BEIRUT: Lebanon accused Israel of targeting journalists in a “deliberate” attack that killed three people in the country’s south on Friday, calling the incident a “war crime.”
Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the strike “targeting journalists” was “a war crime committed by Israel without any deterrent or international voice to halt the ongoing atrocities.”
He added that the “deliberate aggression aims to intimidate the media and obscure the crimes and destruction being perpetrated.”
Mikati said he had directed the Foreign Ministry “to include this latest crime in a series of documented files of Israeli crimes to be submitted to relevant international authorities, with the hope that global conscience will intervene to stop the ongoing violence.”
Al-Mayadeen TV channel confirmed the deaths of broadcast technician Mohammed Rida and camera operator Ghassan Najjar, while Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV mourned the death of camera operator Wissam Qassim in the Israeli strike on a hotel in Hasbayya.
Several other people including media personalities Zakaria Fadel, Hussein Hoteit, and Ali Chaib were injured in the blast.
Survivors appeared on their respective TV channels covered in dirt in the aftermath, stressing that they did not have any weapons and that there “weren’t any armed people” at the hotel.
They added that they only had “their cameras and microphones and that their movement was clear to everyone,” according to Al-Jadeed correspondent Mohamed Farhat and Al-Mayadeen reporter Fatima Ftouni, who showed her shrapnel-torn protective shield.
The number of journalists, technicians, and photographers caught by Israeli hostilities since Oct. 8, 2023, has risen to 13.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad said Israeli strikes killed more than 160 rescuers and health workers in the past year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
At a press conference on Friday, Abiad said 55 attacks on hospitals had been recorded, including 36 direct hits.
Eight hospitals were forcibly closed down, while seven are partially operating.
The attacks resulted in “the martyrdom of 12 health workers, the injury of 60 people and the damage of 24 vehicles,” Abiad said.
According to the minister, the latest Israeli attacks targeted “201 emergency response teams, bringing the total of casualties in the health and hospital sector to 163 martyred and 272 injured.”
He said 51 emergency response centers, 158 ambulances, 57 fire trucks, and 15 rescue vehicles have been targeted.
“Two weeks ago, eight paramedics were martyred in the triangle of Odaisseh-Taybeh-Rab El-Thalathine. Their bodies are still in three ambulances due to the enemy’s refusal to allow the retrieval of their bodies. In addition, six firefighters are still under the rubble in Baraachit,” Abiad said.
The Israeli military has targeted health workers, claiming that Hezbollah “uses ambulances to transport members and weapons.”
Avichay Adraee, spokesperson for the Israeli military, warned on Friday that troops could target medical personnel carrying out their duty of helping the injured in southern Lebanon.
Adraee called on medical personnel to “avoid engaging with Hezbollah members and cooperating with them. Otherwise, necessary action will be taken against any vehicle transporting armed people regardless of its type.”
Adraee’s warning came as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said that its peacekeepers withdrew from a watchtower in one of its posts near Dhayra in south Lebanon on Tuesday, after Israeli forces fired at it.
UNIFIL senior leadership announced in a statement on Friday that “peacekeepers on duty at a permanent observation post near Dhayra were observing Israeli soldiers conducting house clearing operations nearby.”
The statement added: “Upon realizing they were being observed, the soldiers fired at the post.”
UNIFIL clarified that the duty guards “withdrew following the incident to avoid being shot.”
It also pointed out that the Israeli military had “repeatedly demanded that UNIFIL vacate its positions along the Blue Line and has deliberately damaged camera, lighting, and communications equipment at some of these positions.”
UNIFIL added: “Despite the pressure exerted on the mission and our troop-contributing countries, peacekeepers remain in position and on task.
“We remind the Israeli army and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property. Any deliberate attack on them is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and Resolution 1701.”
These developments were preceded and followed by Israeli raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut and towns in the south, in addition to the shelling of a second border crossing between Lebanon and Syria in the Qaa region in the Bekaa.
The Masnaa border crossing was targeted once again, which limited the movement of cars and trucks between Lebanon and Syria to one crossing in northern Lebanon after the raids blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.
People could only cross the border on foot and under the surveillance of Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, launched a series of military operations targeting northern Israel. Israeli media reported that “a state of emergency was declared in Nahariya Hospital due to a security event in Shomera in Western Galilee.”
