BEIRUT: Israel launched a wave of air strikes on Hezbollah bastions in Beirut and south Lebanon on Saturday, as the Iran-backed militants said they fired on several Israeli military bases around the coastal city of Haifa.
Israel’s military reported a “heavy rocket barrage” on Haifa and said a synagogue was hit, injuring two civilians.
Since September 23, Israel has escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops after almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in support of Hamas in Gaza.
In the Palestinian territory, where Hamas’s attack on Israel triggered the war, the civil defense agency reported 24 people killed in strikes on Saturday.
Security services in Israel said two flares landed near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in the town of Caesarea, south of Haifa, but he was not home.
The incident comes about a month after a drone targeted the same residence, which Hezbollah claimed.
Israel’s military chief, in comments issued Saturday, said Hezbollah has already “paid a big price” but Israel will keep fighting until tens of thousands of its residents displaced from the north can return safely.
“We will continue to fight, to implement plans, to go further, conduct deep strikes, and hit Hezbollah very hard,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on a visit earlier in the week to the Kfar Kila area of south Lebanon.
AFPTV footage showed fresh strikes Saturday on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, after Israel’s military called on residents to evacuate.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a series of strikes.
The Israeli military said aircraft had targeted “a weapons storage facility” and a Hezbollah “command center.”
The NNA also reported strikes on the southern city of Tyre, including in a neighborhood near UNESCO-listed ancient ruins. Israel’s military late Saturday said it had hit Hezbollah facilities in the Tyre area.
In Lebanon’s east, the health ministry said an Israeli strike in the Bekaa Valley killed six people including three children.
Hezbollah said it fired a guided missile which set an Israeli tank ablaze in the southwest Lebanon village of Shamaa, about five kilometers (three miles) from the border.
Late Saturday, after Israel reported the rocket barrage on Haifa, Hezbollah said it had targeted five military bases, including the Stella Maris naval base which it said it fired on earlier in the day.
In eastern Lebanon, funerals were held for 14 civil defense staff killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday.
“They weren’t involved with any (armed) party... they were just waiting to answer calls for help,” said Ali Al-Zein, a relative of one of the dead.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,452 people have been killed since October last year, with most casualties recorded since September.
Israel announced the death of a soldier in southern Lebanon, bringing to 48 the number killed in fighting with Hezbollah.
In Hamas-run Gaza, the Israeli military said it continued operations in the northern areas of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, the targets of an intense offensive since early October.
Israel said its renewed operations aimed to stop Hamas from regrouping.
A UN-backed assessment on November 9 warned famine was imminent in northern Gaza, amid the increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid.
Israel has pushed back against a 172-page Human Rights Watch report this week that said its displacement of Gazans amounts to a “crime against humanity,” as well as findings from a UN Special Committee that pointed to warfare practices that “are consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”
A foreign ministry spokesman dismissed the HRW report as “completely false,” while the United States — Israel’s main military supplier — said accusations of genocide “are certainly unfounded.”
The Gaza health ministry on Saturday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war has reached 43,799.
The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry figures which the United Nations considers reliable.
In Rafah, southern Gaza, Jamil Al-Masry told AFP a house was hit, causing “a massive explosion.”
“We went to the house, only to find it in ruins, with fire raging and smoke and dust everywhere.”
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Demonstrators in Tel Aviv on Saturday reiterated demands that the government reach a deal to free dozens of hostages still held in Gaza.
The protest came a week after mediator Qatar suspended its role until Hamas and Israel show “seriousness” in truce and hostage-release talks.
In a rare claim of responsibility for a strike on Syria, Israel said it targeted the Islamic Jihad group on Thursday.
A statement from the group on Saturday confirmed that “prominent leader” Abdel Aziz Minawi and external relations chief Rasmi Yusuf Abu Issa were killed in the air raid on Qudsaya, in the Damascus area.
Islamic Jihad still holds several Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 attack.
Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are all backed by Israel’s arch-enemy Iran, which said Friday it supported a swift end to the nearly two-month war in Lebanon.
With diplomacy aimed at ending the Gaza war stalled, a top government official in Beirut said on Friday that US ambassador Lisa Johnson had presented a 13-point proposal to halt the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
It includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon will deploy troops to the border. The official added that Israel has yet to respond to the plan.
Israel pummels south Beirut as Hezbollah targets Haifa area
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Israel pummels south Beirut as Hezbollah targets Haifa area
- Israel’s military reported “heavy rocket barrage” on Haifa, saying synagogue was hit
- Lebanese authorities say over 3,452 people have been killed since October last year
Israeli defense minister: Troops will remain in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria indefinitely
“Unlike in the past, the (Israeli military) is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Israel Katz said in a statement. The military “will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and (Israeli) communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza — as in Lebanon and Syria.”
Israeli forces have taken over large areas of Gaza in recent weeks in a renewed campaign to pressure Hamas to release hostages after Israel ended their ceasefire last month. Israel has also refused to withdraw from some areas in Lebanon following a ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group last year, and it seized a buffer zone in southern Syria after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad.
