New Hezbollah chief open to truce with Israel if offer is made

New Hezbollah chief open to truce with Israel if offer is made
People watch Hezbollah’s newly named leader Naim Kassem delivering a televised speech, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo)
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Updated 30 October 2024
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New Hezbollah chief open to truce with Israel if offer is made

New Hezbollah chief open to truce with Israel if offer is made
  • Naim Qassem: ‘If the Israelis decide that they want to stop the aggression, we say we accept, but under the conditions that we see as appropriate and suitable’
  • Qassem insisted Hezbollah would not ‘beg for a ceasefire,’ however, and warned that it had not yet received a credible proposition

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Hezbollah’s new leader says the beleaguered Lebanese militia could agree to a ceasefire under certain terms, as Israeli forces warn civilians to flee more cities as they expand their bombardment of the group’s bastions.

His statement came as Israel’s security cabinet met to discuss a possible truce, but also as Israel attacked the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek and said it had claimed the scalp of yet another senior Hezbollah commander.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem became leader of the Iran-backed armed movement on Tuesday, after the long-serving former chief Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated by Israel in a massive air strike last month.

In his first speech since taking over, Qassem insisted he would follow his slain predecessor’s “work program” and that Hezbollah could continue to resist Israel’s air and ground attacks inside Lebanon for months to come.

But he also opened the door to a negotiated truce, if presented with an Israeli offer.

“If the Israelis decide that they want to stop the aggression, we say we accept, but under the conditions that we see as appropriate and suitable,” he said.

Qassem insisted Hezbollah would not “beg for a ceasefire,” however, and warned that it had not yet received a credible proposition.

Meanwhile, in a sign of political machinations behind the scenes of the devastating military conflict, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said the country’s security cabinet was meeting to discuss what terms it might offer to secure a truce.

“There are discussions, I think it will still take time,” Cohen told Israeli public radio.

According to Israel’s Channel 12 television, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with ministers on Tuesday evening on Israel’s demands in return for a 60-day truce.

These include that Hezbollah withdraw to the north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli frontier, and that the Lebanese state’s army deploy along the border.

An international intervention mechanism would be established to enforce the truce, but Israel would demand a guarantee that it will maintain freedom of action in case of threats.

“Thanks to all the army’s operations these past months and particularly these past weeks ... Israel can come in a position of strength after the entire Hezbollah leadership was eliminated and over 2,000 Hezbollah terrorist infrastructures were hit,” said Cohen, a former intelligence minister.

According to Israeli media, US President Joe Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk and special envoy Amos Hochstein will head to the region Wednesday to meet Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to discuss conditions for a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

Their goal is to implement the deal prepared by Hochstein, which is reported to be based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

Under the resolution, which ended Israel’s last war with Hezbollah in 2006, only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL would be deployed in areas south of the Litani.

On the ground explosions rocked the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek shortly after Israel’s military warned residents it would “act forcefully against Hezbollah interests within your city and villages.”

Baalbek mayor Mustafa Al-Shall confirmed strikes hit in and around the city, while state media said “enemy warplanes launched a series of strikes on the Asira area of the city of Baalbek.”

The war in Lebanon began late last month, nearly a year after Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border fire into Israel in support of Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The war has killed at least 1,754 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, although the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.

Israel’s military says it has lost 37 soldiers in Lebanon since ground operations began on September 30.

In the year-old parallel conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, there were more deadly strikes on Wednesday, as international mediators prepared to propose a short-term truce to free hostages and avert a humanitarian catastrophe.

News of a potential breakthrough in truce talks came a day after an Israeli strike on a single Gaza residential block killed nearly 100 people and triggered international revulsion.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have for months been trying to negotiate a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza to allow a prisoner swap, humanitarian access and talks on a longer-term peace.

Israel’s Mossad spy chief David Barnea, CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani held their latest round of secretive talks on Sunday and Monday in Doha.

On Wednesday, a source close to the talks told AFP on condition of anonymity that the senior officials discussed proposing to the parties a “short-term” truce of “less than a month.”

The proposal included the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, and an increase in aid to Gaza, the source added.

“US officials believe that if a short-term deal can be reached, it could lead to a more permanent agreement,” the source said.

