Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since

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Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 3, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 07 October 2024
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Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since

  • Lebanon being drawn into someone else’s catastrophe
  • Hezbollah’s ‘hubris’ and unilateral actions are to blame

LONDON: How does one write a feature looking through Lebanon’s year without it sounding like an obituary?

Across Lebanon and wherever in the world citizens found themselves on Oct. 7 last year, phones buzzed and lit up with notifications of the seemingly unbelievable news.

Hamas, the insurgent militant group that had been running the Palestinian enclave of Gaza since 2007, had launched a surprise attack on Israel.

At first, near disbelief. Could it possibly be true?

Israel had long boasted about the impregnable nature of its “Iron Wall,” the high-tech, 7-meter-tall fence surrounding Gaza.

Bristling with cameras, watch towers, robotic machine guns, razor wire, radar and underground sensors, it was designed precisely to prevent exactly such an incursion.

Yet with every fresh ping, with every update flashing on smartphones, the unthinkable became increasingly possible, then probable and, finally, certain.

Hamas, relying on a combination of brute force and ingenuity — bulldozers smashed through the fence and drones dropped explosives on watch towers, knocking out the remotely operated machine guns — had broken through the Iron Wall in as many as 30 places.

More than 1,200 Israelis and others were killed, and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Hearts sank. All Lebanese knew full well that Lebanon was never not going to get involved, whether its citizens wanted to or not.

Past is prologue, and Lebanon’s history is riddled with sudden yanks into conflicts in which it has no business being involved.

From Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in response to Palestinian militants using the country’s south as a launching pad for missiles and attacks, to the 2006 war between Iran-backed group Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanese citizens have always found themselves caught in the crossfire.

Their dead, wounded, ruined homes and countless devastated lives are written off by all sides as collateral damage.

Now, one year on since the start of Hamas’ assault on Israel and the latter’s devastating response in Gaza — which has claimed in excess of 40,000 Palestinian lives, including more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children — once again Lebanon is being sucked into someone else’s catastrophe.

It all seemed depressingly inevitable from the outset, when the day after the Hamas attack its ally Hezbollah began exchanging fire with Israel over Lebanon’s southern border.

Since then, Lebanon has suffered immense damage, especially in its southern villages and towns, which have been repeatedly and indiscriminately pounded by Israeli jets targeting Hezbollah outposts.

Nearly 1 million Lebanese have been displaced internally, 1,974 have been killed including 127 children, and 9,384 wounded, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The situation began to deteriorate alarmingly on Sept. 17, when thousands of Hezbollah pagers, sabotaged by Israeli agents, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing a dozen people, including two children, and wounding thousands more.

The following day similarly sabotaged walkie-talkies detonated. This time 30 people died and hundreds more were injured. Now Israeli troops have invaded the south of Lebanon.

Lebanon has been in a spiral since 2019, when it was rocked by a disastrous and ongoing financial crisis that has seen the lira drastically devalued.

Since then further blows have included the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck Lebanon in early 2020, and the devastating Beirut Port explosion later that year that rocked the capital and destroyed thousands of structures.

To make matters worse, political paralysis has left Lebanon without a president or an effective government for the past two years.

In a statement issued on Oct. 31, 2023, the first anniversary of Lebanon’s presidential vacancy, the US State Department accused the country’s “divided parliamentarians” of “putting their personal ambitions ahead of the interests of their country.”

Issued just over three weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, the statement added presciently: “Even as rising tensions along Lebanon’s southern border threaten the country’s stability and the economic crisis deepens, the Lebanese people are deprived of leadership when they need it most.”

Around the world, since Oct. 7, Lebanese have been glued to their screens, holding their breath with each missile fired across the border in either direction.

And listening with growing anxiety to the pronouncements of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the fiery speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah’s death in an Israeli air strike on Beirut on Sept. 27 killed at least five other people and injured dozens more.

For the Lebanese in Lebanon and abroad, every day begins with a recap of the destruction and a counting of the dead, injured and missing. Every day ends with evacuation drills across areas of the capital targeted by Israeli bombs and missiles.

Today, as before, they are helpless bystanders, witnesses to the destruction of their country and the loss of the lives of their friends and family members.

As Michael Young of the Malcom H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center wrote late last month, “the opening of a front in the south on Oct. 8, 2023, was the final straw. Hezbollah consulted none of its Lebanese partners in initiating a war in defense of its ally Hamas in Gaza.”

Hezbollah, he added, “displayed remarkable hubris in being completely indifferent to the fact that Lebanon paid a heavy price in the past for the Palestinian cause — especially the Shia community itself.

“After hubris comes nemesis, however, and today Hezbollah is largely alone in facing the violent Israeli campaign against Lebanon.”

Perhaps. But for now, the war has seen Lebanon’s sectarian noose grow ever tighter.

Social media has become a parallel battleground, for the preaching of one side against the other, pitting blame based on religiosity and correlating silence with acquiescence.

The Lebanese have always reluctantly accepted that, in Lebanon, this is just the way things are.

It remains to be seen whether, in the wake of the current disaster engulfing the country, the Lebanese will finally abandon their passive acceptance of a cruel fate dictated by others.
 


Israeli snipers shooting children ‘like a game’ at Gaza aid centers: British surgeon

Updated 9 sec ago
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Israeli snipers shooting children ‘like a game’ at Gaza aid centers: British surgeon

  • Prof. Nick Maynard: Different body parts being targeted depending on day of the week
  • ‘I’ve never had so many patients die because they can’t get enough food to recover’

LONDON:  Israeli soldiers are opening fire on children in Gaza at aid distribution centers, targeting different body parts depending on the day of the week, a British doctor has said.

