IDLIB: For more than a decade, a steady flow of Syrians have crossed the border from their war-torn country into Lebanon. But anti-refugee sentiment is rising there, and in the past two months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have gone the other way.
They’re taking a smugglers’ route home across remote mountainous terrain, on motorcycle or on foot, then traveling by car on a risky drive through government-held territory into opposition-held northwestern Syria, avoiding checkpoints or bribing their way through.
Until this year, the numbers returning from Lebanon were so low that the local government in Idlib run by the insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al Sham had not formally tracked them. Now it has recorded 1,041 people arriving from Lebanon in May, up from 446 the month before. A Turkish-backed local administration overseeing other parts of northwest Syria said arrivals from Lebanon have increased there, too.
Tiny, crisis-wracked Lebanon is the host of the highest per capita population of refugees in the world and has long felt the strain. About 780,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the UN refugee agency there and hundreds of thousands more are unregistered.
For years, and particularly since the country sank into an unprecedented economic crisis in 2019, Lebanese officials have called for the refugees to be returned to Syria or resettled elsewhere. Tensions flared in April when an official with the Christian nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Pascal Suleiman, was killed in what military officials said was a botched carjacking by a Syrian gang.
That prompted outbreaks of anti-Syrian violence by vigilante groups. Lebanese security agencies cracked down on refugees, raiding and closing down businesses employing undocumented Syrian workers.
In hundreds of cases, authorities have deported refugees. The Lebanese government has also organized “voluntary return” trips for those willing to return to government-held areas, but few have signed up, fearing retaliation from Syria’s government and security forces.
As precarious as the situation is in Lebanon, most refugees still prefer it to northwest Syria, which is controlled by a patchwork of armed groups under regular bombing by Syrian government forces. It also suffers from aid cuts by international organizations that say resources are going to newer crises elsewhere in the world.
For Walid Mohammed Abdel Bakki, who went back to Idlib in April, the problems of staying in Lebanon finally outweighed the dangers of return.
“Life in Lebanon was hell, and in the end we lost my son,” he said.
Abdel Bakki’s adult son, Ali, 30, who he said has struggled with schizophrenia, disappeared for several days in early April after heading from the Bekaa valley to Beirut to visit his sister and look for work.
His family eventually found him at a police station in the town of Baabda. He was alive but “his body was all black and blue,” Abdel Bakki said. Some reports by activist groups said he was beaten by a racist gang, but Abdel Bakki asserted that his son had been arrested by Lebanese army intelligence for reasons that are unclear. Ali described being beaten and tortured with electric shocks, he said. He died several days later.
A spokesman for army intelligence did not respond to a request for comment. Faysal Dalloul, the forensic doctor who examined Ali, said he had multiple “superficial” wounds but scans of his head and chest had not found anything abnormal, and concluded that his death was natural.
Abdel Bakki was distraught enough that he borrowed $1,200 to pay smugglers to take him and his 11-year-old son to northwestern Syria, a journey that included an arduous trek through the mountains on foot.
“We spent a week on the road and we were afraid all the time,” he said.
They now stay with relatives in Idlib. Their own house had been damaged in an airstrike and then gutted by thieves.
Mohammad Hassan, director of the Access Center for Human Rights, an nongovernmental organization tracking the conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, said an “orchestrated wave of hate speech and violence against refugees, justified by political leaders” is pushing some to leave out of fear that otherwise they will be forcibly deported.
While Lebanese officials have warned against vigilante attacks on refugees, they also regularly blame Syrians for rising crime rates and called for more restrictions on them.
Hassan said the route from Lebanon to Idlib is “controlled by Lebanese and Syrian smuggling gangs linked with local and cross-border militias” and is not safe.
The route is particularly risky for those who are wanted for arrest in Syria’s government-controlled areas for dodging army service or for real or suspected affiliation with the opposition.
Ramzi Youssef, from southern Idlib province, moved to Lebanon before Syria’s civil war for work. He remained as a refugee after the conflict began.
He returned to Idlib last year with his wife and children, paying $2,000 to smugglers, driven by “racism, pressure from the state, the economic collapse in Lebanon and the lack of security.”
In Aleppo, the family was stopped at a checkpoint and detained after the soldiers realized they had come from Lebanon. Youssef said he was transferred among several military branches and interrogated.
“I was tortured a lot, even though I was outside the country since 2009 and had nothing to do with anything (in the war),” he said. “They held me responsible for other people, for my relatives.”
Syria’s government has denied reports of torture and extrajudicial killings in detention centers and accuses Western governments of launching smear campaigns against it and supporting “terrorists.”
In the end, Youssef was released and sent to compulsory military service. He escaped weeks later and made his way to Idlib with his family.
He said he has not looked back.
“Despite the poverty and living in a tent and everything else, believe me, I’m happy and until now I haven’t regretted that I came back from Lebanon,” he said.
