SHTULA: A momentary shriek presages a bone-juddering blast, followed by a plume of thick black smoke. Refrigerator-sized holes mark where Hezbollah anti-tank missiles like this one have hit along Israel’s northern border.
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack triggered war in Gaza.
The Iran-backed militants have launched thousands of rockets, mortar rounds, anti-tank missiles and attack drones at northern Israel.
The exchanges of fire have killed at least 11 civilians and 14 soldiers in Israel, according to the army.
At least 429 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including at least 82 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
The barrages have dealt a heavy blow to Israeli towns and villages near the border which have been evacuated for more than six months. They have also served as a warning of the far greater destruction that would be wrought by a full-blown war.
The Israeli defense ministry body responsible for rebuilding northern communities said it had received 930 reports of damage — around a third of them categorized as moderate to critical — the vast majority of it inflicted on residential buildings.
Hundreds more cases remain unassessed in towns like Arab Al-Aramsheh, Menara and Metula because it is considered too hazardous for inspectors to enter.
The report did not cite an estimated cost, but a senior defense official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said reconstruction in the hardest hit locations could take months to a year.
In Kibbutz Menara, around 30 percent of buildings have suffered substantial damage, the official said.
At least 26 percent of the reported damage was caused by Israeli troops who have entrenched themselves in evacuated towns and villages along the 120-kilometer (75-mile) border, according to the Northern Horizon Directorate report.
The Israeli military said it “regrets any damage to the residents’ property” and is working to minimize damage as much as possible.
The most vulnerable communities were evacuated immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, displacing some 60,000 civilians. Access to them is restricted by the Israeli military.
But AFP reporters managed to visit Shtula, a village of 300 people sitting on the border that has 44 recorded cases of moderate to critical damage.
Although her neighbor’s house suffered a direct hit, and missiles pounded several other nearby buildings facing Lebanon, Ora Hatan, 60, is one of the few residents who has stayed on.
“An anti-tank missile flew over the chicken coop and right into the house,” said Hatan, pointing at a neighbor’s property.
“A direct hit. Fortunately, no one was home.”
Even after more than seven months of intense bombardment, Hatan won’t leave.
“It’s my house. It’s my land. It’s my country. Where would I go? Why should I go?” she told AFP on her balcony overlooking the Lebanese village of Raymeh two kilometers (little more than a mile) away.
As the war grinds on, and Hezbollah attacks show no sign of relenting, northern residents have grown weary of what many see as talk and little action.
For months, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said Israel will restore security — diplomatically or militarily. The two sides fought a devastating war in 2006.
Israel’s Channel 13 reported that National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told lawmakers Wednesday that “the cabinet hasn’t defined any clear objective concerning the north — not dates, not targets, not strategic aims.”
A poll published Thursday by Israel’s public broadcaster showed that 46 percent of respondents backed military action in Lebanon, while 29 percent opposed.
On Thursday, a few hundred activists set up a protest camp to demand urgent action to restore security and allow displaced residents to return to their homes in the north.
One of the organizers, Nisan Zeevi, lives in kibbutz Kfar Giladi and serves on its emergency response team.
Across the valley from his home, a fortified tower seven storys high looms over the kibbutzim in the valley below that have been frequent targets of drone and missile strikes.
A house in the neighboring kibbutz bears a gaping hole where a missile strike killed a woman and her son in January.
Zeevi said the camp aimed “to express our protest to the Israeli government and to the world until they find a solution to the severe security situation.”
Hezbollah barrages deal heavy damage in northern Israel
https://arab.news/zce69
Hezbollah barrages deal heavy damage in northern Israel
- The barrages have dealt a heavy blow to Israeli towns and villages near the border which have been evacuated for more than six months
- The Israeli defense ministry body responsible for rebuilding northern communities said it had received 930 reports of damage
Syrians flee sectarian killing into Lebanon
- More than 350 families had made the same journey into Lebanon in recent days, according to local Lebanese authorities, fleeing the violence in which the UN human rights office said entire families including women and children had been killed
MASOUDIYEH, Lebanon: Fearing for their lives, Syrian men, women and children waded through a river to safety in Lebanon on Tuesday, among hundreds of people who have fled to the neighboring country to escape sectarian killing targeting their Alawite community.