The party said it hit “a gathering of soldiers who were sheltering inside a place considered to be safe. Additionally, a truck and several vehicles were hit by rockets launched from Lebanon.”
Israeli media reported that “four wounded people were in critical condition, in addition to other injuries of varying degrees, as a result of rockets fired by Hezbollah on the Shomera area.”
Fires were still raging in the morning after Israeli airstrikes on Thursday night in El-Aamroussieh, Haret Hrek, and the Sainte Therese area, reaching Burj Al-Barajneh in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In the south, the Israeli military used
phosphorous bombs to burn forests and olive groves in the border areas in the western sector.
An airstrike on a house in the town of Bazourieh killed three people, whilst clashes between Hezbollah and Israel continued in the towns of Aitaroun, Taybeh, and Marwahin.
Hezbollah said that it targeted Israeli military sites in the settlements of Al-Malikiyah and Al-Baghdadi.
Relief efforts between Lebanon and international partners continued as a UAE ship docked at Beirut Port, delivering 2,000 tons of aid.
This shipment, provided by the UAE, includes food supplies and essential equipment for shelter centers, offering critical support to the people of Lebanon.
The Army Command announced the arrival of a donation from the Malta-Lebanon Organization to the Lebanese Army.
A UNHCR spokeswoman estimated that around one-fifth of the Lebanese population has been displaced from their homes so far.
She said the government-run displacement centers in Lebanon had become overcrowded, and that the number of people fleeing from Lebanon to Syria had reached 430,000.
The Crisis and Disaster Management Room in the Beirut Governorate — in collaboration with the Farah Al-Ataa Association, a civil society organization, successfully relocated displaced people from tents along the Beirut waterfront to a shelter center in the Karantina area.
In the initial phase, more than 400 displaced people were transferred, with the second phase set to be completed in the coming days.
Health workers, journalists bear brunt of Israeli strikes in Lebanon
https://arab.news/83q5d
Health workers, journalists bear brunt of Israeli strikes in Lebanon
- Mikati denounces ‘Israeli aims to intimidate media and obscure their crimes’
- UN peacekeepers say Israeli troops fired at Lebanon post
UN investigator says possible to find ‘enough’ proof for Syria prosecutions
- Since Assad’s fall, Petit has been able to visit the country but his team still require authorization to begin their work inside Syria which they have requested
DAMASCUS: The visiting head of a UN investigative body for Syria said Sunday it was possible to find “more than enough” evidence to convict people of crimes against international law, but there was an immediate need to secure and preserve it.
The doors of Syria’s prisons were flung open after an Islamist-led rebel alliance ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad this month, more than 13 years after his brutal repression of anti-government protests triggered a war that would kill more than 500,000 people.
With families rushing to former prisons, detention centers and alleged mass graves to find any trace of disappeared relatives, many have expressed concern about safeguarding documents and other evidence.
“We have the possibility here to find more than enough evidence left behind to convict those we should prosecute,” said Robert Petit, who heads the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) set up by the UN in 2016 to prepare prosecutions for major international crimes in Syria.
But he noted that preserving evidence would “need a lot of coordination between all the different actors.”
“We can all understand the human impulse to go in and try and find your loved ones,” Petit said. “The fact is, though, that there needs to be a control put in place to restrict access to all these different centers... It needs to be a concerted effort by everyone who has the resources and the powers to do that to freeze that access, preserve it.”
The organization, known as the Mechanism, was not permitted to work in Syria under Assad’s government but was able to document many crimes from abroad.
Since Assad’s fall, Petit has been able to visit the country but his team still require authorization to begin their work inside Syria which they have requested.
He said his team had “documented hundreds of detention centers... Every security center, every military base, every prison had their own either detention or mass graves attached to it.”
“We’re just now beginning to scratch that surface and I think it’s going to be a long time before we know the full extent of it,” he told AFP.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, more than 100,000 people died in Syria’s jails and detention centers from 2011.
The Saydnaya complex, the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomised the atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
Petit compared Saydnaya to the S-21 prison in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, which came to stand for the Khmer Rouge’s wider atrocities and now houses the country’s genocide museum.
