BEIRUT: Foreign embassies in Lebanon continued to take precautionary measures on Saturday amid fears of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty expressed his country’s “deep concern over the dangerous escalation” in the region in a phone call with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib. Abdelatty confirmed Egypt’s support for Lebanon in “confronting the threats surrounding it,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Egyptian statement came as the US and UK urged their citizens in Lebanon to leave the country immediately.
Despite flight suspensions and cancelations, “commercial transportation options to leave Lebanon remain available,” the US Embassy said.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said tensions “are high, and the situation could deteriorate rapidly.”
The Swedish Embassy recently announced that it would relocate its staff to Cyprus due to security concerns.
In light of the escalating tension, several airlines have canceled or extended the suspension of their flights to Beirut. The Netherlands’ Transavia Airlines extended the suspension of its flights to and from Beirut until Tuesday, as did Air France. Kuwait Airways will suspend flights to and from Beirut starting Monday.
The Israeli army resumed its assassinations of Hezbollah members in southern Lebanon and on the Beirut-Damascus road on Saturday, as Israel awaits Hezbollah’s response to the killing of its top military commander, Fuad Shukr, on Tuesday.
One Israeli raid targeted a residential building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing seven civilians and an Israeli military drone targeted a car on Tyre’s Al-Bazuriyya road, setting it on fire and killing its driver. Hezbollah identified the victim as Nazih Abed Ali from the southern village of Aitit. The victim was reportedly the brother of a paramedic — Mahmoud Abed Ali — who rushed to the attack site. Videos circulating on social media showed Mahmoud at the site, a few kilometers from Aitit, saying that “crying is forbidden” and that he would collect the remains of his brother, “who is a father of three.”
The Public Health Emergency Operations Center confirmed that the attack killed one person and injured two others.
A few hours later, the Syrian Observatory announced the death of a person in an Israeli raid that targeted a car on the Damascus-Beirut road.
Israel also expanded its hostilities toward the Lebanese-Syrian borders on Friday night and Saturday morning. Israeli warplanes targeted the surroundings of Al-Qusayr and the military Al-Dabaa airport.
Israeli forces also raided the Matraba crossing — an illegal crossing used by Hezbollah to transport trucks and members from Lebanon to Syria and vice versa.
Israel also targeted a truck convoy in the surroundings of the Hosh Al-Sayyid Ali area, killing a Syrian driver, according to AFP.
Israeli shelling targeting houses in frontier villages including Rab Al-Thalathin, Houla, Tayr Harfa, Aita Al-Shaab, and Mays Al-Jabal led to destruction of property but no further casualties.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, said they had targeted Israeli military positions with missiles including “the Al-Assi site, the Al-Summaqah site in the occupied Kfarshuba Hills, a military force in the Avivim settlement, and a building used by Israeli soldiers in the Mattat settlement.”
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah vowed at Shukr’s funeral to take “decisive action” and warned Israelis that they would be “left in tears instead of laughter.”
Multiple security sources reported that Hezbollah had evacuated sites in the southern suburbs of Beirut, including homes inhabited by party officials, as a precautionary measure.
Since the commencement of hostilities on Oct. 8, the total number of casualties among Hezbollah, its allies, and civilians, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese, is 521.
Israeli media on Saturday reported an “unusual incident in northern Israel, specifically in the settlement of Liman in Upper Galilee, where a man attempted to infiltrate into Lebanon.” The man’s identity was not disclosed.
Foreign embassies announce precautionary measures amid fears of all-out Israel-Hezbollah war
https://arab.news/68mag
Foreign embassies announce precautionary measures amid fears of all-out Israel-Hezbollah war
- Israel resumes killing of Hezbollah members and pursues them to the Syrian border
- The Egyptian statement came as the US and UK urged their citizens in Lebanon to leave the country immediately
RSF paramilitaries kill 31 in Sudanese city of Sennar, activists say
DUBAI/CAIRO: At least 31 people have been killed and 100 wounded since the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces renewed an assault on the city of Sennar in southeastern Sudan on Sunday, a legal activist group said.
Several parts of the city including the main market have been targeted by RSF artillery fire, said Emergency Lawyers, which has monitored civilian deaths and other humanitarian violations.
The progress of the RSF, which already controls most of Sennar and at least half of the country, has slowed in the southeast as heavy rains have made movement difficult.
Its war with Sudan’s army has created the world’s largest hunger and internal displacement crises, killing tens of thousands of civilians and destroying most of Sudan’s infrastructure and economy.
