BEIRUT: Israeli fighter jets bombarded the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital Beirut overnight into Saturday, sending panicked families fleeing massive strikes that were reportedly targeting Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel said it was attacking Hezbollah’s headquarters and weapons facilities, while US and Israeli media reported that Nasrallah was the target, although a source close to the group said he was “fine.”
The explosions that shook southern Beirut were the fiercest to hit the Iran-backed movement’s stronghold since Israel and Hezbollah last went to war in 2006.
After heavy shelling sounded across the Mediterranean city on Friday, Israel issued fresh warnings for people to leave part of the densely populated Dahiyeh suburbs before dawn on Saturday.
Hundreds of families spent the night on the streets, seeking shelter in downtown Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square or along the seaside boardwalk area.
Syrian refugee and father of six Radwan Msallam said they had “nowhere to go.”
“We were at home when there was the call to evacuate. We took our identity papers, some belongings and we left,” he told AFP.
The Israeli army declined to comment on Nasrallah but claimed on Saturday to have killed “Muhammad Ali Ismail, the commander of Hezbollah’s missile unit in southern Lebanon, and his deputy” as well as “other senior officials.”
Hours earlier at the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah until the country’s border with Lebanon was secured.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safe,” he said.
Hezbollah began low-intensity attacks across the border a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
Israel has in the past days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people and sparked an exodus of around 118,000 people.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Friday that a “precise strike” hit Hezbollah’s “central headquarters” located underneath residential buildings in Dahiyeh.
A source close to Hezbollah said the initial wave of strikes levelled six buildings.
According to a preliminary toll from Lebanon’s health ministry, six people were killed and 91 wounded.
In the Haret Hreik neighborhood, an AFP photographer saw the blasts left craters up to five meters (16 feet) wide. Ambulances careened into the area, while families scrambled out.
A second wave of attacks on the same southern suburbs followed on Saturday, as the Israeli military said it warned civilians to get away from three buildings in the heart of Dahiyeh.
Israel also announced strikes on the Beqaa area in eastern Lebanon and Tyre in the south.
US and Israeli media reported that Israel’s strikes on Beirut aimed to kill Hezbollah leader Nasrallah.
Rarely seen in public, Nasrallah enjoys cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters and is the only man in Lebanon with the power to wage war or make peace.
After a relentless night, the strikes appeared to stop around 6:00 am (0300 GMT), though fires were still smoldering in several areas.
“I felt like the building was going to collapse on top of me,” said Abir Hammoud, a teacher in her 40s.
After the wave of strikes on Beirut, Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel, “defending Lebanon and its people.”
The Israeli military said sirens sounded in the north.
Israel this week raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread concern for an all-out regional war.
“We must avoid a regional war at all costs,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told world leaders, while appealing again for a ceasefire.
In Israel, too, many were weary of the violence.
“It is incredibly exhausting to be in this situation. We don’t really know what’s going to happen, there’s talk of a ground offensive or a major operation,” said Lital Shmuelovich, a physiotherapy student.
In New York, Netanyahu also addressed the war in Gaza, saying that Israel’s military would continue to fight Hamas until it achieved “total victory.”
Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink.
“The path to diplomacy may seem difficult to see at this moment, but it is there, and in our judgment, it is necessary,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 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 41,534 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
The Lebanon violence has raised fears of spillover, with Iran-backed militants across the Middle East vowing to keep up their fight with Israel.
Netanyahu took aim at Iran in his UN General Assembly address, saying: “I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran. If you strike us, we will strike you.”
He added: “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that’s true of the entire Middle East.”
Analysts have said Iran would try to resist being dragged into the conflict.
But following the Beirut strikes, Iran’s embassy in Lebanon said: “This reprehensible crime... represents a dangerous escalation that changes the rules of the game.”
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian later condemned the strikes, branding them a “flagrant war crime.”
Series of Israeli strikes pound southern Beirut suburbs all night
https://arab.news/m3vdx
Series of Israeli strikes pound southern Beirut suburbs all night
- The explosions that shook southern Beirut were the fiercest to hit the Iran-backed movement’s stronghold since Israel and Hezbollah went to war in 2006
Battling to keep flood waters at bay in South Sudan
- More than 700,000 people have been impacted by flooding across South Sudan
Bentiu: The neat brown rectangle of an airstrip stands out against the vast expanse of floodwater all around — a crucial lifeline in this remote corner of South Sudan.
