Israeli military begins ground invasion of southern Lebanon

Update An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from northern Israel towards Lebanon, in a position near the Israel-Lebanon border, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. (AP)
An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from northern Israel towards Lebanon, in a position near the Israel-Lebanon border, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 01 October 2024
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Israeli military begins ground invasion of southern Lebanon

Israeli military begins ground invasion of southern Lebanon
  • The Israeli military said the operation was limited and localized
  • Syrian state media said air defenses were intercepting “hostile” targets in the Damascus area

BEIRUT/RIYADH: The Israeli military said early Tuesday that it had started a ground invasion of Lebanon in a long anticipated operation that leaders say will support the return of displaced Israelis to northern settlements.  

Israel’s military said the operation in southern Lebanon was limited and localized and was based on precise intelligence against the Lebanese group Hezbollah, adding that the air force and artillery units were supporting ground troops.

The military said that its targets were in villages close to its border with Lebanon that pose “an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.”

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire across the border for months, forcing many residents either side of it to flee or be evacuated from danger zones.  

Lebanese residents in Aita al-Shaab reported heavy shelling and the sound of military aerial activity.

Lebanese authorities said that 95 people had been killed on Monday due to Israeli actions across the country.

Hezbollah said on Monday that it had carried out attacks against the Israeli military.

The Lebanese capital was again targeted by Israeli fire on Monday night as at least six strikes hit south Beirut. Residents received messages to evacuate target sites and many continue to sleep outside for safety or because they have nowhere else to go.

In Sidon, a strike targeted Mounir Maqdah, commander of the Lebanese branch of the Palestinian Fatah movement’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Reuters reported citing two Palestinian security officials, and his fate was unknown early Tuesday.

The strike hit a building in the Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the city.

In neighboring Syria, state media said that three people had been killed, including a journalist, with air defenses intercepting “hostile” targets in the Damascus area on Tuesday.

“Our air defense systems are intercepting hostile targets in the Damascus area,” Syria’s official SANA news agency said, using a phrase usually used to refer to Israeli strikes.

Earlier, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel informed the US about the raids, which he said were described as “limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.”

Before the Israeli ground troops entered Lebanon, a Western diplomat in Cairo whose country is directly involved in de-escalation efforts said Israel had shared its plans with the US and other Western allies, and conveyed the operation will “be limited.”

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s army is repositioning troops stationed on its southern border, a Lebanese military official told AFP.

The Lebanese army is “repositioning and regrouping forces” at the southern border following threats of an Israeli incursion, the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Britain and Canada announced on Monday plans to get their citizens out of Lebanon amid fears over a wider escalation that may involve Iranian intervention to support Hezbollah.

Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said in his first public speech since Israeli airstrikes killed its veteran chief Hassan Nasrallah last week that the group’s fighters are primed to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon. Israel will not achieve its goals, he said.

“We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said in an address from an undisclosed location.

He was speaking as Israeli airstrikes on targets in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon continued, extending a two-week long wave of attacks that has eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1,000 Lebanese and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government.

Nasrallah’s killing, along with the series of blows against the organization’s communications devices and assassination of other senior commanders, constitute the biggest blow to the organization since Iran created it in 1982 to fight Israel.

He had built it up into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with wide sway across the Middle East.

Now Hezbollah faces the challenge of replacing a charismatic, towering leader who was a hero to millions of supporters because he stood up to Israel even though the West branded him a terrorist mastermind.

“We will choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity...and we will fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis,” Qassem said.

Qassem said Hezbollah’s fighters had continued to fire rockets as deep as 150 km (93 miles) into Israeli territory and were ready to face any possible Israeli ground incursion.

“What we are doing is the bare minimum...We know that the battle may be long,” he said. “We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006 in the face of the Israeli enemy,” he added, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes.

Israel, which has also assassinated leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza war, says it will do whatever it takes to return its citizens to evacuated communities on its northern border safely.

“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one. In order to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops deployed to the country’s northern border.

Hours before Hezbollah’s Qassem spoke, Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his wife, son and daughter in the southern city of Tyre on Monday.

