BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said one person was killed Sunday in an Israeli drone strike, a day after the most intense escalation since a November ceasefire in the war with Hezbollah.
“The Israeli enemy raid with a drone on a car in Aita Al-Shaab led to the death of one citizen,” the health ministry said, after the official National News Agency (NNA) had reported the strike on the southern village.
The NNA also reported separate Israeli strikes on Sunday on Naqurah, Shihin and Labbouneh in the south, near the Israeli border.
Saturday saw the most intense escalation since a November ceasefire halted the war between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
The Lebanese health ministry said seven people were killed on Saturday, including in an attack on Tyre which a security source told AFP targeted a Hezbollah official.
Israel said the strikes were “a response to rocket fire toward Israel and a continuation of the first series of strikes carried out” in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah denied any involvement in the rocket attack, and called Israel’s accusations “pretexts for its continued attacks on Lebanon.”
The November ceasefire brought relative calm after a year of hostilities, including two months of open war, between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel has continued to strike Lebanon after the ceasefire, targeting what it said were Hezbollah military sites that violated the agreement.
Under the ceasefire, Hezbollah is supposed to pull its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces across the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the de facto border, but has missed two deadlines to do so and continues to hold five positions it deems “strategic.”
Lebanon says one dead as Israel resumes strike on south
https://arab.news/6jv3c
Lebanon says one dead as Israel resumes strike on south
- The NNA also reported separate Israeli strikes on Sunday on Naqurah, Shihin and Labbouneh in the south
Queen Rania of Jordan hosts iftar banquet for women in armed forces
- Efforts of military, security personnel ‘make us proud,’ she says
- Monarch conveys King Abdullah II’s greetings to guests at Ramadan meal
LONDON: Queen Rania of Jordan on Wednesday evening hosted an iftar banquet at Al-Husseiniya Palace in Amman for women serving in the country’s armed forces and security services.
She conveyed King Abdullah II’s greetings to the guests and praised them as “an example of dedication and service to the nation,” the Petra agency reported.
“Your stances, whether inside or outside Jordan, make us proud,” she said.
The queen said a unique bond between citizens and the military had developed over the years.
“It’s a natural relationship based on trust, love and respect for the military’s motto. Most of our homes have either a military person or someone related to the army or security,” she said.
The queen spoke directly to several of the guests about their lives and families.
“May God protect you as a source of strength for the nation and support for your colleagues in serving this country,” she said.
Lebanese president heading to France on first Europe visit since election
- “This visit to France is symbolically important” because Paris stood alongside Washington and Riyadh in pushing hardest for Aoun’s election, said Karim Bitar
- The trip also aims to restore France’s “traditional role” in mobilizing “countries friendly to Lebanon” for their support at donor conferences, he added
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun visits France on Friday, his first trip to a European country since his January election and as Paris pushes Beirut for long-demanded political and economic reforms.
He is due to meet President Emmanuel Macron, who on a visit to Beirut days after Aoun’s appointment said France would hold an international aid conference to support Lebanon’s reconstruction after a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.
No date for the conference has been announced.
Aoun was elected president after the position had been vacant for more than two years, under international pressure, including from former colonial power France.
His election, along with the formation of a new government in February led by reformist premier Nawaf Salam, ended a prolonged political impasse.
The breakthroughs came after the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, long a powerful player in Lebanese politics, was left heavily weakened in the war.
Lebanon’s new leaders now face the arduous task of reconstructing swathes of the country, and overseeing the disarmament of Hezbollah, beginning in south Lebanon.
They must also carry out reforms demanded by the international community to unlock bailout funds amid a five-year economic collapse widely blamed on official mismanagement and corruption.
“This visit to France is symbolically important” because Paris stood alongside Washington and Riyadh in pushing hardest for Aoun’s election, said Karim Bitar, lecturer in Middle East studies at Sciences-Po university in Paris.