Some Syrian refugees risk returning to opposition-held areas as hostility in host Lebanon grows
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Some Syrian refugees risk returning to opposition-held areas as hostility in host Lebanon grows
- As precarious as the situation is in Lebanon, most refugees still prefer it to northwest Syria, which is controlled by a patchwork of armed groups
Yemen’s Houthis mourn slain Hezbollah chief, say resistance will not be broken
Both Hezbollah and the Houthis are part of the Axis of Resistance
CAIRO: The Houthi movement in Yemen on Saturday mourned the death of Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, its ally in an Iran-backed alliance opposing Israel, in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
“The resistance will not be broken, and the Jihadist spirit of the Mujahideen brothers in Lebanon and on all fronts of support will grow stronger and bigger,” the group said in a statement.
Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah’s killing after the Israeli military said it had eliminated him in an airstrike in Beirut on Friday.
Both Hezbollah and the Houthis are part of the Axis of Resistance, an alliance built up over years of Iranian support against Israel and US influence in the Middle East.
The Houthis have launched repeated drone and missile strikes on ships they say are affiliated to Israel, in the crucial shipping channels of the Red Sea, the Bab Al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden since November to show their support for Palestinians in the Gaza war.
The group, which controls northern Yemen, also fired missiles and drones at Israel repeatedly, some of which targeted central Israel for the first time.
Lebanese health minister says 11 killed, 108 injured on Friday
Beirut: A new Israeli strike hit a building in Hezbollah’s south Beirut bastion Saturday, a Lebanese security official told AFP, after Israel earlier said it killed group leader Hassan Nasrallah during intense bombardment.
“A new Israeli strike targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The strike hit the second and third floors of a building, the official said.
While Lebanese health minister said that 11 killed and 108 injured on Friday in Israeli strikes across Lebanon.
In addition to bombardment on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon’s south and east, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Saturday Israeli strikes outside the group’s traditional bastions, including in the Keserwan area north of Beirut.
Earlier Saturday, Israel’s military announced Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut the previous night, but there was no confirmation from the Lebanese armed group.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel one day after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
But Israel has in recent days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed hundreds and displaced around 118,000.
Continuing strikes on both sides of the border
On Saturday morning, the Israeli military carried out more than 140 airstrikes in southern Beirut and eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, including targeting a storage facility for anti-ship missiles in Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh. Israel said the missiles were stored underground beneath civilian apartment buildings. Hezbollah launched dozens of projectiles across northern and central Israel and deep into the Israel-occupied West Bank, damaging some buildings in the northern town of Safed.
In Beirut’s southern suburbs, smoke rose and the streets were empty after the area was pummeled overnight by heavy Israeli airstrikes. Shelters set up in the city center for displaced people were overflowing. Many families slept in public squares and beaches or in their cars. On the roads leading to the mountains above the capital, hundreds of people could be seen making an exodus on foot, holding infants and whatever belongings they could carry.
At least 720 people have been killed in Lebanon over the past week from Israeli airstrikes, according to the Health Ministry.
Hamas says Nasrallah ‘assassination’ will only strengthen resistance
- “Crimes and assassination by the occupation will only increase the determination and the insistence of the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon to go forward,” Hamas said
- His death marks a heavy blow to Hezbollah as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks
CAIRO: Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Saturday it mourned Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah following his killing in an Israeli airstrike, saying his death would only fuel the fight against Israel.
“Crimes and assassination by the occupation will only increase the determination and the insistence of the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon to go forward with all their might, bravery and pride on the footsteps of the martyrs...and pursue the path of resistance until victory and the dismissal of the occupation,” Hamas said in a statement.
His death marks a heavy blow to Hezbollah as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks. It is also a huge blow to Iran, given the major role he has played in the Tehran-backed regional “Axis of Resistance.”
The ‘Axis of Resistance’ refers to groups including Hezbollah that are backed by Iran and have been waging attacks on Israel since war erupted between their ally Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7.
“We reaffirm our absolute solidarity and standing with the brothers in Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, who are taking part in the battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood to defend Al-Aqsa mosque, alongside our people and our resistance,” Hamas added.
Islamic Jihad, another Iranian-backed Palestinian group, said in a statement: “Sooner or later, the resistance forces in Lebanon, Palestine, and the region will make the enemy pay the price of its crimes, and taste defeat for what its sinful hands have done.”
Gaza has a population of 2.3 million people, most of whom have been internally displaced by the war, which has killed 41,500 of them, according to Gaza health authorities.
Israel and Hamas have been fighting since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing some 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
Asked how Nasrallah’s death would affect the fight against Israel, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters: “The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah will not break the will of the resistance and we are confident that the occupation will lose the battle,” said Abu Zuhri.