A woman who made the crossing on Sunday said she’d seen the bodies of seven slain people in her village. Another said she’d spent three days trapped at home by heavy gunfire. A man said militants had threatened to kill all the people in his village because they are members of the minority Alawite community.
Days after the killing began in Syria’s coastal region, the steady stream of refugees continued: Reuters reporters saw more than 50 cross the knee-high waters of the Nahr El Kabir River into Lebanon during a half-hour period on Tuesday, carrying children and whatever possessions they could gather.
Nada Mohammed, who crossed into Lebanon on Sunday, said her village near the border, Karto, was woken up by a phone call at 4 a.m. from relatives telling her the militants had arrived in the village and she should pack her things.
“We saw seven people they slaughtered,” she said.
Her daughter, Sally Rajab Abboud, described bearded foreigners with long hair who spoke formal Arabic rather than Syrian dialect.
More than 350 families had made the same journey into Lebanon in recent days, according to local Lebanese authorities, fleeing the violence in which the UN human rights office said entire families including women and children had been killed.
Violence began to spread through the coastal region, home to many Alawites, on Thursday, when Syria’s Sunni Islamist-led government said its forces were attacked by remnants of the regime of Syria’s ousted leader Bashar Assad, an Alawite.
Security forces poured into the region to crush the insurrection, while mosques in areas loyal to the government issued calls for jihad, or holy struggle. During violence that followed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 1,200 civilians were killed, the vast majority of them Alawites.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Monday promised to punish those responsible, including his own allies if necessary. Sharaa said he could not yet say whether forces from the defense ministry — which has merged former rebels into one structure — were involved in the sectarian killings.
Abou Jaafar Sakkour, who fled to Lebanon from the village of Khirbet Al-Hamam near the Lebanese border, said militants had threatened to slaughter its residents because they are Alawites, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Some of the militants were Syrian while others were foreign, he said. The attackers had ordered the women to leave the village, and declared that it belonged to them.
“What are we guilty of? We want international protection, whether it’s Israel, Russia, from France. Anything that will protect us,” Sakkour said.
Lebanese from nearby Alawite villages assisted the Syrian refugees as they crossed the river into Lebanon on Tuesday.
Lebanon received more than a million Syrian refugees after the eruption of the Syrian conflict in 2011 as people fled Assad’s rule.
Crossing the river with her two children on Tuesday, a woman said she had fled her home in the city of Tartous after being trapped indoors for three days by heavy gunfire.
“We didn’t go out, we didn’t even stand in front of the windows, we shut the curtains, and we didn’t go out at all, all the doors were locked, but we haven’t slept for three nights,” she said, declining to give her name.
“There’s fear.”
Yemen rebels say will resume attacks on Israeli shipping over blocked Gaza aid
- The attacks will continue until Israel allows aid deliveries in Gaza, the Houthis say
SANAA: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on Tuesday said they would resume attacks on Israeli shipping after their deadline for the resumption of aid deliveries into Gaza expired.
The Houthis said they were “resuming the ban on the passage of all Israeli ships” in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Baba Al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden after Israel failed to meet the four-day deadline the rebels set on Friday for the suspended aid deliveries to be restarted.
Israel blocked all aid into the war-battered territory just over a week ago in an effort to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages it took in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
An increasingly fragile truce was then further hit on Sunday when Israel announced it would cut off the electricity supply to a water desalination plant in Gaza, although Hamas announced on Tuesday that a fresh round of ceasefire talks had begun in Qatar.
The Houthis, who control much of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, fired scores of drones and missiles at Israeli-linked and other shipping in the Red Sea during the Gaza war, until calling a halt when a ceasefire started in January.
The rebels said on Tuesday that the ban on Israeli shipping would “take effect from the time this statement is issued” and that “any Israeli ship attempting to violate this ban shall be targeted in the declared zone of operations.”
The attacks will continue until Israel allows aid deliveries in Gaza, the Houthis said.
