BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said an Israeli air strike on Sunday killed two fighters from the Iran-backed group, with the health ministry reporting another death from an attack days ago.
Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since October.
Tensions have skyrocketed since a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late last month killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, just hours before the assassination, blamed on Israel, of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
An “Israeli strike that targeted the village of Taybeh today left two dead,” the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement.
Hezbollah confirmed they were group fighters, killed in Taybeh near the border with Israel.
The official National News Agency reported that “a drone fired two missiles on the village of Taybeh.”
The Israeli military said it had “struck throughout the day several Hezbollah military structures in the area of Adaisseh,” which is located next to Taybeh.
In another statement later on Sunday the military said its forces had “struck a Hezbollah terrorist cell in the area of Taybeh” as well as “a military structure in the area of Derdghaiya.”
“Following the strike, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of weapons inside the structure” in Derdghaiya, it added.
A union of local governments in the area said at least three Syrians were killed in an Israeli strike on Derdghaiya. The Lebanese health ministry gave a different toll, saying two Syrians were killed and several others including a Lebanese wounded.
Separately, the health ministry specified that a Lebanese man who had succumbed to injuries sustained in an Israeli strike “several days ago” on the southern village of Beit Lif was a Hezbollah fighter, not a civilian as earlier reported.
Hezbollah claimed several attacks against military positions in northern Israel on Sunday, including at least two using attack drones.
On Saturday, the Iran-backed group said it had launched “squadrons of explosive-laden drones” at a north Israel army base following the killing of a Hamas commander in the south Lebanon city of Sidon a day earlier.
The cross-border violence since early October has killed at least 565 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including at least 116 civilians, according to the AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Thousands have been displaced from both sides of the border due to the fighting.
Hezbollah says two fighters killed in Israeli strike
https://arab.news/8akm6
Hezbollah says two fighters killed in Israeli strike
- Cross-border violence since early October has killed at least 565 people in Lebanon
Qatar reiterates support for two-state solution after Trump calls for moving Gazans
Foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari did not reveal details of conversations with US officials, but said Qatar often didn’t see “eye to eye” with its allies.
“Our position has always been clear to the necessity of the Palestinian people receiving their rights, and that the two-state solution is the only path forward,” Ansari told a regular media briefing when asked about Trump’s comments.
“We don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things with all our allies, not only the United States, but we work very closely with them to make sure that we formulate policy together,” he added.
Qatar, the US and Egypt jointly mediated the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal that went into effect a little over a week ago, halting more than 15 months of fighting sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
On Monday, Trump repeated his wish to move Gazans to another country, after earlier saying he wanted to “clean out” the devastated Palestinian territory.
The US president told reporters he would “like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much.”
Ansari said Qatar, which hosts the region’s biggest US military base, was “engaging fully with the Trump administration and with envoy (Steve) Witkoff,” the president’s special representative for the Middle East.
“I’m not going to comment on the type of discussions we are having with them right now, but I would say that it is very productive,” Ansari said.
“We have been working very closely with the Trump administration over the regional issues as a whole, including the Palestinian issue.”
Turkiye says it killed 15 Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq
ISTANBUL: Turkiye said on Wednesday it had killed 13 Kurdish militants in northern Syria and two in Iraq, a sign that Ankara has pressed on with its campaign against fighters, some with possible links to US allies, since Donald Trump took office in the White House last week.
The Turkish defense ministry said the Kurdish fighters it had “neutralized” in Syria belonged to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Turkiye considers the PKK and YPG to be identical; the United States considers them separate groups, having banned the PKK as terrorists but recruited the YPG as its main allies in Syria in the campaign against Islamic State.
Turkiye has long called on Washington to withdraw support for the YPG, and has expressed hope that Trump would revise the policy inherited from the previous administration of President Joe Biden.
Tuesday’s report of major clashes was the second within days: Turkiye also reported having killed 13 Kurdish militants on Sunday.
Turkish forces and their allies in Syria have repeatedly fought with Kurdish militants there since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Assad last month.
Turkiye has said that the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed umbrella group that includes the Kurdish YPG, must disarm or face a military intervention.
Under the Biden administration the United States has had 2,000 troops in Syria fighting alongside the SDF and YPG.