The landing strip in Bentiu has been carefully preserved with huge dykes against the waters that have added another layer of devastation to the world’s youngest country.
Alongside is a camp for some 200,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who have endured multiple horrors — war in their own country and neighboring Sudan, and now years of flooding that has destroyed homes, schools, crops and infrastructure.
More than 700,000 people have been impacted by flooding across South Sudan, the UN’s humanitarian agency said recently, and worse floods could be coming next month.
In Bentiu in Unity State, one of the worst affected and most remote areas, a taskforce of Pakistani military engineers with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has constructed a five-meter-high (16-foot) wall around the IDP camp to keep the waters at bay.
Major Mohi Ud Din, head of the taskforce, said they were working “day and night” to keep the wall intact and had managed to build more than 120 kilometers (75 miles) of dykes.
Most crucial is the airstrip. With roads frequently cut off by the floods, it is often the only way to receive food and supplies.
Tap Mach Dhieu, 43, fled to the camp from his home in nearby Panyijiar County in 2014, during the civil war.
He receives rations from the World Food Programme but must then hire a canoe to go in search of firewood.
“We survive this way,” he told AFP.
“People would not be here if (the UN) did not make this dyke. The lifeline of the people is UNMISS, not the government.”
He despairs at officials, who he said have done little to help since his home was destroyed and cows stolen during the 2013-2018 civil war.
“The flood situation is a natural disaster, but looting cows and burning houses is man-made and that’s the government’s responsibility,” he added.
David Garang, a UN health volunteer, said disease was a major problem.
“All the latrines are flooding into the shelters. There’s no cleaning and no collecting of garbage. The situation is dire. What I see in the near future is an outbreak of many diseases,” he said.
Although it still provides services, UNMISS has handed over day-to-day running of the camp to the government, which does not fill Garang with confidence.
“If UNMISS leaves, the situation will not be OK,” he said. “The presence of UNMISS is 100-percent good for the safety of the community,” he said.
There has been a peacekeeper base in nearby Leer County since 2015, currently staffed by a Ghanaian contingent.
They provide security but also items like schoolbooks, fresh water and vaccines for animals.
“There are a lot of problems and without them, it would be difficult,” said a Leer County official, Stephen Taker.
But with waters still rising, there is still plenty of work to do.
“Our problem is that roads are already cut by the water,” said Taker. “We’re working by hand to make sure vehicles can move in the coming month.”
Israel strikes on Beirut cause panic on the streets as Lebanese army spreads across the country
- Israeli army spokesperson claims “precise strikes” hit Hezbollah’s central headquarters
- At least two have been killed while hospitals in the area received more than 50 wounded
BEIRUT/DUBAI/LONDON: A series of Israeli airstrikes rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday evening, erasing a residential block in the Haret Hreik neighborhood and reverberating across the Lebanese capital, rattling windows and sending a thick plume of dark smoke into the sky.
The Israeli army’s spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed the “precise strikes” hit the central headquarters of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, believed to be located beneath residential buildings, the AP news agency reported.
The blasts caused nationwide panic and plunged the surrounding area into chaos. Paramedics from Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Authority rushed to the scene alongside relatives of the buildings’ residents.
Others in the southern suburbs rushed into their cars and fled towards Beirut and Mount Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad confirmed that “some of the targeted buildings were inhabited.”
At least two people have been killed, and hospitals in the area received more than 50 wounded from nearby buildings, including three in critical condition. Rescue teams urgently appealed for blood donations.
The Lebanese state-run National News Agency said six tall buildings in Haret Hreik have been reduced to rubble in the biggest blast to hit the capital in the past year.
Targeting Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, who was suspected to be in a bunker underneath the buildings, the Israeli military used F-35 aircraft and dropped 2,000 tons of explosives on the area, according to Israeli media.
Mohanad Hage Ali, the deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, told Arab News that “Israel has moved from the precision killings phase into dynamite or blast fishing; the end justifies the means.”