A Syrian man barely escaped a wave of sectarian killings. His brothers did not
- Of the roughly 1,000 civilians killed, nearly 200 were in Baniyas, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor
- Government reinforcements — which residents said did not intervene during the height of the killings — were eventually sent to restore order, and calm appeared to hold by late Monday
BEIRUT: The Haydar family huddled in their apartment while gunmen stalked their hometown of Baniyas, hunting for members of Syria’s minority Alawite sect like them. After 24 terrifying hours, a friend helped Samir Haydar, his wife and two sons escape — just in time.
Minutes later, the gunmen, who were Sunni Muslim, broke into his building and killed the Alawites still there, Haydar said. Down the street, gunmen took Haydar’s two older brothers and a nephew out of their homes and killed them, too.
“If I had stayed five minutes longer, I with my entire family would have been killed,” Haydar, 67, said.
This past weekend’s sectarian violence was possibly among the bloodiest 72 hours in Syria’s modern history, including the 14 years of civil war from which the country is now emerging — and it threatens to open an endless cycle of vengeance. From early Friday to Sunday night, attackers rampaged through coastal provinces heavily populated by Alawites, as well as the nearby provinces of Hama and Homs, killing people, sometimes entire families, on streets, in homes, on rooftops.
Of the roughly 1,000 civilians killed, nearly 200 were in Baniyas, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. The toll could not be independently confirmed.
Among the attackers, witnesses say, were hard-line Sunni Islamists, including Syria-based jihadi foreign fighters, who came from nearby provinces. Some had been allied to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the disbanded insurgent group that in December led the overthrow of longtime autocrat Bashar Assad and whose members dominate the interim government now running the country.
But many were local Sunnis, unleashing hatreds pent-up over past atrocities blamed on Alawites loyal to Assad.
Survivors say some of the attackers in Baniyas were Syrians from surrounding villages seeking vengeance over a 2013 massacre in the nearby town of Beyda, where paramilitaries killed several hundred Sunnis. It was one of several mass killings under then-President Assad, whose attempts to crush protests helped foment an armed insurgency.
Assad, who is Alawite, filled his security agencies and paramilitaries with members of the sect. Some Sunnis blame the entire community for Assad’s brutal crackdowns, though Alawites say they also suffered under his rule.
“We have a lot of injustices. Many were waiting for the chance to let it out,” Haydar said from his hiding place after fleeing home. “Instead of the pain teaching them mercy and making them against killings, they translated it into more killings.”
Government reinforcements — which residents said did not intervene during the height of the killings — were eventually sent to restore order, and calm appeared to hold by late Monday. The government declared an independent committee appointed by the president will investigate the attacks. But the bloodshed has deeply tainted attempts by interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to convince Syria’s minorities that he wants to include them as equals.
Blood and plunder
The bloodshed began after reports Thursday night of seemingly coordinated attacks by Assad loyalists on government security forces near the city of Latakia and elsewhere along the coast.
The Associated Press spoke to nine residents from villages and towns hit by the violence. Some refused to give their names out of fear for their security.
Haydar said that around daybreak Friday, hordes of armed Sunnis descended on Baniyas and surrounding villages in vans and pickup trucks, and waving guns. Another resident said she heard the gunmen shouting, “God is great,” and threatening and cursing the Alawite residents.
Images and videos soon surfaced online, mostly posted by the perpetrators. Some show fighters in military fatigues pushing residents out of homes into the streets, beating some with rifles and forcing them to bark like dogs, in humiliation. Some show fighters firing on civilians. The hundreds of videos posted could not be immediately verified.
Looting and theft were rampant. Haydar said armed men went into the building of one of his elder brothers, 74-year-old Rafik, stole his valuables and left.
Hiding in his home, Haydar said he saw fighters shoot a neighbor at the entrance of a nearby building. One fighter turned the body over to ensure he was dead.
Shot on the roof
Around noon Friday, Haydar got a call from the wife of his other brother, Iskander. She screamed that fighters had stormed their building and taken away Iskander and their son, Mourad.
Later, Mourad told his mother what happened. The fighters dragged them to the roof and made him, his father and five other men lie down. Then they sprayed them with bullets. Miraculously, Mourad was uninjured. His father and the rest of the men were killed.
Ali Sheha, a 57-year-old resident of the same neighborhood, said five of his neighbors were shot in the street, including two doctors and their two children. The gunmen prevented anyone from coming to remove their bodies for hours. Acting fast, Sheha secured a van. He, his wife, three children and other families squeezed in and fled.