Emergency Lawyers said the army had killed at least four people in Al-Souki, a town near Sennar, during airstrikes. The RSF killed one person and wounded 17 in artillery strikes on el-Obeid, another town it has struggled to assert full control of.
Both sides in Sudan’s 18-month-old civil war have committed abuses that may amount to war crimes, a UN-mandated mission said on Friday, calling for peacekeepers and a country-wide arms embargo.
On Saturday, Sudan’s army-aligned foreign ministry rejected both recommendations, calling the idea of international peacekeepers “the wish of Sudan’s enemies and it will not be fulfilled.”
UN rights chief calls on states to challenge Israel over occupation
- Nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza
GENEVA: The UN human rights chief said on Monday that ending the nearly year-long war in Gaza is a priority and he asked countries to act on what he called Israel’s “blatant disregard” for international law in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials, since Israel unleashed a military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and a further 250 taken hostage.
“Ending that war and averting a full-blown regional conflict is an absolute and urgent priority,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a speech at the opening of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“States must not – cannot – accept blatant disregard for international law, including binding decisions of the (UN) Security Council and orders of the International Court of Justice, neither in this nor any other situation.”
He cited an opinion released by the UN top court in July that called Israel’s occupation illegal and said this situation must be “comprehensively addressed.” Israel has rejected the opinion and called it one-sided.
Turk’s comments were given in a broad speech marking the mid-way point of his four-year term as UN rights chief where he described massive challenges around the world and a crisis of political leadership.
“In every region around the world, we see deep-seated power dynamics at play to grab or hold on to power, at the expense of universal human rights,” he said at the start of the five-week session where rights violations in Sudan, Afghanistan and Ukraine will also be debated.
Lebanon judge orders warrant of ex-central bank boss Salameh: judicial official
- Salameh was long feted as a financial wizard in Lebanon but left office with his reputation shredded by corruption charges at home and abroad
BEIRUT: A Lebanese judge on Monday issued a formal arrest warrant for former central bank governor Riad Salameh, days after he was taken into custody over alleged embezzlement, a judicial official said.
The investigating judge finished questioning Salameh and “issued an arrest warrant against him,” the official told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.
Salameh ran the central bank for three decades until July 2023.
If the prosecution continues, it would mark a rare case of a serving or retired senior Lebanese official facing accountability in a system which critics say has long shielded the elite.
Salameh was long feted as a financial wizard in Lebanon but left office with his reputation shredded by corruption charges at home and abroad and the catastrophic collapse of Lebanon’s financial system in 2019.
Salameh’s media office has said he will not comment publicly on the case, in line with the law. It said in a statement he had cooperated in the past with more than 20 criminal probes in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and was cooperating with the investigation after his detention.
Salameh has denied previous corruption charges.
Turkey says its air strikes hit PKK targets in northern Iraq
ISTANBUL: Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq destroyed 21 targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on Monday, Turkey's Defence Ministry said, adding many militants had been "neutralised" in the attack.
Ankara typically uses the term "neutralised" to mean killed.
The operations targeted PKK bases in Gara, Hakurk, Metina and Qandil, the ministry statement said.
Israeli strikes in central Syria kill seven — war monitor
- Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since 2011, targeting pro-Iranian groups
- Latest airstrikes targeted an area housing scientific research centers and weapons experts
DAMASCUS: Israeli strikes in central Syria killed at least seven people late Sunday, including three civilians, a war monitor reported.
Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes there, targeting pro-Iranian groups in particular.
“The number of dead in the Israeli strikes on the Masyaf region stands at seven, namely three civilians, including a man and his son who were in a car, and four unidentified soldiers,” said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a vast network of sources inside the country.
The attack also wounded at least 15 others and destroyed military facilities in the area, the Observatory said.
“Thirteen violent explosions rang out in the zone housing scientific research centers in Masyaf where pro-Iranian groups and weapons development experts are present,” the group said in an earlier statement.
The Syrian state news agency Sana had previously reported five killed and 19 wounded near Masyaf, citing a medical source.
“Around 11:20 p.m. (2020 GMT) on Sunday, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack from the northwest of Lebanon targeting a number of military sites in the central region,” Sana reported, citing a military source.
“Our air defense shot down some missiles.”
Israeli air raids in Syria have intensified since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
At the end of August, three pro-Iranian fighters were killed in the central region of Homs in strikes attributed to Israel, the Observatory said.
A few days later, the Israeli military said it had killed an unspecified number of fighters belonging to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad in a strike in Syria near the Lebanese border.