“They can kill hundreds to reach a target,” he continued. “This is why it is more likely a high-value target was there (in the targeted block) – this is why they (the Israeli military) took the decision.”
Israeli broadcaster Kan 11 initially reported an on-screen headline saying Nasrallah was “harmed,” but quickly followed with Israeli assessments indicating he is dead.
However, the Iranian news agency Tasnim reported that a security source confirmed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and the group’s executive council head, Hashim Safi Al-Din, were unharmed.
Iran’s embassy in Beirut described the Israeli strike as a “serious escalation that changes the rules of the game,” threatening that there will be repercussions.
“The Israeli regime once again commits a bloody massacre, targeting heavily populated residential neighborhoods while spewing false justifications to try and cover up its brutal crimes,” the embassy wrote on the social platform X.
“There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represent a serious escalation that changes the rules of the game, and that its perpetrator will be punished appropriately.”
Analysts believe the strike on Haret Hreik reflects Israel’s dismissal of traditional wartime norms, marking the start of a new phase in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“Such a strike signals a disregard for the limitations typically observed in warfare, including proportionality and ethical considerations as it is a civil populated area as Tel Aviv a city with military basis,” Rafe Jabari, a researcher on the political sociology of Arab states, told Arab News.
“The scale of the destruction implies that the Israeli government is not constrained by these principles of International Law,” he added.
Jabari also believes “the strategy being employed suggests that Israel believes that war is the solution to end further conflict.”
He explained that “airstrikes are the strategic weapons used by Israel before the invasion of the Lebanese territories as happened in the Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli army is using destruction and terrors to eliminate any opposition to its occupation and colonization policy.”
“However, this approach is wrong,” Jabari continued. “Rather than achieving lasting peace, the continuation of such military actions is likely to provoke further instability and insecurity across the region.”
“Instead of bringing about an end to hostilities, this escalation will fuel the conditions for more wars and destruction in the future including this one.”
Likewise, Beirut-based political analyst Nader Ezzedine said: “By targeting Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, regardless of the outcome, Israel has chosen to break all established conflict rules and red lines that had been observed in its previous wars with Hezbollah.”
He told Arab News that “whether the outcome of this strike results in Nasrallah’s death or his survival, it will have significant ramifications for the conflict.”
“Hezbollah initially tried to adhere to certain rules in the hopes that an agreement can be reached to end the war in Gaza and Lebanon,” he added. “However, after this strike, I no longer believe this war will have any rules or limits.”
However, Ezzeddine believes that while the strike may have dealt a significant blow to Hezbollah and undermined its fighters’ morale, “it will not end the war but will likely intensify the fighting even further.”
“This strike will not end the conflict if Israel aimed to do so by killing Nasrallah,” he said. “Instead, it will certainly cause a huge escalation.”
He also expects this strike to be followed by an Israeli ground invasion, while Hezbollah may escalate its attacks against Israel.
Middle East expert Jabari noted that “we are witnessing an open war worse than the one in 2006. The Israeli army and government are choosing weapons as a means of negotiation instead of political and diplomatic endeavors.”
On Wednesday, Sep. 25, Israel’s military chief Herzi Halevi told troops that its airstrikes in Lebanon aimed to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure to pave the way for a possible ground incursion, CNN reported.
These comments came after the Israeli army intercepted a missile that Hezbollah said it had shot at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Qubaisi, who reportedly led the group’s missile and rocket force.
Reports of Friday’s strikes came less than an hour after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the UN General Assembly, in which he vowed to continue his military operation in Lebanon despite a US ceasefire proposal demanding a 21-day pause in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon, which it says aims to eliminate Hezbollah, has killed within a few days 720 Lebanese people, many of them women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Since October 8, after Israel launched its onslaught on Palestine’s Gaza Strip, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging cross-border fire. But in the last week, Israel dramatically intensified its airstrikes in Lebanon, claiming the goal is to end Hezbollah’s 11 months of attacks on its territory.
