Hezbollah repels Israeli ‘infiltration’ as border tensions rise

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A man walks on rubble of a damaged site in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Al-Kfour, Nabatieh, southern Lebanon. (Reuters)
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Updated 19 August 2024
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Hezbollah repels Israeli ‘infiltration’ as border tensions rise

  • Israeli soldier, Hezbollah members killed amid exchanges of fire, drone attacks
  • Israeli planes break sound barrier over Beirut once again as MP warns war will destroy Lebanon

BEIRUT: An Israeli soldier and several Hezbollah fighters were killed in clashes along the Israeli-Lebanese border on Monday.

The Israeli sergeant was killed in a drone attack in Western Galilee, the Israeli military said, as the situation in southern Lebanon continued to deteriorate.

Hezbollah said on Monday it had detected “the infiltration of a contingent of Israeli soldiers into the vicinity of the border town of Aita Al-Shaab at dawn.”

The group said its rocket fire and artillery shelling forced the Israelis to retreat.

Later that day Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over southern Lebanon, extending to Chouf, Beirut, and its southern suburbs.

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According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, the violence since October has displaced more than 110,000 people in southern Lebanon.

Israel said its aircraft “attacked Hezbollah military buildings in Aita A-Shaab, Beit Lif, and Houla, and targeted the towns of Hanin and Tyre Harfa in southern Lebanon on Monday.”

The Israeli military also used heavy machine guns in a night operation near the Blue Line on the outskirts of the towns of Naqoura, Jabal Al-Labouneh, and Jabal Al-Alam.

Phosphorous bombs fired by the Israelis in the Tal Nahas area, meanwhile, caused a fire near a UNIFIL post.

An Israeli raid on the outskirts of the town of Yarin on Sunday resulted in injuries to three soldiers from the Ghanaian peacekeeping contingent serving under UNIFIL, whose patrol happened to pass near the area.

The Public Health Emergency Operations Center in Lebanon said two people were killed in an Israeli attack on the town of Houla. Hezbollah announced the deaths of two of its members, Abbas Melhem, aged 34, from Majdal Selm, and Mohammed Qadouh, aged 19, from Ghandouriya in southern Lebanon.

On Monday, Israeli media reported that sirens sounded in the settlements of Zar’it and Shtula in Upper Galilee, in areas surrounding the city of Acre and the settlement of Nahariya, and later in Hanita in Western Galilee.

It followed the explosion of drones launched from southern Lebanon toward the settlement of Ya’ara in Western Galilee near the Lebanese border.

Israeli media reported that the attacks left at least one person dead and six injured.

One report said that “at least three (injured people), one of which (was) in (a) critical condition, were transported to the medical center in Nahariya.”

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the drone attack, saying it came “in response to Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon in the past two days.”

The party said in statements that it launched “a coordinated aerial attack with a squadron of assault drones on the Israeli Ya’ara barracks — the headquarters of the Western Brigade 300 — and the Saint Jean base — the logistical base for the Northern Command.”

Hezbollah said it also targeted the Zarit Barracks and a group of soldiers in its vicinity with rockets and artillery shells, setting it on fire. It also reported targeting the Bayad Blida site with a Burkan rocket, “achieving a direct hit.”

Israeli media said three drones and 10 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward the Western Galilee.

On Sunday, Israel intensified its operations by targeting the town of Batoulyeh near the city of Tyre, the village of Dhayrah, and the town of Shebaa in the far south, which left one Hezbollah member, Fady Qassem Kanaan, dead.

Hezbollah carried out 10 operations on Sunday including against the Zebdine and Zarit barracks, the Ruwaysat Al-Alam, Al-Malikiyah, Al-Marj, Ruwaysat Al-Qarn, and Jal Al-Alam sites, and buildings used by soldiers in the settlements of Shtula and Misgav Am.

The operations also targeted the headquarters of Al-Sahl Battalion in the Beit Hillel barracks “in response to the targeting of the town of Shebaa.”

MP Ghayath Yazbek of the Lebanese Forces parliamentary bloc emphasized the need to implement UN Resolution 1701.

“It is best to implement it with the least possible damage,” said the MP. “Nothing will save Lebanon except the immediate implementation of UN Resolution 1701 because it will be implemented sooner or later.”