Who is Hezbollah: powerful Lebanese armed group with regional role
- Group’s confirmation on Saturday of its leader’s killing marks an unprecedented blow
- Since July Israel has also killed several top Hezbollah commanders in strikes on south Beirut
Beirut:Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has been a powerful domestic and regional force, politically and militarily, but the group’s confirmation on Saturday of its leader’s killing marks an unprecedented blow.
Financed and armed by Iran, Hezbollah is the most prominent actor in the Axis of Resistance — regional pro-Tehran armed groups opposed to Israel. They also include Palestinian militants Hamas, Iraqi movements and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Since the day after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that triggered war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah launched cross-border rocket attacks from Lebanon seeking to tie up Israeli military resources in what it calls “support” for Hamas.
These exchanges escalated over the past week, and on Monday Israeli air raids killed more than 550 people, Lebanon’s health ministry said, in the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.
The raids targeted Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut, the south of Lebanon, and in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa area.
The air assault followed pager and walkie-talkie blasts that targeted operatives of Hezbollah, which blamed Israel, killing almost 40 people and wounding nearly 3,000.
Since July Israel has also killed several top Hezbollah commanders in strikes on south Beirut. These included Fuad Shukr, a key adviser to Nasrallah, and Ibrahim Aqil, head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.
On Saturday Israel’s military said it had killed Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the movement later confirmed his death.
AFP details Hezbollah’s influence here:
Hezbollah, whose name means “Party of God” in Arabic, was founded during the Lebanese civil war after Israel besieged the capital Beirut in 1982. The group has since become a powerful domestic political player.
Created at the initiative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Shiite Muslim movement gained its moniker as “the Resistance” by fighting Israeli troops who occupied southern Lebanon until 2000.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in July-August 2006 that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers, after the group kidnapped two Israeli troops in a cross-border raid.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 ended that conflict and called for the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers to be the only armed forces deployed in south Lebanon.
But Hezbollah holds sway in the area, enjoying broad support and where experts say it likely has a network of underground tunnels.
On August 16, the group released a video showing what appeared to be underground tunnels and large missile launchers, without revealing their location.
The group also has a strong presence in the Bekaa valley near Syria.
Hezbollah has bolstered its powerful arsenal, including with guided missiles, and says it can count on more than 100,000 fighters, though analysts have cited figures of around 50,000.
Nasrallah was elected secretary-general in 1992 after Israel assassinated his predecessor. He rarely appeared in public.
Hezbollah is a major actor in the Middle East, where it has supported and trained Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Houthis since October have claimed attacks on Israel and what they say are Israeli-linked shipping interests in the Red Sea area.
Hezbollah is also present in Syria, where many of its members have fought in support of President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war, with Damascus also an ally of Tehran.
Domestically, Hezbollah is the only Lebanese faction to have retained its weapons after the country’s civil war, doing so in the name of “resistance” against Israel.
It is now an important political player, though detractors have accused it of being a “state within a state.”
Political deadlock between Hezbollah allies and their adversaries since late 2022 has prevented the election of a new president, leaving Lebanon essentially leaderless during a years-long economic meltdown.
Founded in the Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah has become predominant in all Shiite Muslim areas of Lebanon. Its religious and financial institutions are based in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The movement runs an extensive social services network, complete with schools, hospitals, emergency responders and a wide range of charitable organizations serving its supporters.
Its trademark yellow flags and huge portraits of the bespectacled, bushy-bearded Nasrallah adorn areas of the country where the movement is popular.
The United States has considered Hezbollah a “terrorist” organization for years. The European Union applies the classification to the group’s armed wing.
A predecessor of Hezbollah claimed the 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut that killed 63 people, and double-bombings that killed more than 200 US Marines as well as 58 French soldiers the same year.
In 2022, a UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for a Beirut bombing in 2005 that killed Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafic Hariri.
Hezbollah confirms Hassan Nasrallah dead in Beirut strike
- Israel army says struck more than 140 Hezbollah targets ‘since last night’
- Hamas group says Nasrallah’s killing will only strengthen the resistance
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Lebanon’s Hezbollah confirmed on Saturday that its leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed and vowed to continue the battle against Israel, hours after the Israeli military announced his death in a strike in Beirut on Friday.
The military said that it carried out a precise airstrike while Hezbollah leadership met at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.
Ali Karki, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and additional Hezbollah commanders, were also killed in the attack, the Israeli military said. The Lebanese Health Ministry said that 6 people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes on Friday, which leveled six apartment buildings.
Israel’s military said Saturday that “most” senior leaders of Hezbollah had been killed, after it announced the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the group, which has not provided confirmation.
“Most of the senior leaders of Hezbollah have been eliminated,” military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told an online press briefing.
Nasrallah has lead Hezbollah for more than three decades. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
Israel maintained a heavy barrage of airstrikes against Hezbollah on Saturday, as Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets toward Israel.