Turkish builder jailed for 865 years over quake collapse
- ‘Shoddy construction’ killed 96 in 14-story apartment block in southern city of Adana
RIYADH: A court in Turkiye sentenced a builder to 865 years in prison on Friday for the shoddy construction of a 14-story apartment block that collapsed during a powerful earthquake, killing 96 people.
Hasan Alpargun was convicted of “having caused the death and injury of more than one person with possible intent,” court officials said.
The 14-story building in the southern Turkish city of Adana was destroyed by a massive 7.8-magnitude quake in February 2023 that killed more than 53,500 people in Turkiye and nearly 6,000 in Syria. Only one of the building’s residents survived.
The apartment block was built in 1975. Its collapse immediately aroused suspicions because Adana, although less than 200 km from the earthquake’s epicenter, was largely spared from the violent tremors.
Alpargun fled to northern Cyprus on the day of the quake, but turning himself over to police a week later.
During the trial experts pointed to serious deficiencies in the construction of the building's support columns, as well as the quality of concrete used. Alpargun’s defense was that the construction had been approved by the appropriate authorities.
More than 260 people involved in the construction of buildings that collapsed during the earthquake were arrested, some while trying to flee the coutry.
Germany, Turkiye at odds over migrant deportation deal
- Germany’s relations are sensitive with Turkiye, a fellow NATO member and home to Europe’s largest Turkish diaspora of some three million people
BERLIN: Germany said Friday it had agreed a plan with Turkiye under which Berlin will step up deportations of failed Turkish asylum seekers, but Ankara denied any such deal had been struck.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser posted on X that “we have now reached a point where returns to Turkiye can be carried out more quickly and effectively and that Turkiye will more speedily take back citizens who are not allowed to stay in Germany.
“This is another building block in limiting irregular migration.”
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily reported that Turkiye had offered to soon take back up to 500 citizens per week on “special flights.”
In return, Germany would ease visa rules for Turkish citizens wanting to visit the EU country for holidays or business trips, it said.
The FAZ report said the plan had been agreed after months of talks between the offices of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The German interior ministry declined to officially comment on the details of the reports when contacted by AFP.
But later Friday, Turkiye’s foreign ministry said the reports “regarding the return of our citizens who do not have a legal right to reside in Germany to Turkiye is not true.
“No practice of mass deportation of our citizens has been authorized,” a ministry spokesman said in a message on social media platform X.
There has been heated debate about irregular immigration in Germany and other EU member states.
Germany’s relations are sensitive with Turkiye, a fellow NATO member and home to Europe’s largest Turkish diaspora of some three million people.
Many of them are part of the wave of so-called “guest workers” invited to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, and their descendants.
The Scholz government has been under heightened pressure after a series of violent crimes and extremist attacks committed by asylum seekers.
The debate has fueled the rise of the far-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a year ahead of national elections.
The FAZ reported that an initial 200 Turkish citizens would be flown out to Turkiye on several scheduled flights leaving from a number of airports.
Beyond that, it said Turkiye had offered to take back up to 500 citizens per week from Germany on what would be declared “special flights” rather than charter flights.
The daily said the number of Turkish asylum requests in Germany rose sharply last year, with most applicants declaring they were members of the Kurdish minority.
This year, Turkish citizens accounted for the third-largest number of requests for asylum, after those from Syria and Afghanistan.
However, only a small minority of recent applications by Turkish nationals have been successful.
According to Germany’s interior ministry, the number of Turkish nationals in Germany required to leave has topped 15,000.
However, fewer than 900 were deported last year and thousands received stays of deportation, often because they declared they lacked valid travel documents, FAZ said.
Iran’s foreign minister accuses Israel of using US bombs in Beirut
- Senior Hezbollah commanders were the target of Israel’s strike on the group’s central headquarters in Beirut’s suburbs on Friday
UNITED NATIONS: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi accused Israel of using several US “bunker buster” bombs to strike Beirut on Friday.
“Just this morning, the Israeli regime used several 5,000-pound bunker busters that had been gifted to them by the United States to hit residential areas in Beirut,” he told a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East.
Senior Hezbollah commanders were the target of Israel’s strike on the group’s central headquarters in Beirut’s suburbs on Friday, but it was too early to say whether the attack took out Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a senior Israeli official said on Friday.
