BEIRUT: Israel said Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon on Friday following overnight air strikes which destroyed dozens of launchers after its leader vowed retribution for deadly sabotage attacks on its communications.
The intensifying exchanges came as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss this week’s attacks on Hezbollah pagers and two-way radios, which killed 37 people and wounded thousands over two days.
Hezbollah said it targeted at least six Israeli military bases with salvos of rocket fire in response to overnight bombardment which people in south Lebanon described as among the fiercest so far.
“Some 140 rockets were fired from Lebanon within an hour,” an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
The military said that overnight its jets hit infrastructure and “approximately 100 launchers” ready to be fired.
Hezbollah said two of its fighters were killed, without elaborating.
Residents of Marjayoun, a Lebanese town close to the border, said the bombardment was among the heaviest since the border exchanges began in October last year.
“We were very scared, especially for my grandchildren,” said Nuha Abdo, 62. “We were moving them from one room to another.”
Clothing store owner Elie Rmeih, 45, said he counted more than 50 strikes.
“It was a terrifying scene and unlike anything we have experienced since the escalation began.
“We live in fear of a wider war, you don’t know where to go.”
The communications device explosions and intensifying air strikes came after Israel announced it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon.
For nearly a year, Israel’s firepower has been focused on Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily exchanges with Hezbollah militants.
International mediators have repeatedly tried to avert a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah and staunch the regional fallout of the Gaza war started by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Hezbollah maintains its fight is in support of Hamas, and its leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday that the attacks on Israel would continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts.
Speaking for the first time since the device blasts, Nasrallah warned Israel would face retribution.
Describing the attacks as a “massacre” and a possible “act of war,” Nasrallah said Israel would face “just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
The cross-border exchanges have killed hundreds in Lebanon, mostly fighters, and dozens in Israel, including soldiers. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have fled their homes.
Speaking to troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah will pay an increasing price” as Israel tries to “ensure the safe return” of its citizens to border areas.
“We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he said.
Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war.”
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the attacks set for Friday, he said Lebanon had filed a complaint against “Israel’s cyber-terrorist aggression that amounts to a war crime.”
Senior UN officials have also expressed concern about the legality of the Israeli sabotage.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called the blasts “shocking,” and said their impact on civilians was “unacceptable.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres said it was “very important... not to weaponize civilian objects.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been scrambling to salvage efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, called for restraint by everyone.
“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a Gaza ceasefire, he said.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy expressed “deep concern” over the rising tensions and renewed a call for Britons to leave Lebanon, saying the “situation could deteriorate rapidly.”
Hamas’s October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.
In the latest Gaza violence, the territory’s civil defense agency said an air strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp killed eight people. Another six people, including children, were killed in a separate strike on an apartment in Gaza City, it added.
The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers that exploded had been booby-trapped, a security official said.
Lebanon’s UN mission concurred, saying in a letter that the probe showed “the targeted devices were professionally booby-trapped... before arriving in Lebanon, and were detonated by sending emails to the devices.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the pagers that exploded were produced by the Hungary-based BAC Consulting on behalf of Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. It cited intelligence officers as saying BAC was part of an Israeli front.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary.”
Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border
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Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border
- The intensifying exchanges came as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss this week’s attacks on Hezbollah pagers and two-way radios
- Hezbollah said it targeted at least six Israeli military bases with salvos of rocket fire in response to overnight bombardment
Allies providing Sudan’s warring parties with weapons are ‘enabling the slaughter,’ UN official says
Allies providing Sudan’s warring parties with weapons are ‘enabling the slaughter,’ UN official says
- Last month, the RSF rampaged through the province of Gezira, attacking towns and villages, killing dozens of people and raping women and girls, according to the UN and local groups
GENEVA: The UN political chief accused allies of Sudan’s warring military and paramilitary forces on Tuesday of “enabling the slaughter” that has killed more than 24,000 people and created the world’s worst displacement crisis.
“This is unconscionable,” Rosemary DiCarlo told the UN Security Council. “It is illegal, and it must end.”