The Israeli military said it was mobilizing additional reserve soldiers as tensions escalate with Lebanon.
The military said Saturday morning it was activating three battalions of reserve soldiers, after earlier sending two brigades to northern Israel earlier in the week to train for a possible ground invasion.
Hezbollah also said that it had targeted Israeli sites on Saturday including Rosh Pina in the north with missiles in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese cities, villages and civilians.
In Beirut’s southern suburbs, smoke rose and the streets were empty after the area was pummeled overnight by heavy Israeli airstrikes. Shelters set up in the city center for displaced people were overflowing. Many families slept in public squares and beaches or in their cars. On the roads leading to the mountains above the capital, hundreds of people could be seen making an exodus on foot, holding infants and whatever belongings they could carry.
At least six people were killed and 91 were wounded in the strikes against the Hezbollah on Friday, Lebanon’s health ministry said. It was the biggest blast to hit the Lebanese capital in the past year and appeared likely to push the escalating conflict closer to full-fledged war. At least 720 people have been killed in Lebanon during the week, according to the Health Ministry.
Reuters journalists heard more than 20 airstrikes in Beirut before dawn on Saturday and more after sunrise. Smoke could be seen rising over the city’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, known as the Dahiyeh.
Thousands of people have fled the area since Friday’s attack, congregating in squares, parks and sidewalks in downtown Beirut and seaside areas.
“They want to destroy Dahiyeh, they want to destroy all of us,” said Sari, a man in his 30s who gave only his first name, referring to the suburb he had fled after an Israeli evacuation order. Nearby, the newly displaced in Beirut’s Martyrs Square rolled mats onto the ground to try to sleep.
The Israeli military said a missile fired at central Israel on Saturday had struck an open area. Earlier, the military said about 10 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory and that some had been intercepted.
The Israeli military also said it was striking Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley, a region of eastern Lebanon at the Syrian border that it has pounded over the last week.
Israel’s five hours of continuous strikes on Beirut early on Saturday followed Friday’s attack, by far the most powerful by Israel on the city during the conflict with Hezbollah that has played out in parallel to the Gaza war for nearly a year.
The escalation has sharply increased fears the conflict could spiral out of control, potentially drawing in Iran, Hezbollah’s principal backer, as well as the United States.
There was no immediate confirmation of Nasrallah’s fate after Friday’s heavy strikes, but a source close to Hezbollah told Reuters he was not reachable.
“I think it’s too early to say... Sometimes they hide the fact when we succeed,” the Israeli official told reporters when asked if the strike on Friday had killed Nasrallah.
Earlier, a source close to Hezbollah told Reuters that Nasrallah was alive. Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported he was safe. A senior Iranian security official told Reuters that Tehran was checking his status.
Israel’s attacks in Lebanon have widened to new areas this week. On Saturday, an airstrike hit the Lebanese mountain town of Bhamdoun, southeast of Beirut, Lebanese lawmaker for the area Mark Daou told Reuters.
The mayor of Bhamdoun, Walid Khayrallah, told Reuters the strike hit a large empty lot and did not cause any casualties.
Death toll rises
Hours before the latest barrage, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations that his country had a right to continue the campaign.
“As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely,” he said.
Several delegations walked out as Netanyahu approached the lectern. He later cut short his New York trip to return to Israel.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television reported seven buildings were destroyed.
Hours later, the Israeli military told residents in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate as it targeted missile launchers and weapons storage sites it said were under civilian housing.
Hezbollah denied any weapons or arms depots were located in buildings that were hit in the Beirut suburbs, the group’s media office said in a statement.
Alaa Al-Din Saeed, a resident of a neighborhood that Israel identified as a target, told Reuters he was fleeing with his wife and three children.
“We found out on the television. There was a huge commotion in the neighborhood,” he said. The family grabbed clothes, identification papers and some cash but were stuck in traffic with others trying to flee.
“We’re going to the mountains. We’ll see how to spend the night — and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do.”
Around 100,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced this week, increasing the number uprooted in the country to well over 200,000.
Israel’s government has said that returning some 70,000 Israeli evacuees to their homes is a war aim.
Fear the fighting will spread
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and missiles against targets in Israel, including Tel Aviv. The group said it fired rockets on Friday at the northern Israeli city of Safed, where a woman was treated for minor injuries.
Israel’s air defense systems have ensured the damage has so far been minimal.
Iran, which said Friday’s attack crossed “red lines,” accused Israel of using US-made “bunker-busting” bombs.
At the UN, where the annual General Assembly met this week, the intensification prompted expressions of concern including by France, which with the US has proposed a 21-day ceasefire.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a New York press conference: “We believe the way forward is through diplomacy, not conflict... We will continue to work intentionally with all parties to urge them to choose that course.”
Hezbollah opened the latest bout in a decades-long conflict with a missile barrage against Israel immediately following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza last year.