The trip also aims to restore France’s “traditional role” in mobilizing “countries friendly to Lebanon” for their support at donor conferences, he added.
On Wednesday, Aoun told visiting French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian that he and the new government were “determined to overcome the difficulties that the reform process may face in the economic, banking, finance and judicial areas.”
Bitar said that despite recent optimism, “there are still reasons to fear the new leaders’ task will not be so simple.”
He accused “private interests” intrinsically linked to political, economic and media powers of seeking to “defend the system that has endured” since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Such interests also seek to “prevent any economic or social reform, any state-building,” or agreement with the International Monetary Fund, he charged.
Bitar also warned that Hezbollah was “not yet ready to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state.”
Under the November 27 ceasefire, Hezbollah was to withdraw its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Israeli border.
The Lebanese army was to deploy in the area, and any remaining Hezbollah military infrastructure there was to be dismantled.
The ceasefire, which France helps monitor, is based on United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the disarmament of all non-state armed groups.
Israel still regularly strikes what it says are Hezbollah targets and occupies five border points it considers strategic.
UN agency says has ‘two weeks’ left of food supplies in Gaza
- Israel resumed military operations in enclave just over a week ago, shattering fragile ceasefire
- WFP reducing individual rations so agency can feed more people overall
GAZA: The UN’s World Food Programme warned Thursday it had only two weeks’ worth of food left in Gaza, where “hundreds of thousands of people” are at risk of severe hunger and malnutrition.
“WFP has approximately 5,700 tons of food stocks left in Gaza — enough to support WFP operations for a maximum of two weeks,” the Rome-based agency said in a statement.
Israel resumed military operations in the Palestinian territory just over a week ago, shattering weeks of relative calm brought by a fragile ceasefire.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that the renewed Israeli operations had displaced 142,000 people in just seven days, and warned of dwindling supplies after Israel resumed a block on humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
WFP said Thursday that it and others in the food security sector had been “unable to bring new food supplies into Gaza for more than three weeks.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are again at risk of severe hunger and malnutrition as humanitarian food stocks in the Strip dwindle and borders remain closed to aid,” it said.
“Meanwhile, the expansion of military activity in Gaza is severely disrupting food assistance operations and putting the lives of aid workers at risk every day,” WFP added.
The agency said that due to the deteriorating security situation and rapid displacement of people, it will “distribute as much food as possible, as quickly as possible.”
It is reducing individual rations so the agency can feed more people overall. It plans to distribute food parcels to half a million people, meaning the packages will feed a family for roughly one week, it said.
Israeli officials say the new operations are meant to pressure Hamas, which controls Gaza, into releasing the remaining hostages following a stalemate in talks with mediators on extending the truce.
Of the 251 hostages seized during the Islamist group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 50,208 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry.
Lebanon says Israel strikes killed four people
- An “Israeli enemy strike on a car in Yohmor Al-Shaqeef led to the death of three people,” said a health ministry statement
- A drone targeted a vehicle near the town, in a strike that came at the same time as artillery shelling
BEIRUT: Lebanon said Thursday that Israeli strikes killed four people in the country’s south, with Israel saying it struck Hezbollah operatives.
The strikes were the latest in a series on south Lebanon, despite a November ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah after more than a year of hostilities.
An “Israeli enemy strike on a car in Yohmor Al-Shaqeef led to the death of three people,” said a health ministry statement reported by the National News Agency.
The agency said a drone targeted a vehicle near the town, in a strike that came at the same time as artillery shelling.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “several Hezbollah terrorists were identified transferring weapons in the area of Yohmor in southern Lebanon,” adding that the army “struck the terrorists.”
The NNA earlier Thursday reported that “one person was killed and another wounded in the Israeli drone targeting... of a car in the town Maaroub,” also in south Lebanon.
The Israeli military said that overnight, the air force “struck and eliminated... a battalion commander” in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force in the Derdghaiya area, near Maaroub.