Israel says it must maintain control of such territories to prevent a repeat of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack, in which thousands of militants stormed into southern Israel from Gaza.
Gaza hospital chief held in ‘inhumane’ conditions by Israel: lawyer
- Abu Safiya was subjected to interrogations involving beatings, mistreatment and torture.
- In January, rights group Amnesty International demanded Abu Safiya’s release, citing witness testimonies describing “the horrifying reality” in Israeli prisons.
NAZARETH: The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital who was detained by Israeli forces in December is being held in “inhumane” conditions by Israel and subjected to “physical and psychological intimidation,” his lawyer told AFP.
Hussam Abu Safiya, a 52-year-old paediatrician, rose to prominence last year by posting about the dire conditions in his besieged hospital in Beit Lahia during a major Israeli offensive.
On December 27, Israeli forces began an assault on the facility which they labelled a Hamas “terrorist center,” and arrested dozens of medical staff including Abu Safiya.
The military accused him of being a “Hamas operative.”
Abu Safiya’s lawyer, Gheed Qassem, was able to visit the doctor on March 19 in Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.
“He is suffering greatly, he is exhausted from the torture, the pressure and the humiliation he has endured to force him to confess to acts he did not commit,” said Qassem who met an AFP correspondent in Nazareth.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from AFP about the conditions in which Abu Safiya is being held.
After initially spending two weeks in the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel’s Negev desert, Abu Safiya was transferred to Ofer, where Israel keeps hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
In Sde Teiman, Abu Safiya was subjected to interrogations “involving beatings, mistreatment and torture,” Qassem said, before he was transferred to a cramped cell in Ofer for 25 days, where he was also subjected to questioning.
The Israeli authorities have designated the medic an “illegal combatant” for an “unlimited period of time,” Qassem said, and his case has been designated confidential by the military, meaning Abu Safiya’s defense cannot access the files.
She denounced what she said were restrictions imposed on legal visits, which have prevented lawyers from informing detainees about “the war, the date, the time or their geographic location.”
Her meeting with Abu Safiya, which took place under tight surveillance, lasted for only 17 minutes, she said.
Adopted in 2002, Israel’s law concerning “illegal combatants” permits the detention of suspected members of “hostile forces” outside of normal legal frameworks.
In January, rights group Amnesty International demanded Abu Safiya’s release, citing witness testimonies describing “the horrifying reality” in Israeli prisons, where Palestinian detainees are subjected to “systematic acts of torture and other mistreatment.”
A social media campaign using the hashtag #FreeDrHussamAbuSafiya has brought together health care organizations, celebrities and UN leaders.
That includes the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who demanded Abu Safiya’s release in a post on X.
Qassem warned that her client’s health was “very worrying.”
“He is suffering from arterial tension, cardiac arrhythmia and vision problems,” she said, adding “he has lost 20 kilos in two months and fractured four ribs during interrogations, without receiving proper medical care.”
The doctor remains calm, she said, but “wonders what crime he has committed” to be subjected to “such inhumane conditions.”
According to the lawyer, Abu Safiya’s jailers are demanding that he confess to having operated on members of Hamas or Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but he has refused to do so and denies the accusations.
The doctor insists that he is just a paediatrician, “and everything he did was out of a moral, professional and human duty toward the patients and the wounded,” Qassem said.
Since October 7, 2023, around 5,000 Gazans have been arrested by Israel, and some were subsequently released in exchange for hostages held in Gaza.
In general, they are accused of “belonging to a terrorist organization” or of posing “a threat to Israel’s security,” the lawyer said.
Qassem said that a number of detainees are being held without charge or trial and that their lawyers often did not know where their clients were during the first months of the war.
Istanbul's Hagia Sophia prepares for next big quake
- Hagia Sophia a World Heritage Site and Turkiye’s most visited landmark
Istanbul: The Hagia Sophia of Istanbul is no stranger to change — through the centuries the city’s architectural jewel has gone from church to mosque to museum, back to mosque again.
But the latest renovation aims not only to restore the wonders of the 1,488-year gem, but to ensure it survives the next earthquake to hit the ancient city.
From afar, its dome, shimmering rock and delicate minarets appear to watch over Istanbul, as they have for centuries.
As visitors get closer however, they see scaffolding covering its eastern facade and one of the minarets.
While “the renovation of course breaks a little bit the atmosphere of the appearance from the outside” and the “scaffolding takes away the aesthetic of the monument... renovation is a must,” said Abdullah Yilmaz, a guide.
Hagia Sophia, a World Heritage Site and Turkiye’s most visited landmark, “constantly has problems,” Hasan Firat Diker, an architecture professor working on the restoration, told AFP.
That is why it has undergone numerous piecemeal reconstructions over the centuries, he added.
'Global’ makeover'
The current makeover is the first time the site will undergo a “global restoration,” including the dome, walls and minarets, he said.