She didn’t name the countries funding and providing weapons to Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, but she said they have a responsibility to press both sides to work for a negotiated settlement of the war.
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur, which was wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003. The UN recently warned that the country has been pushed to the brink of famine.
Last month, the RSF rampaged through the province of Gezira, attacking towns and villages, killing dozens of people and raping women and girls, according to the UN and local groups.
DiCarlo told the council that nongovernmental organizations say those attacks have been marked by “some of the most extreme violence in the last 18 months.”
She strongly condemned the RSF’s continuing attacks against civilians and said the UN is also “appalled by the attacks against civilians perpetrated by forces affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Khartoum area.”
DiCarlo said it is long past time for the rival forces to come to the negotiating table, but she said both sides seem convinced they can win on the battlefield, and this is being fueled by outside support and weapons.
“As the end of the rainy season approaches, the parties continue to escalate their military operations, recruit new fighters and intensify their attacks,” she said. “This is possible thanks to considerable external support, including a steady flow of weapons into the country.”
Sudan has accused the United Arab Emirates of arming the RSF, which the UAE vehemently denies. The RSF has also reportedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. And UN experts said in a report earlier this year that the RSF received support from Arab-allied communities and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.
As for the government, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, who led a military takeover of Sudan in 2021, is a close ally of neighboring Egypt and its president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. In February, Sudan’s foreign minister held talks in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart amid unconfirmed reports of drone purchases for government forces.
DiCarlo called for stepped up international action to protect civilians and promote talks.
She said UN special envoy for Sudan Ramtane Lamamra “is considering the next phase of his engagement with the warring parties, including another round of ‘proximity talks’ focused on commitments related to the protection of civilians.”
Sudan’s military boycotted proximity talks in Geneva, Switzerland, in July aimed at spurring humanitarian aid and starting peace talks despite international pleas that it take part. The RSF sent a delegation to Geneva.
DiCarlo said Lamamra will travel to Sudan and other places in the region in the coming weeks to meet key stakeholders to discuss a new attempt at talks.
Ramesh Rajasingham, coordination director in the UN humanitarian office, told the council the “shocking atrocities” in Gezira and fighting in West Darfur and North Darfur are causing more people to flee.
Since April 2023, more than 11 million people have fled their homes, with 3 million crossing into neighboring countries, he said. Last month, 58,000 people from the two Darfur states crossed into neighboring Chad, which is now hosting more than 710,000 refugees, he said.
Rajasingham said fighting continues to intensify around North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher — the only capital in Darfur that the RSF doesn’t hold. In July, hunger experts confirmed famine conditions in the Zamzam displacement camp nearby.
Rajasingham said a recent nutrition screening in the camp found about 34 percent of children malnourished including 10 percent who are severely malnourished.
“And we are now seeing troubling indications that deepening food insecurity is spreading to other areas, with reports in recent weeks of particularly alarming levels of hunger in South Kordofan,” he said.
“I just cannot put strongly enough how serious this situation is,” Rajasingham said, urging the international community to take immediate action.
Northern Gaza at grave risk of Israeli atrocities of ‘the most serious nature,’ UN warns
- ‘Horrific possibility’ of famine cannot be separated from unrelenting Israeli attacks on the human rights of Palestinians, Security Council hears
- Systematic destruction of Palestinian infrastructure is directly contributing to threat of starvation, human rights official tells council members
NEW YORK CITY: Not only are Israeli authorities seeking to clear northern Gaza of Palestinians by displacing them to the south of the territory, but their actions pose a grave risk of atrocities of “the most serious nature,” the UN warned on Tuesday.
Ilze Brands Kehris, the organization’s assistant secretary-general for human rights, urged all states to assess their arms sales or transfers “with a view to ending such support if this risks serious violations of international law.”
Speaking during a meeting of the Security Council to discuss the growing risk of famine in Gaza, she described the humanitarian and human rights situation for Palestinians across the battered enclave as “catastrophic.”
The meeting followed an alert issued at the weekend by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee, which said there was “a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip.” It called for the international community to act “in days, not weeks” to address this threat.