That night, the village where they took refuge also came under attack. Sheha said he and hundreds of others fled again, sleeping for two nights outside among olive and pine trees.
By Saturday afternoon, Sheha said he knew of at least 20 people killed, including three cousins and two of their children with special needs, gunned down in their food stall.
When fighters entered his nephew’s house, they asked if his wife was Sunni, because she wore a headscarf. They checked her ID and let her go. His sister, living in a building with many Christians, said the gunmen spared them and her husband, in his 80s.
Haydar and his family escaped with help from a Sunni friend who negotiated for hours with the gunmen, explaining that Haydar had once been imprisoned by Assad’s security forces.
The friend, declining to give his name for fear of retribution, said the gunmen shoved and hit him, criticizing him for harboring Alawites.
During the weekend’s violence, the friend sheltered 15 Alawites in his home, he said by phone from Baniyas.
In Tuwaym, an Alawite village in the Sunni-majority Hama province in central Syria, a resident said gunmen summoned the men, beat them with rifles and shot some. By the time they left, they had killed 25 members of her family, including her father and nine children between the ages of four and 15.
“I carried the children with my own hands. Some had their bones coming out of the gaping wounds,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety.
Aftermath
In Baniyas and elsewhere, bodies were left lying in streets, cars and apartment buildings, civil rescue teams said as they began to collect the dead. Families put out lists online of their slain loved ones. Haydar buried his brothers Sunday.
Sheha said that as of Tuesday evening, he and hundreds of others remained in the forests outside Baniyas, too afraid to return home. At night, when it gets cold, they shelter in a nearby village.
Sheha, who had been part of a group of Alawite civilians that sought to build bridges with the new government, said the Alawites can’t be blamed for the crimes of Assad’s forces. Most Alawites were impoverished under Assad, abused by his top aides and forced to show loyalty and serve in the army, he said.
Instead of seeing inclusion and transitional justice, the community is targeted in revenge, he said.
“Now people are not just afraid, they’re terrified,” he said. “They have no trust, even in the government security that are present ... We’re terrified of anyone we see with a mask on.”
Trump’s hostage envoy visited Iraq to push to free kidnapped Princeton researcher, sources say
- “The United States cannot tolerate hostage-taking of US nationals or those of our partners such as Israel
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler traveled to Iraq last month to push for the release of Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was kidnapped in Iraq nearly two years ago, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Since taking office, Boehler has stepped up efforts to secure the release of Tsurkov, a Princeton University student who went missing in Iraq during a research trip in March 2023, publicly urging the Iraqi government to help her get home.
“The Trump Administration has done more in just a few weeks than the previous administration did in almost two years,” Emma Tsurkov, sister of Elizabeth told Reuters in a statement.
“I am especially grateful to SPEHA (Special Envoy) Boehler for going directly to meet with Prime Minister (Mohammed Shia Al-)Sudani in Baghdad. His engagement with Sudani makes it clear that the US holds Sudani responsible for finding a way to get my sister home.”
An Iraqi official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters confirmed Boehler had visited in February to discuss the Tsurkov case but did not provide further details.
Tsurkov is being held in Iraq by the Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, a group backed by Iran, according to Israeli officials.
Boehler is trying to negotiate a deal under which Tsurkov will be released in exchange for six members of Iran-aligned Lebanese militia Hezbollah, one of the sources, adding that there was a whole of government effort to bring her back.
“The United States cannot tolerate hostage-taking of US nationals or those of our partners such as Israel. We have and will continue to underscore with the Iraqi government the urgency of securing Elizabeth Tsurkov’s release,” a State Department spokesperson at Boehler’s office said.
In a February 5 post on social media platform X, Boehler advocated for Tsurkov’s release.
“Elizabeth Tsurkov is a Princeton student held hostage in Iraq! The @IraqiPMO consistently made false promises to the prior administration about releasing her. BUT NOW @realDonaldTrump IS ON TO YOU,” Boehler said, tagging the official handle of Sudani’s office.