He added: “We are facing a long war of attrition between Israel and Hamas.”

Yazbek also warned that though Israel would suffer if the war expands, it would also destroy Lebanon.

He added that Hezbollah “is dealing with us, those who chose the state model, as if we were an insurance company.

“It decides and fights wars, and we compensate for the states of madness it goes through.”

He added: “Hezbollah knows well that it cannot win a war against Israel, but it is telling the Lebanese that ‘I do not care if I win or not.’”

 


Iraq’s water reserves lowest in 80 years: official

Updated 36 min 17 sec ago
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Iraq’s water reserves lowest in 80 years: official

  • Iraqi spokesperson of the Water Resources Ministry Khaled Shamal says the country hasn't seen such a low reserve in 80 years
  • Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five most impacted countries by climate change

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s water reserves are at their lowest in 80 years after a dry rainy season, a government official said Sunday, as its share from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers shrinks.
Water is a major issue in the country of 46 million people undergoing a serious environmental crisis because of climate change, drought, rising temperatures and declining rainfall.
Authorities also blame upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye for dramatically lowering the flow of the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates, which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.
“The summer season should begin with at least 18 billion cubic meters... yet we only have about 10 billion cubic meters,” water resources ministry spokesperson Khaled Shamal told AFP.
“Last year our strategic reserves were better. It was double what we have now,” Shamal said.
“We haven’t seen such a low reserve in 80 years,” he added, saying this was mostly due to the reduced flow from the two rivers.
Iraq currently receives less than 40 percent of its share from the Tigris and Euphrates, according to Shamal.
He said sparse rainfall this winter and low water levels from melting snow has worsened the situation in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
Water shortages have forced many farmers in Iraq to abandon the land, and authorities have drastically reduced farming activity to ensure sufficient supplies of drinking water.
Agricultural planning in Iraq always depends on water, and this year it aims to preserve “green spaces and productive areas” amounting to more than 1.5 million Iraqi dunams (375,000 hectares), said Shamal.
Last year, authorities allowed farmers to cultivate 2.5 million dunams of corn, rice, and orchards, according to the water ministry.
Water has been a source of tension between Iraq and Turkiye, which has urged Baghdad to adopt efficient water management plans.
In 2024, Iraq and Turkiye signed a 10-year “framework agreement,” mostly to invest in projects to ensure better water resources management.


Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza, including a journalist and rescue service official

Updated 25 May 2025
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Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza, including a journalist and rescue service official

  • Israeli fire kills at least 23 people in Gaza
  • Israel controls 77 percent of Gaza Strip, Hamas media office says

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including a local journalist and a senior rescue service official, local health authorities said.
The latest deaths in the Israeli campaign resulted from separate Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, medics said.
In Jabalia, they said local journalist Hassan Majdi Abu Warda and several family members were killed by an airstrike that hit his house earlier on Sunday.
Another airstrike in Nuseirat killed Ashraf Abu Nar, a senior official in the territory’s civil emergency service, and his wife in their house, medics added.
There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said that Abu Warda’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to 220.
In a separate statement, the media office said Israeli forces were in control of 77 percent of the Gaza Strip, either through ground forces or evacuation orders and bombardment that keeps residents away from their homes.
The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said in separate statements on Sunday that fighters carried out several ambushes and attacks using bombs and anti-tank rockets against Israeli forces operating in several areas across Gaza.
On Friday the Israeli military said it had conducted more strikes in Gaza overnight, hitting 75 targets including weapons storage facilities and rocket launchers.
Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people by Israeli tallies with 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.
The conflict has killed more than 53,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip. Aid groups say signs of severe malnutrition are widespread.


Israeli military says it intercepted missile from Yemen

Updated 25 May 2025
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Israeli military says it intercepted missile from Yemen

  • Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel.
Sirens sounded in several areas in the country, the Israeli military said earlier.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Most of the group’s missile have been intercepted or have fallen short.
The Houthis did not immediately comment on the latest missile launch.


Syria to help locate missing Americans

Updated 25 May 2025
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Syria to help locate missing Americans

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities have agreed to help the United States locate and return Americans who went missing in the war-torn country, a US envoy said on Sunday.
“The new Syrian government has agreed to assist the USA in locating and returning USA citizens or their remains. The families of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and Kayla Mueller must have closure,” US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack wrote on X.


