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
Sudan has been torn apart and pushed to the brink of famine by the war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, which, in addition to 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
A further 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan’s borders to escape the war, which means over a quarter of the country’s pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, are now uprooted.
Famine has already been declared in five areas in Sudan and is expected to take hold of five more areas by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.
Sudan’s army-aligned government has denied there is famine, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
For much of the conflict, the UN has struggled to raise even a quarter of the funds it has targeted for its humanitarian response in the impoverished northeast African country.
Sudan has often been called the world’s “forgotten” war, overshadowed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine despite the scale of the horrors inflicted upon civilians.
Jordanian FM discusses rebuilding Syria in Turkiye talks
DUBAI: The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi highlighted on Tuesday the need to help Syria regain its security, stability, and sovereignty during discussions in Turkiye.
Talks also focused on providing support to the Syrian people and addressing the challenge of rebuilding the war-torn country.
He underscored Jordan's firm stance against any aggression on Syria’s sovereignty, rejecting Israeli attacks on Syrian territory.
The minister also expressed solidarity with Turkey, supporting its rights in confronting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), emphasizing the importance of regional cooperation to ensure peace and stability.
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“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.