Israeli, US strike on Iran nuclear program would be ‘crazy’: FM
- Abbas Araghchi: Such an attack ‘would be faced with an immediate and decisive response’
- ‘Lots of things should be done’ by Washington to bring Tehran to negotiating table
LONDON: Israel and the US would be “crazy” to strike Iran’s nuclear program, the latter’s foreign minister has said.
“We’ve made it clear that any attack to our nuclear facilities would be faced with an immediate and decisive response,” Abbas Araghchi told Sky News in his first interview since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think they’ll do that crazy thing. This is really crazy. And this would turn the whole region into a very bad disaster.”
In the interview, Araghchi addressed concerns over his country’s nuclear program. Trump’s first term as president saw the US pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which had eased sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limited uranium enrichment.
Iran claims that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, but its return to high levels of enrichment in recent years has alarmed Western governments.
Trump has said he prefers a diplomatic solution, and a new deal with Iran would be “nice.” But Araghchi said credible US guarantees would need to be provided to Iran for negotiations to begin.
“The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time,” he added. “Lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence … We haven’t heard anything but the ‘nice’ word, and this is obviously not enough.”
Russian delegation arrives in Syria: state media
DAMASCUS: A Russian government delegation has arrived in Damascus for the first time since Moscow's ally President Bashar al-Assad was toppled, Russia's TASS state news agency reported on Tuesday.
The delegation, which is expected to hold talks with Syria's new rulers, includes Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Alexander Lavrentiev, the Kremlin's special envoy for Syria.
Russia was a longtime Assad ally and intervened militarily to help him recapture territory from rebels during the more than decade-long war that erupted in 2011 after his crackdown of protests against his rule.
But a lightning rebel offensive late last year pushed Assad to flee Damascus in December — first to the Russian-run Hmeimim Air Base in northern Syria then to Moscow.
Days later, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Bogdanov as saying that Russia’s contacts with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham — the Islamist rebel group that spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad — were “proceeding in constructive fashion.”
Bogdanov said Russia hoped to maintain its two bases in Syria — a naval base in Tartous and the Hmeimim base near the port city of Latakia.
But this month, Syria’s new administration canceled a contract with Russian firm STG Stroytransgaz to manage and operate the Tartous port, according to three Syrian businessmen and media reports.
The contract had been signed under Assad.
Syria’s interim defense minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, told Reuters in an interview in Damascus this month that negotiations were under way with Russia to determine the nature of the future relationship between the two states.
“We as a state are committed to the agreements that were present in the past but there may be some amendments in the negotiations that would achieve Syria’s interests,” Abu Qasra said.
Turkiye arrests talent manager over trying to overthrow the government
- In 2013, small demonstrations against plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, swelled into hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the government nationwide
- According to the court, Barim had “intensive communication” with defendants in the Gezi Park trial at the time of the protests
ISTANBUL: A Turkish court arrested a well-known talent manager over the charge of attempting to overthrow the government in an investigation connected to nationwide protests in 2013, a court document seen by Reuters showed.
Ayse Barim was initially detained on Friday and eight actors were summoned to give statements to the court as witnesses in her file.
According to her statement to the prosecutor, Barim denied the charges and said she had been to the area of the 2013 protests a few times individually as an observer and to accompany the people she worked with.
Barim denied the charges and said she did not coordinate actors she is working with or request them to support the protests, the court document showed.
“My job as a manager is to manage the career of the actors I work with and represent them in the best possible way. These artists have their own ideas, wills and decisions. I did not organize anything by directing their ideas,” Barim said, according to transcript of her statement.
In 2013, small demonstrations against plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, swelled into hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the government nationwide — and prompted a harsh crackdown.
According to the court, Barim had “intensive communication” with defendants in the Gezi Park trial at the time of the protests. These defendants include businessman Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in April 2022.
Kavala has faced various charges, including espionage, financing the Gezi Park protests and involvement in a failed coup against Erdogan’s government in 2016. He has been in prison since November 2017.
Human rights groups say 11 people were killed and more than 8,000 injured in the state response, and more than 3,000 were arrested.
President Tayyip Erdogan’s government said the crackdown was warranted given threats to the state, and he has called the protesters “looters” who were partly funded from abroad, a claim denied by defendants and civil society groups.