Figures verified by the UN Human Rights Office reveal that almost 70 percent of those killed in Gaza since the war began in October last year were children, mostly between the ages of 5 and 9 years old, or women. According to the Palestinian health ministry, the total death toll from the conflict stands at least 43,000 Palestinians, and more than 100,000 have been injured.
However, these figures are likely to be “a serious understatement,” Brands Kehris told the Security Council, because the bodies of many other victims are thought to be buried under rubble.
Nearly 1.9 million people in Gaza have been displaced, many of them repeatedly, including pregnant women, people with disabilities, the elderly and children, she said. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes on shelters and residential buildings continue to kill unconscionable numbers of civilians, she added: women, men, young and old.
“Attacks on so-called ‘safe zones’ prove that nowhere in Gaza is safe,” Brands Kehris said.
The destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure by the Israeli military — including facilities that enjoy protected status under international law, such as hospitals, schools and vital services such as including power supplies, water and sewage — is directly contributing to the risk of famine, she added.
In addition, Israeli forces have killed hundreds of medical personnel, civilian police officers, journalists and humanitarian aid workers, including more than 220 UN staff, she said, and thousands of Palestinians have been taken from Gaza to Israel, usually shackled and blindfolded, where they are held incommunicado.
“Meanwhile, there is constant and continued interference with the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, which has fallen to some of the lowest levels in a year,” Brands Kehris added.
“The cumulative impact of more than a year of destruction in Gaza has taken an enormous toll. Basic services for Palestinians in Gaza, the fabric of society, have been decimated. Conditions of life, particularly in northern Gaza, are increasingly not fit for survival.
“This horrific possibility cannot be separated from the unrelenting attacks on the human rights of civilians there.”
Over the past five weeks, she said, Israeli strikes have resulted in massive civilian fatalities in northern Gaza, particularly among women, children, the elderly, the sick and people with disabilities, many of whom are reportedly “trapped by Israeli military restrictions and attacks on escape routes.”
She added: “The pattern and the frequency of these reported attacks suggest the systematic targeting of locations known, or which should have been known, as sheltering significant numbers of civilians, coupled with the continued use of weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas.
“The Israeli military has also conducted repeated attacks on the three major hospitals in the area and on other vital infrastructure, while unlawfully restricting the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.”
Brands Kehris echoed a call by the high commissioner for human rights for an end to the war, the release of Israeli hostages, and the urgent delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid to Gaza “by all routes.”
There must also be “due reckoning” over allegations of serious violations of international law, she said, overseen by “credible and impartial judicial authorities.”
She added: “In line with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion and the General Assembly resolution, Israel must end its continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible, allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination.”
Trump nominates hard-liner Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel
- Huckabee, 69, who ran twice for Republican Party presidential nomination, has traveled to Israel regularly since 1973
- Israel’s FM Gideon Saar quickly offered congratulations to Huckabee
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he had nominated Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel under his incoming administration, putting a stalwart supporter of that country’s government in a key role.
“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement, referring to the Christian pastor-turned-politician.
“He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar quickly offered his congratulations to Huckabee, who has in the past said there was “no such thing as an occupation” when it came to Palestinian territories.
“I look forward to working with you to strengthen the bond between our peoples,” Minister Saar posted to Huckabee on X. “As a longstanding friend of Israel and our eternal capital Jerusalem — I hope you will feel very much at home.”
Huckabee, 69, ran twice for the Republican Party presidential nomination, including in 2016 against eventual winner Trump, who Huckabee was quick to back after falling out of the race.
Huckabee, whose nomination requires confirmation by the US Senate, has traveled to Israel regularly since 1973, and has led numerous tours there.
In 2017, he was present in Maale Adumim for the expansion of one of Israel’s largest illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. In 2018, he also laid a brick at a new housing complex in Efrat settlement, strongly suggesting he was in support of Trump’s positions on Israel.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee told CNN there at the time, using the Biblical terms for the area.
“There’s no such thing as a settlement; they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation,” he added.
In December 2023 he visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where dozens of Israelis were killed in the October 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants.