Another faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said three of its leaders died in a strike in Beirut’s Kola district — the first such hit inside the city limits.

The wave of Israeli attacks on militant targets in Lebanon are part of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, to Yemen, Iraq and within Israel itself. The escalation has raised fears that the United States and Iran will be sucked into the conflict.

The latest actions indicated Israel has no intention of slowing down its offensive even after eliminating Nasrallah, who was Iran’s most powerful ally in its “Axis of Resistance” against Israeli and US influence in the region.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Tehran would not let any of Israel’s “criminal acts” go unanswered. He was referring to the killing of Nasrallah and an Iranian Guard deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes on Friday.

Russia said Nasrallah’s death had led to a serious destabilization in the broader region.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain called for a ceasefire, although they added that its support for Israel’s right to self-defense was “ironclad.”

Close ally the US has shown unwavering support for Israel despite concerns over heavy civilian casualties.


Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel

Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel
Updated 57 min 6 sec ago
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Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel

Lebanese president rules out normalization with Israel
  • Joseph Aoun calls on Israel to withdraw from the five points near the border it still occupies in southern Lebanon
  • He expressed hope for peaceful relations with Israel in the future

BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun ruled out normalization between his country and Israel on Friday, while expressing hope for peaceful relations with Beirut’s southern neighbor, which still occupies parts of southern Lebanon.

Aoun’s statement is the first official reaction to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar’s statement last week in which he expressed his country’s interest in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria.

Aoun “distinguished between peace and normalization,” according to a statement shared by the presidency.

“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment. As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy,” the president said in front of a delegation from an Arab think tank.

Lebanon and Syria have technically been in a state of war with Israel since 1948, with Damascus saying that talks of normalization were “premature.”

The president called on Israel to withdraw from the five points near the border it still occupies. Israel was required to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon under a November ceasefire seeking to end its war with Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Aoun said that Israeli troops in Lebanon “obstruct the complete deployment of the army up to the internationally recognized borders.”

According to the ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah must pull its fighters north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border with Israel, leaving the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.

The United States has been calling on Lebanon to fully disarm Hezbollah, and Lebanese authorities sent their response to Washington’s demand this week.

The response was not made public, but Aoun stated that Beirut was determined to “hold the monopoly over weapons in the country.”

The implementation of this move “will take into account the interest of the state and its security stability to preserve civil peace on one hand, and national unity on the other,” hinting that Hezbollah’s disarmament will not be done through force.

Hezbollah, a powerful political force in Lebanon, is the only non-state actor to have officially retained its weaponry after the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990, as parts of southern Lebanon were still under Israeli occupation at the time.

The Lebanese group was heavily weakened following its year-long hostilities with Israel, which escalated into a two-month war in September.


UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks

UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks
Updated 14 min 29 sec ago
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UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks

UN reports nearly 800 deaths near Gaza aid hubs in six weeks
  • Killings took place both at aid points run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near humanitarian convoys run by other relief bodies
  • GHF says UN figures are 'false and misleading' and denies killings took place at its sites

GENEVA: The UN rights office said on Friday it had recorded at least 798 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and near convoys run by other relief groups.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.

After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians trying to reach the GHF’s aid hubs in zones where Israeli forces operate, the United Nations has called its aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.

“(From May 27) up until the seventh of July, we’ve recorded 798 killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, and 183 presumably on the route of aid convoys,” UN rights office (OHCHR) spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a regular media briefing in Geneva.

The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May after Israel lifted an 11-week-old aid blockade, told Reuters on Friday the UN figures were “false and misleading.” It has repeatedly denied that deadly incidents have occurred at its sites.

“The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys,” a GHF spokesperson said.

The OHCHR said it bases its figures on a range of sources such as information from hospitals in the Gaza Strip, cemeteries, families, Palestinian health authorities, NGOs and its partners on the ground.

Most of the injuries to Palestinians in the vicinity of aid distribution hubs recorded by OHCHR since May 27 were gunshot wounds, Shamdasani said.