The Saydnaya facility will become “an emblematic example of inhumanity,” he said.
Petit said his team had reached out to the new authorities “to get permission to come here and start discussing a framework by which we can conduct our mandate.”
“We had a productive meeting and we’ve asked formally now, according to their instructions, to be able to come back and start the work. So we’re waiting for that response,” he said.
Even without setting foot in Syria, Petit’s 82-member team has gathered huge amounts of evidence of the worst breaches of international law committed during the war.
The hope is that there could now be a national accountability process in Syria and that steps could be taken to finally grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in the country.
Tunisian women herb harvesters struggle with drought
- Tunisia produces around 10,000 tonnes of aromatic and medicinal herbs each year, according to official figures
TUNIS: On a hillside in Tunisia’s northwestern highlands, women scour a sun-scorched field for the wild herbs they rely on for their livelihoods, but droughts are making it ever harder to find the precious plants.
Yet the harvesters say they have little choice but to struggle on, as there are few opportunities in a country hit hard by unemployment, inflation and high living costs.
“There is a huge difference between the situation in the past and what we are living now,” said Mabrouka Athimni, who heads a local collective of women herb harvesters named “Al-Baraka.”
“We’re earning half, sometimes just a third, of what we used to.”
SPEEDREAD
Yet the harvesters say they have little choice but to struggle on, as there are few opportunities in a country hit hard by unemployment and high living costs.
Tunisia produces around 10,000 tonnes of aromatic and medicinal herbs each year, according to official figures.
Rosemary accounts for more than 40 percent of essential oil exports, mainly destined for French and American markets.
For the past 20 years, Athimni’s collective has supported numerous families in Tbainia, a village near the city of Ain Draham in a region with much higher poverty rates than the national average.
Women, who make up around 70 percent of the agricultural workforce, are the main breadwinners for their households in Tbainia.
Tunisia is in its sixth year of drought and has seen its water reserves dwindle, as temperatures have soared past 50 degrees Celsius in some areas during the summer.
The country has 36 dams, mostly in the northwest, but they are currently just 20 percent full — a record low in recent decades.
The Tbainia women said they usually harvested plants like eucalyptus, rosemary and mastic year-round, but shrinking water resources and rare rainfall have siphoned oil output.
“The mountain springs are drying up, and without snow or rain to replenish them, the herbs yield less oil,” said Athimni.
Mongia Soudani, a 58-year-old harvester and mother of three, said her work was her household’s only income. She joined the collective five years ago.
“We used to gather three or four large sacks of herbs per harvest,” she said. “Now, we’re lucky to fill just one.”
Forests in Tunisia cover 1.25 million hectares, about 10 percent of them in the northwestern region.
Wildfires fueled by drought and rising temperatures have ravaged these woodlands, further diminishing the natural resources that women like Soudani depend on.
In the summer of last year, wildfires destroyed around 1,120 hectares near Tbainia.
“Parts of the mountain were consumed by flames, and other women lost everything,” Soudani recalled.
To adapt to some climate-driven challenges, the women received training from international organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, to preserve forest resources.
Still, Athimni struggles to secure a viable income.
“I can’t fulfil my clients’ orders anymore because the harvest has been insufficient,” she said.
The collective has lost a number of its customers as a result, she said.
Civilians suffer as rival forces seek foothold in wider Darfur region
- Rapid Support Forces seize back control of key logistical base
DUBAI/CAIRO: Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized back control of a key logistical base in North Darfur on Sunday, the paramilitary group said, a day after it was taken by rival forces allied with Sudan’s army.
The conflict between the RSF and the army erupted in April 2023, and some of the fiercest fighting has taken place in North Darfur as the army and allied Joint Forces — a collection of former rebel groups — battle to maintain a last foothold in the wider Darfur region.
The Joint Forces and the army said in statements they had taken control on Saturday of the Al-Zurug base, which the RSF has used during the 20-month war as a logistical base to channel supplies from over the nearby borders with Chad and Libya.
BACKGROUND
• The conflict between the RSF and the army erupted in April 2023, and some of the fiercest fighting has taken place in North Darfur.
• Since fighting picked up in Al-Fashir in mid-April, at least 782 civilians have been killed, according to a UN human rights report.