It accused him of having “advanced and directed numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians” and troops during the war, and of also directing “terror attacks against Israel’s Home Front” in recent months.
Israel has continued to carry out raids in Lebanon since the November 27 ceasefire, striking what it says are Hezbollah military targets that violated the truce agreement.
Last weekend saw the most intense escalation since the truce, with Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killing eight people, according to Lebanese officials.
Israel’s raids were in response to rocket fire, the first to hit its territory since the ceasefire.
No party has claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, which a military source said originated north of the Litani River, between the villages of Kfar Tebnit and Arnoun, near the zone covered by the ceasefire deal.
Hezbollah, heavily weakened by the war, denied involvement.
Under the ceasefire, Hezbollah was to pull its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
Israel was to withdraw its forces across the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the de facto border, but still holds five positions in south Lebanon that it deems strategic.
Sudan’s army shells Omdurman in push to oust RSF from capital region
- The war has ruined much of Khartoum, uprooted more than 12 million Sudanese from their homes, and left about half of the 50 million population suffering acute hunger
DUBAI: The Sudanese army shelled parts of Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman from early morning on Thursday, residents said, after declaring victory over their Rapid Support Forces rivals in a two-year battle for the capital.
The army ousted the RSF from its last footholds in Khartoum on Wednesday but the paramilitary RSF holds some areas in Omdurman, directly across the Nile River, and has consolidated in west Sudan, splitting the nation into rival zones.
Khartoum residents expressed delight fighting was over for the first time since it erupted in April 2023.
“During the last two years the RSF made our life hell killing and stealing. They didn’t respect anybody including women and old men,” teacher Ahmed Hassan, 49, said by phone.
The war has ruined much of Khartoum, uprooted more than 12 million Sudanese from their homes, and left about half of the 50 million population suffering acute hunger in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
Overall deaths are hard to estimate but a study published last year said the toll may have reached 61,000 in Khartoum state alone in the first 14 months of the conflict.
The conflict has added to instability around northeast Africa, with Sudan’s neighbors Libya, Chad, Central African Republic and South Sudan each weathering internal bouts of conflict over recent years.
In a video posted on Thursday from the recaptured presidential palace, army chief Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan declared: “Khartoum is free.”
The RSF said in a statement that it had never lost a battle, but that its forces had “strategically repositioned and expanded across the battlefronts to secure their military objectives,” without naming Khartoum or other locations.
While the seizure of Khartoum marks a significant turning point, the war looks far from over.
Residents in the western state of Darfur said the RSF was shelling army positions in Al-Fashir, the main city there, on Thursday.
RETREATING RSF
RSF fighters pulling out of Khartoum on Wednesday via a Nile dam 40 km south redeployed, some heading into Omdurman to help stave off army attacks and others heading west toward Darfur, witnesses said.
The army controls most of Omdurman, home to two big military bases, and looks focused on driving out the last RSF troops to secure control over Khartoum’s entire urban area. Thursday’s shelling was directed at southern Omdurman.
The RSF still holds a last patch of territory around the dam at Jebel Aulia south of Khartoum, two residents of the area said, to secure a line of retreat for stragglers.
Residents of a village in North Kordofan state said they had seen an RSF military convoy with dozens of vehicles passing through on its way west.
The army and RSF had been in a fragile partnership, jointly staging a coup in 2021 that derailed the transition from the Islamist rule of Omar Al-Bashir, a longtime autocrat ousted in 2019.
The RSF, under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, developed from Darfur’s janjaweed militias and Bashir developed the group as a counterweight to the army, led by career officer Burhan.
Under an internationally backed transition plan the RSF was meant to integrate into the army, but there were disputes over how and when that should happen and fighting broke out.
In Khartoum the RSF quickly spread through residential districts, taking most of the city and besieging the better-equipped army in big military bases that had to be resupplied by air.
The army’s capture of Khartoum could open the way for it to announce the formation of a government. The RSF has said it would support the formation of a rival civilian administration.