Prof. Nick Maynard, a gastrointestinal surgeon working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told the BBC that he and his colleagues are encountering “clear patterns of injury” in young casualties, including “certain body parts on different days, such as the head, legs or genitals.”

Speaking to the “Today” program on BBC Radio 4, Maynard said: “On one day they’ll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they’ll all be head gunshot wounds or neck gunshot wounds, on another they’ll be arm or leg gunshot wounds.”

He added: “It’s almost as if a game is being played, that they’re deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after.”

Maynard said the victims at the aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which he called “death traps,” tend more often than not to be teenaged boys.

“These are mainly from the militarized distribution points, where starving civilians are going to try and get food but then report getting targeted by Israeli soldiers or quadcopters,” he added.

“A 12-year-old boy I was operating on died from his injuries on the operating table — he’d been shot through the chest.”

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READ MORE: British surgeon in Gaza describes wounded Palestinians dying due to malnutrition

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GHF sites, backed by the US and Israel, are manned by private contractors and Israeli soldiers.

At least 875 Palestinians seeking food at the centers have been killed by live fire since May, according to the UN.

Maynard said levels of malnutrition seen in young patients are affecting their ability to recover from their wounds.

“The repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, and they die,” he added. “I’ve never had so many patients die because they can’t get enough food to recover.”

The BBC said other medics working in central and southern Gaza had also reported patterns of gunshot wounds in people shot at GHF centers.


Ancient statue returns to Turkiye 65 years later

Updated 8 min 18 sec ago
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Ancient statue returns to Turkiye 65 years later

  • “It was a long struggle … we won,” Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy said
  • “We brought the ‘Philosopher Emperor’ Marcus Aurelius back to the land where he belongs“

ISTNABUL: Turkiye has repatriated an ancient statue believed to depict Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius from the United States as part of efforts to recover antiquities illegally removed from the country, the government announced on Saturday.

The bronze statue, smuggled from the ancient city of Boubon — now the province of Burdur in southwest Turkiye — in the 1960s, was returned to Turkiye after 65 years, according to Turkish officials.

“It was a long struggle. We were right, we were determined, we were patient, and we won,” Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy said.


“We brought the ‘Philosopher Emperor’ Marcus Aurelius back to the land where he belongs,” he added.

This unique artefact, once exhibited in the United States, was repatriated to Turkiye based on scientific analyzes, archival documents and witness statements, added the minister.

“Through the combined power of diplomacy, law, and science, the process we conducted with the New York Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the US Homeland Security Investigations Unit is more than just a repatriation; it is a historical achievement,” Ersoy said.

“Marcus Aurelius’s return to our country is a concrete result of our years-long pursuit of justice.”

The headless statue had been on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art from April to July, before its return to Turkiye.

Ersoy said Turkiye was determined to protect all its cultural heritage that has been smuggled out.

“We will soon present the Philosopher Emperor to the people of (Turkiye’s capital) Ankara in a surprise exhibition,” he announced.


21 dead in Iran as coach overturns: state media

Updated 49 min 6 sec ago
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21 dead in Iran as coach overturns: state media

  • The accident, the cause of which remains unclear, occurred near Kavar
  • Iranian media showed images of a coach lying on its side on a mountain road

TEHRAN: At least 21 people were killed and nearly 30 injured when a coach overturned in southern Iran on Saturday, state media reported.

The accident, the cause of which remains unclear, occurred near Kavar, a town about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the capital, Tehran.

“Unfortunately, 21 deaths have been recorded,” Kavar Hospital director Mohsen Afrasiabi told state television, adding that 29 people were injured.

Iranian media showed images of a coach lying on its side on a mountain road.

Iran has a poor road safety record, with nearly 20,000 deaths from traffic accidents in the 12 months to March, according to official news agency IRNA.


Unidentified drone kills PKK member, injures another near Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah, sources say

Updated 58 min 40 sec ago
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Unidentified drone kills PKK member, injures another near Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah, sources say

  • Officials said this is the first attack of its kind in months

BAGHDAD: An unidentified drone attack killed a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and injured another near Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah on Saturday, security sources and local officials said, the first attack of its kind in months.


Six local officials detained over Iraq deadly mall fire

Updated 19 July 2025
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Six local officials detained over Iraq deadly mall fire

  • The ministry said: “There was clear negligence among several officials and employees” in Kut
  • Three local officials, including the head of civil defense in Kut, had been detained

BAGHDAD: Iraq has detained six local officials and suspended other public employees following a fire that killed 61 people at a shopping mall earlier this week, authorities said Saturday.

The blaze, which broke out late Wednesday in a newly opened shopping mall in the eastern city of Kut, is the latest fatal disaster in a country where safety regulations are often ignored.

After an initial investigation, the interior ministry said “there was clear negligence among several officials and employees” in Kut, located around 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Baghdad.

It added that three local officials, including the head of civil defense in Kut, had been detained, and 17 employees suspended from work until further notice.

The Commission of Integrity, an anti-graft body, said later that security forces had detained three more officials “over the violations that led to the fire” at the Corniche Hypermarket Mall, including the head of the violations department at Kut’s municipality.

Officials say their investigation is ongoing, and the number of detainees may change.

Safety standards in Iraq’s construction sector are often ignored, and the country — its infrastructure weakened by decades of conflict — frequently experiences fatal fires and accidents.

Fires increase during the blistering summer as temperatures approach 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

The cause of the mall fire was not immediately known, but one survivor told AFP an air conditioner had exploded on the second floor before the five-story building was rapidly engulfed in flames.

Several people told AFP they lost family members — and in some cases whole families — who had gone to shop and dine at the mall days after it opened.