Dozens of RSF soldiers were killed, vehicles destroyed and supplies captured as they captured the base, they said.
The incident could inflame ethnic tensions between the Arab tribes that form the base of the RSF and the Zaghawa tribe that forms most of the Joint Forces, analysts say.
The RSF accused Joint Forces fighters of killing civilians and burning down nearby homes and public amenities during the raid.
“The Joint Forces carried out ethnic cleansing against innocent civilians in Al-Zurug and intentionally killed children, women, and the elderly and burnt and destroyed wells and markets and homes and the health center and schools,” it said in a statement on Sunday.
The Joint Forces said the base had been used by the RSF as a “launching point for barbaric operations against civilians” in areas including Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state and one of the most active frontlines in the fighting.
Since fighting picked up in Al-Fashir in mid-April, at least 782 civilians have been killed, according to a UN human rights report, the result of attacks via “intense” heavy artillery and suicide drones from the RSF and airstrikes and artillery strikes by the army.
On Sunday, activists from the Al-Fashir Resistance Committee reported an onslaught of at least 30 missiles fired on different parts of the city.
Seizing control of the city would bolster the RSF’s attempt to install a parallel government to the national government in Port Sudan, analysts say.
Jordanian minister criticizes ‘sensational’ reporting of Middle East events
- Mohammad Momani stressed the importance of obtaining verified information
- He said media freedom should not be misused to distort regional events
LONDON: Jordanian Minister of Government Communication Mohammad Momani emphasized the importance of professionalism and accuracy in reporting Middle Eastern events during a meeting with local, Arab and international media representatives on Sunday.
Momani said that a few international media outlets “sensationalize” regional events at the cost of accuracy, arguing that “this does not serve the public and undermines professional standards.”
He discussed with media representatives the importance of obtaining verified information to ensure accuracy, serve public opinion and uphold the right to knowledge, the official Jordanian news agency, Petra, reported.
Over the past year, some Western media outlets reporting on the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip and the conflict with Lebanon, as well as the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, have investigated some details in the stories they ran.
CNN investigated a recent video report that captures the moment a Syrian prisoner was freed from a secretive prison in Damascus. Critics have claimed that the report was staged and that the man featured in the CNN video was not who he claimed to be.
Momani said that media freedom should not be misused to distort regional circumstances or promote political and ideological agendas, Petra added.
He called on media outlets in Jordan to report on the country’s political and security realities professionally, accurately representing the event in all its aspects while rejecting false or misleading narratives.
Momani said that the Jordanian government was dedicated to transparency and communication with media representatives, including Arab, international and local outlets.
He praised the professional reporting on regional events by Jordanian state agencies and commended the country’s balanced political stance and commitment to stability.
Jordan’s Ministry of Government Communication regularly holds meetings and briefings to enhance communication with media representatives in Jordan.
Weakened Iran could pursue nuclear weapon, White House’s Sullivan says
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration is concerned that a weakened Iran could build a nuclear weapon, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday, adding that he was briefing President-elect Donald Trump’s team on the risk.
Iran has suffered setbacks to its regional influence after Israel’s assaults on its allies, Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, followed by the fall of Iran-aligned Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Israeli strikes on Iranian facilities, including missile factories and air defenses, have reduced Tehran’s conventional military capabilities, Sullivan told CNN.
“It’s no wonder there are voices (in Iran) saying, ‘Hey, maybe we need to go for a nuclear weapon right now ... Maybe we have to revisit our nuclear doctrine’,” Sullivan said.
Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has expanded uranium enrichment since Trump, in his 2017-2021 presidential term, pulled out of a deal between Tehran and world powers that put restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.
Sullivan said that there was a risk that Iran might abandon its promise not to build nuclear weapons.
“It’s a risk we are trying to be vigilant about now. It’s a risk that I’m personally briefing the incoming team on,” Sullivan said, adding that he had also consulted with US ally Israel.
Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, could return to his hard-line Iran policy by stepping up sanctions on Iran’s oil industry. Sullivan said Trump would have an opportunity to pursue diplomacy with Tehran, given Iran’s “weakened state.”
“Maybe he can come around this time, with the situation Iran finds itself in, and actually deliver a nuclear deal that curbs Iran’s nuclear ambitions for the long term,” he said.