He said if Tsurkov does not come home, then the Iraqi prime minister’s office is “either incapable and should be FiRED or worse COMPLICIT. Bring Elizabeth home now!“
Under the previous administration of former President Joe Biden, Tsurkov’s family struggled to get Washington to throw its weight behind the efforts to secure her release. US officials then said there was little they could do because she is not an American citizen.
“March 21 will be the two year anniversary of my sister’s kidnapping. Hopefully she will not endure March 21 in their custody,” Emma Tsurkov said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on the phone on February 25 with Sudani. While a State Department statement on the conversation did not mention a discussion on Tsurkov, one of the sources said Rubio pushed the Iraqi prime minister on her case.
China, Iran and Russia hold joint naval drills in Mideast as tensions rise between Tehran and US
- Neither China nor Russia actively patrol the wider Middle East, whose waterways remain crucial for global energy supplies
TEHRAN, Iran: China, Iran and Russia conducted joint naval drills Tuesday in the Middle East, offering a show of force in a region still uneasy over Tehran’s rapidly expanding nuclear program and as Yemen’s Houthi rebels threaten new attacks on ships.
The joint drills, called the Maritime Security Belt 2025, took place in the Gulf of Oman near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which a fifth of all crude oil traded worldwide passes. The area around the strait in the past has seen Iran seize commercial ships and launch suspected attacks in the time since President Donald Trump first unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
The drill marked the fifth year the three countries took part in the drills.
This year’s drill likely sparked a warning late Monday from the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, which said there was GPS interference in the strait, with disruptions lasting for several hours and forcing crews to rely on backup navigation methods.
“This was likely GPS jamming to reduce the targeting capability of drones and missiles,” wrote Shaun Robertson, an intelligence analyst at the EOS Risk Group. “However, electronic navigation system interference has been reported in this region previously during periods of increased tension and military exercises.”
China and Russia in Mideast waters patrolled by US Navy
Russia’s Defense Ministry identified the vessels it sent to the drill as the corvettes Rezky and the Hero of the Russian Federation Aldar Tsydenzhapov, as well as the tanker Pechenega. China’s Defense Ministry said it sent the guided-missile destroyer Baotou and the comprehensive supply ship Gaoyouhu. Neither offered a count of the personnel involved.
Neither China nor Russia actively patrol the wider Middle East, whose waterways remain crucial for global energy supplies. Instead they broadly cede that to Western nations largely led by the US Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. Observers for the drill included Azerbaijan, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates — with the Americans likely keeping watch as well.
However, both China and Russia have deep interests in Iran. For China, it has continued to purchase Iranian crude oil despite facing Western sanctions, likely at a discount compared to global prices. Beijing also remains one of the top markets for Iranian imports.
Russia, meanwhile, has relied on Iran for the supply of bomb-carrying drones it uses in its war on Ukraine.
Iran highlights drills to boost public support after Israeli attack
The drills marked a major moment for Iran’s state-run television network. It’s aired segments showing live-fire during a night drill and sailors manning deck guns on a vessel. The exercises come after an Iranian monthslong drill that followed a direct Israeli attack on the country, targeting its air defenses and sites associated with its ballistic missile program.
While Tehran sought to downplay the assault, it shook the wider populace and came as a campaign of Israeli assassinations and attacks have decimated Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a series of militant groups allied with the Islamic Republic. Syrian President Bashar Assad was also overthrown in December, further weakening Iran’s grip on the wider region.
All the while, Iran has increasingly stockpiled more uranium enriched at near weapons-grade levels, something only done by atomic-armed nations. Tehran has long maintained its program is for peaceful purposes, even as its officials increasingly threaten to pursue the bomb.
Iran’s nuclear program has drawn warnings from both Israel and the US that it won’t allow Tehran to obtain a bomb, signalling military action against the program could happen. But just last week, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, seeking a new nuclear deal with Tehran. Iran says it hasn’t received any letter, but still issued a flurry of pronouncements over it.
Yemen’s Houthis renew threats to Mideast waterways
As a shaky ceasefire holds in Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have threatened to resume their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connect the two waterways.
The rebels’ secretive leader Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi warned Friday that attacks against Israel-linked vessels off Yemen would resume within four days if aid didn’t resume to Gaza. That deadline came and went Tuesday. Though no attacks were reported, that again put shippers on edge. The rebels had targeted over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels in their campaign that has also killed four sailors.