A Hamas official said the group would discuss any ideas for a Gaza ceasefire that included an Israeli withdrawal, but had not officially received any comprehensive proposals.

A strike Tuesday in the northern Gaza district of Beit Lahia collapsed a building and left at least 93 dead, including a large number of children, according to the territory’s civil defense agency.

The US State Department described the bombing as “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and a spokesman said Washington had asked Israel for an explanation.

The United Nations aid coordination agency UNOCHA said the strike was just one of at least seven mass casualty incidents over the past week in Gaza.

“Only two... out of 20 health service points and two hospitals, Kamal Adwan and Al Awda, remain functional, although partially, hampering the delivery of life-saving health services,” UNOCHA said.

“Across the Gaza Strip, October has seen very limited food distribution due to severe supply shortages,” it warned, adding that 1.7 million people, 80 percent of the population, did not receive rations.

Israel launched a renewed offensive against Palestinian fighters in northern Gaza in recent weeks, one year after the October 7, 2023 cross-border Hamas attack that left 1,206 Israelis dead.

Israel’s response has led to the deaths of 43,163 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, figures which the United Nations consider reliable.


Magnitude 6.1 earthquake hits Turkiye’s Balikesir province, killing 1 and collapsing buildings

Magnitude 6.1 earthquake hits Turkiye’s Balikesir province, killing 1 and collapsing buildings
Updated 11 August 2025
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Magnitude 6.1 earthquake hits Turkiye’s Balikesir province, killing 1 and collapsing buildings

Magnitude 6.1 earthquake hits Turkiye’s Balikesir province, killing 1 and collapsing buildings
  • Elderly woman pulled out alive from the debris of a collapsed building in Sindirgi but she died shortly
  • 16 buildings and two mosque minarets collapsed, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced

ISTANBUL: A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck Turkiye’s northwestern province of Balikesir on Sunday, killing at least one person and causing more than a dozen buildings to collapse, officials said. At least 29 people were injured.

The earthquake, with an epicenter in the town of Sindirgi, sent shocks that were felt some 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the north in Istanbul — a city of more than 16 million people.

An elderly woman died shortly after being pulled out alive from the debris of a collapsed building in Sindirgi, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told reporters. Four other people were rescued from the building.

Yerlikaya said a total of 16 buildings collapsed in the region — most of them derelict and unused. Two mosque minarets also tumbled down, he said.

None of the injured were in serious condition, the minister said.

Television footage showed rescue teams asking for silence so they can listen for signs of life beneath the rubble.

Turkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency said the earthquake was followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 4.6, and urged citizens not to enter damaged buildings.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement wishing all affected citizens a speedy recovery.

“May God protect our country from any kind of disaster,” he wrote on X.

Turkiye sits on top of major fault lines and earthquakes are frequent.

In 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed more than 53,000 people in Turkiye and destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and southeastern provinces. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighboring Syria.


Security footage from Syria hospital shows men in military garb killing medical worker

Security footage from Syria hospital shows men in military garb killing medical worker
Updated 11 August 2025
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Security footage from Syria hospital shows men in military garb killing medical worker

Security footage from Syria hospital shows men in military garb killing medical worker
  • A Syrian government official said they could not immediately identify the attackers in the video, and are investigating the incident to try to figure out if they are government-affiliated personnel or gunmen from tribal groups

DAMASCUS, Syria: Footage from security cameras at a hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria published Sunday showed what appears to be the killing of a medical worker by men in military garb.

The video published by activist media collective Suwayda 24 was dated July 16, during intense clashes between militias of the Druze minority community and armed tribal groups and government forces.

In the video, which was also widely shared on social media, a large group of people in scrubs can be seen kneeling on the floor in front of a group of armed men. The armed men grab a man and hit him on the head as if they are going to apprehend him. The man tries to resist by wrestling with one of the gunmen, before he is shot once with an assault rifle and then a second time by another person with a pistol.

A man in a dark jumpsuit with “Internal Security Forces” written on it appears to be guiding the men in camouflage into the hospital.

Another security camera shows a tank stationed outside the facility.

Activist media groups say the gunmen were from the Syrian military and security forces.

A Syrian government official said they could not immediately identify the attackers in the video, and are investigating the incident to try to figure out if they are government-affiliated personnel or gunmen from tribal groups.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not immediately cleared to speak to the media on the matter.

