BEIRUT: Tahani Yassine was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she chose to return to her hometown of Beirut to deliver her baby.
Living in Equatorial Guinea with her husband and three young children, she had more faith in the Lebanese health care system.
But just a few days after her arrival in Beirut, Yassine began to regret her decision. Israel intensified its military campaign in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the south, the Bekaa Valley in the east and the southern suburbs of Beirut, close to her home.
Although her area wasn’t directly hit, the strikes were unnervingly close, and the boom of Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier overhead filled her with fear.
Anxious for the safety of her unborn child, the 36-year-old moved to an apartment closer to hospital where she was due to deliver.
“My doctors told me that I was too far along in my pregnancy to travel. I had no choice but to stay and deliver here,” she told Reuters just hours after giving birth at Trad Hospital in central Beirut on Oct. 10.
Lying in her hospital bed, with her newborn girl nestled next to her in a crib, Yassine expressed her relief that both she and her baby were healthy — a very different experience to many expectant mothers in the escalating conflict in Lebanon.
Nicolas Baaklini, an obstetrician and gynaecologist in Beirut, says he has noticed an increase in premature births and foetal deaths since hostilities began last year.
“What has increased the most, and what was shocking to me, is the number of foetal deaths in in-utero babies who died in their mothers’ wombs,” said Baaklini, 61, who has a private clinic and also works in several Beirut hospitals.
“There are many malformations, and surprisingly, several colleagues have observed the same. When ... in one year, you have two foetal deaths in-utero, and then suddenly, in two months, you have about 15, it indicates that something is wrong,” he added.
Mothers flee their homes
Around 11,600 pregnant women remain in Lebanon, of whom around 4,000 are expected to deliver in the next three months, according to a flash appeal published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in October.
Many of them are displaced and lack adequate shelter, nutrition and sanitation. Access to safe antenatal, post-natal, and paediatric care is increasingly difficult.
Since the war intensified in late September, the Israeli campaign has forced about 1.2 million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants erupted a year ago when the Iranian-backed group began launching rockets at northern Israel in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.
Dressed in white scrubs in the neonatal intensive care unit of Trad Hospital, Baaklini stroked the tiny feet of a baby girl in one of the incubators. The baby and her twin brother had been delivered prematurely by a mother who had to evacuate her home in southern Beirut due to Israeli airstrikes.
He believed that the mother’s early contractions were partly caused the stress of the bombardments and having to flee.
He said all the ICU beds were occupied, attributing this to the intensifying bombardments.
“It is not panic that makes you give birth,” Baaklini said, as machines monitoring the premature babies beeped in the background. “It is the act of running, falling, and experiencing trauma to the abdomen that triggers contractions, leading to premature delivery.”
Under bombardment, Lebanon’s expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies
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Under bombardment, Lebanon’s expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies
- Nicolas Baaklini, an obstetrician and gynaecologist in Beirut, says he has noticed an increase in premature births and foetal deaths since hostilities began last year
Israeli strikes hit Yemen’s Sanaa and Hodeidah, Houthis’ Al Masirah TV says
- Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen
JERUSALEM: Multiple air raids hit several targets in Houthi-held areas of Yemen on Thursday, witnesses and the militia said, with their media saying Israel launched the strikes.
Sanaa airport and the adjacent Al-Dailami base were targeted along with a power station in Hodeida, in attacks that the Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV channel called “Israeli aggression.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strikes, which come a day after Yemen fired a ballistic missile and two drones at Israel.
On Saturday, a Houthi missile attack left 16 people wounded in Tel Aviv.
Saturday’s incident had prompted a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he had ordered the destruction of Houthi infrastructure.
“I have instructed our forces to destroy the infrastructure of Houthis because anyone who tries to harm us will be struck with full force,” Netanyahu said in parliament.
“We will continue to crush the forces of evil with strength and ingenuity, even if it takes time.”
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