“We’ve raised concerns about atrocity crimes having been committed and the risk of further atrocity crimes being committed where people are lining up for essential supplies such as food,” she said.

Israel has repeatedly said its forces operate near the relief aid sites to prevent supplies falling into the hands of militants it has been fighting in the

Gaza war

triggered by the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7, 2023.

The GHF said on Friday it had delivered more than 70 million meals to hungry Gaza Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, while the UN World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by

“hungry civilian communities.”

There is an acute shortage of food and other basic supplies 21 months into Israel’s military campaign in during which much of the enclave has been reduced to rubble and most of its 2.3 million inhabitants displaced.


Kurdish PKK militants begin handing over weapons in cave in Iraq

Kurdish PKK militants begin handing over weapons in cave in Iraq
Updated 11 July 2025
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Kurdish PKK militants begin handing over weapons in cave in Iraq

Kurdish PKK militants begin handing over weapons in cave in Iraq
  • Disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party from armed insurgency to democratic politics
  • Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said peace efforts with the Kurds would gain momentum after the PKK begin laying down its weapons

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq: Dozens of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants began handing over weapons in a ceremony in a cave in northern Iraq on Friday, officials said, marking a symbolic but significant step toward ending a decades-long insurgency against Turkiye.

Helicopters hovered above the mountain where the disarmament process got underway, with dozens of Iraqi Kurdish security forces surrounding the area, a Reuters witness said.

The PKK, locked in conflict with the Turkish state and outlawed since 1984, decided in May to disband, disarm and end its separatist struggle after a public call to do so from its long-imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.

After a series of failed peace efforts, the new initiative could pave the way for Ankara to end an insurgency that has killed over 40,000 people, burdened the economy and wrought deep social and political divisions in Turkiye and the wider region.

The ceremony was held inside the Jasana cave in the town of Dukan, 60 kilometers northwest of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq’s north, according to an Iraqi security official and another regional government official.

Around 40 PKK militants and one commander were to hand over their weapons, people familiar with the plan said. It was unclear when further handovers would take place.

The PKK has been based in northern Iraq after being pushed well beyond Turkiye’s southeastern frontier in recent years. Turkiye’s military has regularly carried out operations and strikes on PKK bases in the region and established several military outposts there.

No footage of the ceremony has been made available yet, but Turkish broadcasters have been showing the crowds gathered near Sulaymaniyah and landscapes of the mountainous region as part of their coverage of what they said was a historic moment.

The arms are to be destroyed later in another ceremony attended by Turkish and Iraqi intelligence figures, officials of Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, and senior members of Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM party – which also played a key role in facilitating the PKK’s disarmament decision.

Next steps

The PKK, DEM and Ocalan have all called on Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s government to address Kurdish demands for more rights in regions where Kurds form a majority, particularly the southeast where the insurgency was concentrated.

In a rare online video published on Wednesday, Ocalan also urged Turkiye’s parliament to set up a commission to oversee disarmament and manage the broader peace process.

Ankara has taken steps toward forming the commission, while the DEM and Ocalan have said that legal assurances and certain mechanisms were needed to smooth the PKK’s transition into democratic politics.

Omer Celik, a spokesman for Erdogan’s AK Party, said the disarmament process should not be allowed to drag on longer than a few months to avoid it becoming subject to provocations.

Erdogan has said the disarmament will enable the rebuilding of Turkiye’s southeast.

Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has said Turkiye spent nearly $1.8 trillion over the past five decades combating terrorism, endorsing the peace steps as an economic boon.

The end of NATO member Turkiye’s conflict with the PKK could have consequences across the region, including in neighboring Syria where the United States is allied with Syrian Kurdish forces that Ankara deems a PKK offshoot.

Washington and Ankara want those Kurds to quickly integrate with Syria’s security structure, which has been undergoing reconfiguration since the fall in December of autocratic President Bashar Assad. PKK disarmament could add to this pressure, analysts say.


