BEIRUT: An Israeli strike Friday killed two Hezbollah fighters near the border, a source close to the Lebanese group and Israel’s military said, while drones broadcast anti-Hezbollah messages over south Lebanon.
Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.
But fears of all-out war have skyrocketed after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, just hours before the killing, blamed on Israel, of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Iran and Hezbollah have vowed revenge.
Hezbollah in separate statements Friday said two of its fighters were “martyred on the road to Jerusalem,” the phrase it uses to refer to fighters killed by Israeli fire.
A source close to the Iran-backed group, requesting anonymity, said the pair were killed “in an Israeli strike in Naqura.”
The Israeli army said in a statement that “two Hezbollah terrorists were identified exiting a military structure belonging” to the group in the Naqura area, adding that air forces “eliminated” the operatives.
Elsewhere in south Lebanon, residents and local journalists circulated footage they said showed an Israeli drone flying over the village of Kunin, broadcasting the message in Arabic that the cross-border violence “is thanks to Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah,” the group’s chief.
On Thursday evening, residents of the southern town of Bint Jbeil circulated similar videos in which the same message could be heard.
The source close to Hezbollah told AFP the videos were authentic, calling the messages “incitement” against the group.
Hezbollah said it launched a series of attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Friday, including “a volley of Katyusha rockets” and “Falaq rockets” targeting forces stationed in the border town of Kiryat Shmona, and “explosive-laden drones” at another base.
Some of the attacks came “in response to the assassinations and attacks that the Israeli enemy carried out,” Hezbollah said, also mentioning Naqura.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Israeli strikes on several locations in south Lebanon on Friday.
Ten months of cross-border violence has killed some 561 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including at least 116 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
The violence has displaced more than 102,000 people in Lebanon, the International Organization for Migration said on Thursday, with tens of thousands also displaced across the border in Israel’s north.
Two Hezbollah fighters killed in Israeli strike in Lebanon
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Two Hezbollah fighters killed in Israeli strike in Lebanon
- Hezbollah in separate statements Friday said two of its fighters were “martyred on the road to Jerusalem“
- The pair were killed “in an Israeli strike in Naqura“
UNRWA chief vows to continue aid to Palestinians despite Israeli ban
OSLO: The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will continue to provide aid to people in the Palestinian territories despite an Israeli ban due to be implemented by the end of January, its director said Wednesday.
“We will ... stay and deliver,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a conference in Oslo. “UNRWA’s local staff will remain and continue to provide emergency assistance and where possible, education and primary health care,” he said.
Erdogan says Turkiye can ‘crush’ all terrorists in Syria
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged all countries to “take their hands off” Syria and said Turkiye had the capacity and ability to crush all terrorist organizations in the country, including Kurdish militia and Islamic State.
Speaking in parliament, Erdogan said the Kurdish YPG militia was the biggest problem in Syria now after the ousting of former President Bashar Assad, and added that the group would not be able to escape its inevitable end unless it lays down its arms.
World must keep pressure on Israel after Gaza truce: Palestinian PM
OSLO: The international community will have to maintain pressure on Israel after an hoped-for ceasefire in Gaza so it accepts the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa said on Wednesday.
A ceasefire agreement appears close following a recent round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying late Tuesday that a deal to end the 15-month war was “on the brink.”
“The ceasefire we’re talking about ... came about primarily because of international pressure. So pressure does pay off,” Mustafa said before a conference in Oslo.
Israel must “be shown what’s right and what’s wrong, and that the veto power on peace and statehood for Palestinians will not be accepted and tolerated any longer,” he told reporters.
He was speaking at the start of the third meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, gathering representatives from some 80 states and organizations in Oslo.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, the host of the meeting, said a “ceasefire is the prerequisite for peace, but it is not peace.”
“We need to move forward now toward a two-state solution. And since one of the two states exists, which is Israel, we need to build the other state, which is Palestine,” he added.
According to analysts, the two-state solution appears more remote than ever.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, firmly supported by US President-elect Donald Trump, is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israel is not represented at the Oslo meeting.
Norway angered Israel when it recognized the Palestinian state, together with Spain and Ireland, last May, a move later followed by Slovenia.
In a nod to history, Wednesday’s meeting was held in the Oslo City Hall, where Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
The then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Israeli prime minister and his foreign minister were honored for signing the Oslo accords a year earlier, which laid the foundation for Palestinian autonomy with the goal of an independent state.
Syrians in uproar after volunteers paint over prison walls
DAMASCUS: Families of missing persons have urged Syria’s new authorities to protect evidence of crimes under president Bashar Assad, after outrage over volunteers painting over etchings on walls inside a former jail.
Thousands poured out of prisons after Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of tens of thousands of relatives and friends who went missing.
In the chaos following his ouster, with journalists and families rushing to detention centers, official documents have been left unprotected, with some even looted or destroyed.
Rights groups have stressed the urgent need to preserve “evidence of atrocities,” which includes writings left by detainees on the walls of their cells.
But a video appearing to show young volunteers paint over such writings at an unnamed detention center with white paint and adorning its walls with the new Syrian flag, the depiction of a fireplace or broken chains has circulated on social media in recent days, angering activists.
“Painting the walls of security branches is disgraceful, especially before the start of new investigations into human rights violations” there, said Diab Serriya, a co-founder of Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP).
It is “an attempt to destroy the signs of torture or enforced disappearance and hampers efforts to... gather evidence,” he said.
Jomana Hasan Shtiwy, a Syrian held in three different facilities under Assad, often changing cells, said the writings on the walls held invaluable information.
“On the walls are names and telephone numbers to contact relatives and inform them about the fate of their children,” she said on Facebook.
In each new cell, “we would write a memory so that those who followed could remember us,” she said.
A petition appeared on Tuesday calling for the new Syrian authorities to better protect evidence, and give investigating the fate of those forcibly disappeared under Assad “the highest priority.”
It slammed what it called “the insensitive treatment of the sanctity” of former detention centers.
“Some have gone as far as to paint cells, obscuring their features, which for us represents... a great wronging of detainees,” said signatories, including ADMSP.
The president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said last week determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war would be a “huge challenge.”
Mirjana Spoljaric said the ICRC was following 43,000 cases, but that was probably just a fraction of the missing.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.
Iran’s navy unveils its first signals intelligence ship
DUBAI: Iran’s navy received its first signals intelligence ship on Wednesday, semi-official Tasnim news organization reported, a few days after the country’s army took delivery of 1,000 new drones.
The Zagros is a new category of military vessel equipped with electronic sensors and the ability to intercept cyber-operations and conduct intelligence monitoring, Tasnim said.
“The Zagros signals intelligence ship will be the watchful eye of Iran’s navy in the seas and oceans,” Navy Commander Shahram Irani said.
Earlier this month, Iran started two-month-long military exercises which have already included war games in which the elite Revolutionary Guards defended key nuclear installations in Natanz against mock attacks by missiles and drones.
The military drills and procurement come at a time of high tensions with arch-enemy Israel and the United States under incoming US president Donald Trump.
In October, the spokesperson of Iran’s government said the country plans to raise its military budget by around 200 percent to face growing threats.