Turkiye, PKK must both change for peace: former militant

Updated 25 May 2025
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Turkiye, PKK must both change for peace: former militant

  • For years, Yuksel Genc was a fighter with the Kurdish rebel group
  • Genc herself joined the militants in 1995 when she was a 20-year-old university student in Istanbul

DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: “When you try and explain peace to people, there is a very serious lack of trust,” said Yuksel Genc, a former fighter with the PKK, which recently ended its decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.
Talking over a glass of tea in a square in Diyarbakir, the biggest city in Turkiye’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, this 50-year-old former fighter with long auburn curls is worried about how the nascent rapprochement between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will play out.
“The guerillas are sincere, but they don’t think the state is,” said Genc, her words briefly interrupted by the roar of a fighter jet flying overhead.
“They think the government does not trust them.”
For years, she was a fighter with the Kurdish rebel group, which on May 12 said it would disarm and disband, ending a four-decade armed struggle against the Turkish state that cost more than 40,000 lives.
The historic move came in response to an appeal by its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, arrested in 1999 and serving life in solitary ever since on a prison island near Istanbul.
Genc herself joined the militants in 1995 when she was a 20-year-old university student in Istanbul.
“At that time, many Kurdish villages were being burnt down, and we were constantly hearing about villages being evacuated, people being displaced and unsolved murders,” she said.
She described it as “a time of terrible repression.”
“You felt trapped, as if there was no other way than to join the guerrillas,” she said.
Four years later, after years in exile, Ocalan was snatched by Turkish commandos in a Hollywood-style operation in Nairobi.
“Ocalan’s capture provoked a deep sense of rage among the guerrillas, who feared it would mean the Kurdish cause would be destroyed,” she said.
But it was Ocalan himself who called for calm and insisted it was time for the Kurdish question to be resolved democratically. He urged his followers to go to Turkiye, hand over their weapons and seek dialogue.
“He thought our arrival would symbolize (the PKK’s) goodwill, and persuade the state to negotiate.”
Genc was part of the first so-called “groups for peace and a democratic solution” — a group of three women and five men who arrived in Turkiye on October 1, 1999 on what they knew would be a “sacrificial” mission.
After a long march through the mountains, they arrived in the southeastern village of Semdinli under the watchful eye of “thousands” of Turkish soldiers huddled behind rocks.
Handing over their weapons, they were transferred to the city of Van 200 kilometers (140 miles) to the north where they were arrested.
Genc spent the next nearly six years behind bars.
“For us, these peace groups were a mission,” she said. “The solution had to come through dialogue.”
After getting out, she continued to struggle for Kurdish rights, swapping her gun for a pen to become a journalist and researcher for the Sosyo Politik think tank.
Even so, her writing earned her another three-and-a-half years behind bars.
“Working for peace in Turkiye has a cost,” she said with a shrug.
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister in 2003, there was hope for a new breakthrough. But several attempts to reach an agreement went nowhere — until now.
“Like in 1999, the PKK is moving toward a non-violent struggle,” she said.
“But laying down arms is not the end of the story. It is preparing to become a political organization.”
Resolving the decades-long conflict requires a change on both sides however, said Genc.
“It essentially involves a mutual transformation,” she argued.
“It is impossible for the state to stick with its old ways without transforming, while trying to resolve a problem as old and divisive as the Kurdish question.”
Despite the recent opening, Genc does not speak of hope.
“Life has taught us to be realistic: years of experience have generated an ocean of insecurity,” she said.
“(PKK fighters) have shown their courage by saying they will lay down their weapons without being defeated. But they haven’t seen any concrete results.”
So far, the government, which initiated the process last autumn, has not taken any steps nor made any promises, she pointed out.
“Why haven’t the sick prisoners been released? And those who have served their sentences — why aren’t they benefiting from the climate of peace?“
And Ocalan, she said, was still being held in solitary despite promises of a change in his situation.
The number of people jailed for being PKK members or close to the group has never been revealed by the Turkish authorities.
“The fact that Ocalan is still not in a position to be able to lead this process toward a democratic solution is a major drawback from the militants’ point of view,” she said.
“Even our daily life remains totally shaped by security constraints across the region with the presence of the army, the roadblocks — all that has to change.”