Israel bombards central Gaza as tanks advance deeper in Rafah

JUREUSALEM: Israel said on Tuesday that it had agreed to release five Lebanese citizens detained during its war with Hezbollah as a goodwill gesture to the neighboring country’s new president.
“In coordination with the United States and as a gesture to Lebanon’s new president, Israel has agreed to release five Lebanese detainees,” a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s office said that the decision came following a meeting held earlier in the day in the Lebanese border town of Naqoura that included representatives of the Israeli army, the United States, France and Lebanon.
“During the meeting, it was agreed to establish three joint working groups aimed at stabilising the region,” the prime minister’s statement said.
“These groups will focus on the five points controlled by Israel in southern Lebanon, discussions on the Blue Line and remaining disputed areas, and the issue of Lebanese detainees held by Israel.”
The Blue Line is the UN-patrolled demarcation line that has marked the Israel-Lebanon border since 2000.
In an interview to Lebanese news channel Al Jadeed, US deputy special envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus said the five Lebanese prisoners were a mix of civilians and soldiers.
“I’ll let the government of Lebanon make the announcement of who is in the mix. But there are some soldiers and civilians in the mix of five,” she said.
On November 27, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-French mediated truce that largely halted more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of full-blown war in which Israel sent in ground troops.
While the ceasefire continues to hold, Israel has periodically carried out air strikes on Lebanese territory, it says to prevent Hezbollah from rearming or returning to the territory along its northern border.
On Saturday, the military targeted a Hezbollah militant with an air strike in southern Lebanon. Lebanese media reported one killed and another wounded in what it said was an Israeli drone strike on a car.
The ceasefire required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and to dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
Israel had been due to withdraw completely from Lebanese territory by February 18 after missing a January deadline, but decided to keep troops at five locations it deemed strategic.

NAIROBI: Uganda has deployed special forces in South Sudan’s capital Juba to “secure it,” Uganda’s military chief said on Tuesday, as tensions between South Sudan’s president and first vice president stoke fears of a return to civil war.
A Ugandan military spokesperson said the deployment was at the request of the South Sudan government.
Tensions have risen in recent days in South Sudan, an oil producer, since President Salva Kiir’s government detained two ministers and several senior military officials allied with First Vice President Riek Machar.
One minister has since been released.
The arrests in Juba and deadly clashes around the northern town of Nasir are widely seen as jeopardizing a 2018 peace deal that ended a five-year civil war between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar in which nearly 400,000 people were killed.
“As of 2 days ago, our Special Forces units entered Juba to secure it,” Uganda’s military chief, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, said in a series of posts on the X platform overnight into Tuesday.
“We the UPDF (Ugandan military), only recognize one President of South Sudan, H.E. Salva Kiir ... any move against him is a declaration of war against Uganda,” he said in one of the posts.
Felix Kulayigye, the spokesperson for the Ugandan military, said the troops were there with permission from the South Sudan government.
“Yes we did (deploy them) and they are there on the invitation of government of South Sudan. The situation will determine how long we’ll stay there,” he said.
He declined to give details of troop numbers.
South Sudan government information minister and the military spokesperson did not respond to calls seeking comment.
After the civil war erupted in South Sudan in 2013, Uganda deployed its troops in Juba to bolster Kiir’s forces against Machar. They were eventually withdrawn in 2015.
Ugandan troops were again deployed in Juba in 2016 after fighting reignited between the two sides but they were also eventually withdrawn.
Uganda fears a full-blown conflagration in its northern neighbor could send waves of refugees across the border and potentially create instability.