Gaza civil defense says Israeli strikes kill six

Gaza civil defense says Israeli strikes kill six
Updated 11 July 2025
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Gaza civil defense says Israeli strikes kill six

Gaza civil defense says Israeli strikes kill six
  • In central Gaza on Friday, the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said it received several casualties after Israeli forces had opened fire at civilians near an aid distribution point

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes on Friday killed at least six people in the Palestinian territory’s north, including five at a school-turned-shelter.

“Five martyrs and others injured in an Israeli strike on Halima Al-Saadia School, which was sheltering displaced persons in Jabalia Al-Nazla, northern Gaza,” the agency said in a brief statement.

In a separate strike on Gaza City, to the south, the agency said at least one person was killed and several others wounded.

In central Gaza on Friday, the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said it received several casualties after Israeli forces had opened fire at civilians near an aid distribution point.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations in the Gaza Strip as the war against Hamas militants entered its 22nd month.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency and other parties.

A Palestinian speaking to AFP from southern Gaza on condition of anonymity said there were ongoing attacks and widespread devastation, with Israeli tanks seen near the city of Khan Yunis.

“The situation remains extremely difficult in the area – intense gunfire, intermittent air strikes, artillery shelling and ongoing bulldozing and destruction of displacement camps and agricultural land to the south, west and north of Al-Maslakh,” an area to Khan Yunis’s south, said the witness.


Francesca Albanese, UN investigator and critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, shocked by US sanctions

Francesca Albanese, UN investigator and critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, shocked by US sanctions
Updated 11 July 2025
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Francesca Albanese, UN investigator and critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, shocked by US sanctions

Francesca Albanese, UN investigator and critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, shocked by US sanctions
  • Francesca Albanese: The powerful are trying to silence me for defending those without any power of their own
  • Albanese accuses US officials of receiving Israeli leader with honor and standing side-by-side with someone facing an arrest warrant

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina: An independent UN investigator and outspoken critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza said Thursday that “it was shocking” to learn that the Trump administration had imposed sanctions on her but defiantly stood by her view on the war.

Francesca Albanese said in an interview with The Associated Press that the powerful were trying to silence her for defending those without any power of their own, “other than standing and hoping not to die, not to see their children slaughtered.”

“This is not a sign of power, it’s a sign of guilt,” the Italian human rights lawyer said.

The State Department’s decision to impose sanctions on Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, followed an unsuccessful US pressure campaign to force the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, the UN’s top human rights body, to remove her from her post.

She is tasked with probing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and has been vocal about what she has described as the “genocide” by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the US have strongly denied that accusation.

“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on social media. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”

The US announced the sanctions Wednesday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Washington to meet with President Donald Trump and other officials about reaching a ceasefire deal in the war in Gaza. Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, which accuses him of crimes against humanity in his military offensive in Gaza.

In the interview, Albanese accused American officials of receiving Netanyahu with honor and standing side-by-side with someone wanted by the ICC, a court that neither the US nor Israel is a member of or recognizes. Trump imposed sanctions on the court in February.

“We need to reverse the tide, and in order for it to happen – we need to stand united,” she said. “They cannot silence us all. They cannot kill us all. They cannot fire us all.”

Albanese stressed that the only way to win is to get rid of fear and to stand up for the Palestinians and their right to an independent state.

The Trump administration’s stand “is not normal,” she said at the Sarajevo airport. She also defiantly repeated, “No one is free until Palestine is free.”

Albanese was en route to Friday’s 30th anniversary commemoration of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica where more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in a UN-protected safe zone were killed when it was overrun by Bosnian Serbs.

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights opposed the US move.

“The imposition of sanctions on special rapporteurs is a dangerous precedent” and “is unacceptable,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

While Albanese reports to the Human Rights Council – not Secretary-General Antonio Guterres – the US and any other UN member are entitled to disagree with reports by the independent rapporteurs, “but we encourage them to engage with the UN human rights architecture.”

Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the council in February.

The war between Israel and Hamas began Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were fighters or civilians.

Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, the UN says hunger is rampant after a lengthy Israeli blockade on food entering the territory and medical care is extremely limited.