Huckabee was born in Hope, Arkansas, the same town that gave rise to Democrat Bill Clinton, who served as the state’s governor before he became president.
His daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the current governor of Arkansas. She also served as Trump’s White House press secretary from 2017 to 2019.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch drones and missiles at US warships near the Red Sea but do no damage
- Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said the Iranian-backed Houthis launched at least eight drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles
- No one was wounded on board in the blasts, and the ship was continuing on its journey, the UKMTO added
DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthi militants targeted two US Navy warships with multiple drones and missiles as they were traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but the attacks were not successful, the Defense Department said Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said the Iranian-backed Houthis launched at least eight drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles at the USS Stockdale and the USS Spruance, both Navy destroyers, on Monday. He said there was no damage and no one was injured.
The strait is a narrow waterway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, which typically sees $1 trillion in goods pass through it a year. The militants have been targeting shipping through the strait for months over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon.
The Houthis have insisted that the attacks will continue as long as the wars go on, and the assaults already have halved shipping through the region. Meanwhile, a UN panel of experts now allege that the Houthis may be shaking down some shippers for about $180 million a month for safe passage through the area.
Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree in a prerecorded statement earlier Tuesday had claimed the militants attacked two American destroyers in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles and drones.
There were also reports of a commercial ship being attacked. A vessel in the southern reaches of the Red Sea, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of the Houthi-held port city of Hodeida, reported the attack, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.
No one was wounded on board in the blasts, and the ship was continuing on its journey, the UKMTO added.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the UKMTO report was directly linked to the attacks on the US destroyers, but similar incidents of Houthi fire coming near other ships have happened before.
The Houthis have targeted more than 90 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign, which also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.
The militants maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
The Houthis have shot down multiple American MQ-9 Reaper drones as well.
The last Houthi maritime attack came Oct. 28 and targeted the Liberian-flagged bulk tanker Motaro. Before that, an Oct. 10 attack targeted the Liberian-flagged chemical tanker Olympic Spirit.
It’s unclear why the Houthis’ attacks have dropped, though they have launched multiple missiles toward Israel as well. On Oct. 17, the US military unleashed B-2 stealth bombers to target underground bunkers used by the militants. US airstrikes also have been targeting Houthi positions in recent days as well.
Meanwhile, a report by UN experts from October says “the Houthis allegedly collected illegal fees from a few shipping agencies to allow their ships to sail through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden without being attacked.” It put the money generated a month at around $180 million, though it stressed it hadn’t been able to corroborate the information provided by sources to the panel.
The Houthis haven’t directly responded to the allegation. However, the report did include two threatening emails the Houthis sent to shippers, with one of those vessels later coming under attack by the militants.
Jordan completes latest airdrop of aid to Gaza
- UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees warns that the amount of emergency humanitarian supplies entering the territory ‘is at its lowest level in months’
- Jordanian Armed Forces have carried out 123 airdrops of emergency aid to Gaza since war began, and a further 266 in joint efforts with other countries
LONDON: Jordan’s air force carried out its latest delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
It came as the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees said the amount of emergency supplies entering the enclave is lower than it has been for months.
Royal Jordanian Air Force C130 Hercules aircraft dropped crates of food, drinking water and medical supplies, the Jordan News Agency reported. Since the war began in October last year, the Jordanian Armed Forces have completed 123 airdrops of emergency aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and a further 266 as part of joint efforts with countries including France and the UK.
Humanitarian officials consider land convoys to be the most effective way of delivering emergency supplies to help ease the humanitarian crisis, but Jordan has resorted to airdrops because of Israeli army restrictions on access to the Gaza Strip that have been in place since last year.
Also on Tuesday, Louise Wateridge, an emergencies officer with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, warned that “aid entering the Gaza Strip is at its lowest level in months.”
On Monday, during the Extraordinary Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, Jordan’s King Abdullah called for “a humanitarian bridge to break the siege imposed on the people in the Gaza Strip and deliver emergency aid to the sector that is suffering a humanitarian disaster.”
He said that finding “a real political horizon to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution” remains the “only way to achieve peace, stability and security in the region.”