When it was first completed in AD 537, on the same spot where previous churches had stood, the Hagia Sophia became known as a shining example of the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, which ruled the city known as Constantinople at the time.
It served as a church until the fall of the city to the Ottomans in 1453, when it became a mosque.
In 1935, Mustafa Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkiye who forcibly remade the country into a secular one, turned the building into a museum.
It remained as such until 2020, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a practicing Muslim who came to power at the head of an Islamist-rooted party, turned it back into a mosque.
Next big quake
Like the residents of this historic city, the Hagia Sophia has not only had to contend with the whims of its rulers — it faces the constant danger from earthquakes that have regularly struck the metropolis, the last major one in 1999.
Like many buildings in the city of 16 million, which lies just kilometers from an active seismic fault line, Hagia Sophia does not meet building earthquake standards.
Its dome collapsed in an earthquake in 558 and the building has been damaged in other quakes that have hit the city since.
So the main goal of the restoration under way is to “reinforce the building against the next big earthquake” so that the ancient structure “survives the event with the least damage possible,” said Ahmet Gulec, a member of the scientific committee supervising the works.
For the moment specialists are studying the dome to determine how best to both reinforce and restore it, Diker said.
The interior is for now free of any scaffolding. But eventually four huge pillars will be erected inside to support a platform from where specialists will restore the dome’s paintings and mosaics.
“Once you’re inside... it’s perfect,” marvelled Ana Delgado, a 49-year-old tourist from Mexico as the hum of laughter, conversation and movement filled the building following afternoon prayers.
“It’s magic,” chimed in her friend, Elias Erduran, from the Dominican Republic.
Millions of visitors
Hagia Sophia saw 7.7 million visitors stream through its spacious interior last year.
Around 2.1 million of them are foreign tourists, many of whom pay 25 euros for an entry ticket, generating millions of euros annually.
Officials hope the inside pillars will not deter visitors from coming during the works, which are expected to last for several years. Officials have not said how much the renovation is expected to cost.
“The objective is that the visits and prayers continue” during the works, Gulec said.
And even if some visitors are disappointed not to have witnessed the building in all its glory, the important thing “is that one day my children will also be able to admire Saint Sophia,” said Yana Galitskaya, a 35-year-old visitor from Russia.
Second US carrier arrives off coast of Yemen
- Video footage shows fighter jets taking off to launch attacks against Houthi militia
DUBAI: A second US aircraft carrier has arrived off the coast of Yemen as Washington ramps up its attacks on Houthi militia targets, according to new satellite images.
The USS Carl Vinson is operating in key shipping routes northeast of Socotra island in the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden.
The carrier is accompanied by the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton and two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the USS Sterett and the USS William P. Lawrence.
The US sent the Vinson to back up the carrier USS Harry S. Truman, which has been launching airstrikes against the Houthis since March 15.
Video footage released by the US Navy showed the Vinson preparing ordinance and launching F-35 and F/A-18 fighter jets off its deck. US Central Command also posted videos saying there had been “24/7 strikes” on the Houthis by the two carriers.
Lebanon assures Jordan of solidarity after foiled threats to national security
- After arrest of 16 suspects ‘planning acts of chaos and sabotage,’ Beirut is ‘fully prepared’ to cooperate by sharing info about 2 who reportedly trained in Lebanon, says PM Nawaf Salam
- Palestinian Authority condemns the ‘terrorist plots’ and says ‘attempts to target and weaken Jordan are targeting and weakening Palestine’
LONDON: Lebanon’s prime minister expressed solidarity with Jordan following the arrest on Tuesday of several suspects accused of involvement in plots to compromise Jordanian national security.
During a telephone conversation with his counterpart, Jafar Hassan, Nawaf Salam pledged Lebanon's full cooperation in efforts to tackle threats to Jordan’s security and stability.
Earlier, the Jordanian General Intelligence Department arrested 16 people suspected of “planning acts of chaos and sabotage,” the Jordan News Agency reported. Two of the suspects, Abdullah Hisham and Muath Al-Ghanem, were believed to have visited Lebanon to coordinate with a senior leader in the Muslim Brotherhood and receive training, the agency added.
Salam said Lebanese authorities were “fully prepared” to cooperate with their Jordanian counterparts by providing information about individuals suspected of involvement in the plots who received training in Lebanon, the country’s National News Agency reported.
“Lebanon refuses to be a base or a launching pad for any action that would threaten the security of any brotherly or friendly country,” the prime minister added.
In a message posted on social media platform X, Lebanese MP Fouad Makhzoum said the case affects Lebanon’s relations with Arab and other foreign countries, and urged the government to clarify the circumstances surrounding the suspects’ training.
“All solidarity with Jordan in the face of malicious attempts to undermine its stability,” he added.
During a telephone call with Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, Lebanon’s former prime minister, Najib Mikati, similarly expressed his solidarity with Amman.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the “terrorist plots” and said they represented an attempt to undermine national security. The president’s office said “attempts to target and weaken Jordan are targeting and weakening Palestine,” the Palestinian News Agency reported.