The government has set up a committee tasked with investigating attacks on civilians during the sectarian violence in the country’s south, which is supposed to issue a report within three months.

The incident at the Sweida National Hospital further exacerbates tensions between the Druze minority community and the Syrian government, after clashes in July between Druze and armed Bedouin groups sparked targeted sectarian attacks against them.

The violence has worsened ties between them and Syria’s Islamist-led interim government under President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who hopes to assert full government control and disarm Druze factions.

Though the fighting has largely calmed down, government forces have surrounded the southern city and the Druze have said that little aid is going into the battered city, calling it a siege.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which has organized aid convoys into Sweida, said in a statement on Saturday that one of those convoys that was carrying aid in the day before “came under direct fire,” and some of its vehicles were damaged. It did not specify which group attacked the convoy.

On Sunday, the UN Security Council adopted a statement expressing “deep concern” at the violence in southern Syria and condemning violence against civilians in Sweida. It called for the government to “ensure credible, swift, transparent, impartial, and comprehensive investigations.”

The statement also reiterated “obligations under international humanitarian law to respect and protect all medical personnel and humanitarian personnel exclusively engaged in medical duties, their means of transportation and equipment, as well as hospitals and medical facilities.”

It expressed concern about “foreign terrorist fighters” in Syria, while calling on “all states to refrain from any action or interference that may further destabilize the country,” an apparent message to Israel, which intervened in last month’s conflict on the side of the Druze, launching airstrikes on Syrian government forces.

 


Malnutrition in El-Fasher kills 63 in a week

Malnutrition in El-Fasher kills 63 in a week
Updated 11 August 2025
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Malnutrition in El-Fasher kills 63 in a week

Malnutrition in El-Fasher kills 63 in a week
  • Since May last year, El-Fasher has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which have been at war with Sudan’s regular army since April 2023

PORT SUDAN: Malnutrition has claimed the lives of at least 63 people, mostly women and children, in just one week in Sudan’s besieged city of El-Fasher, a health official said on Sunday.

The official said the figure only included those who managed to reach hospitals, adding that many families buried their dead without seeking medical help due to poor security conditions and a lack of transportation.

Since May last year, El-Fasher has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which have been at war with Sudan’s regular army since April 2023.

The city remains the last major Darfur urban center in army control and has recently come under renewed attack by the RSF after the group withdrew from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, earlier this year.

BACKGROUND

The city remains the last major Darfur urban center in army control and has recently come under renewed attack by the Rapid Support Forces.

A major RSF offensive on the nearby Zamzam displacement camp in April forced tens of thousands of people to flee again — many of them now sheltering inside El-Fasher.

Community kitchens — once a lifeline — have largely shut down due to a lack of supplies. 

Some families are reportedly surviving on animal fodder or food waste.

Nearly 40 percent of children under five in El-Fasher are now acutely malnourished, with 11 percent suffering from severe acute malnutrition, according to UN figures.

The rainy season, which peaks in August, is further complicating efforts to reach the city. 

Roads are rapidly deteriorating, making aid deliveries difficult if not impossible.

The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and created what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.

Rapid Support Forces killed 18 civilians in an attack on two villages west of Khartoum earlier this week, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

The attack occurred on Thursday in North Kordofan state, which is key to the RSF’s fuel smuggling route from Libya.

The area has been a major battleground between the army and the paramilitaries for months, and communications lines with the rest of the world have been mostly cut off.

According to the Emergency Lawyers human rights group, which has documented abuses since the start of the war two years ago, the attack on the two villages in North Kordofan “killed 18 civilians and wounded dozens.”

The wounded were transferred to the state capital of El-Obeid for treatment.

Tolls are nearly impossible to independently verify in Sudan, as many medical facilities have been forced out of service and there is limited media access.

 


How conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa are brutalizing a generation

How conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa are brutalizing a generation
Updated 11 August 2025
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How conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa are brutalizing a generation

How conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa are brutalizing a generation
  • More than 12 million children in the MENA region have been killed, injured, or displaced by conflict in just two years
  • UNICEF warns that children are suffering unprecedented harm due to prolonged wars and political instability

LONDON: For the past two years, humanitarian aid groups and UN aid agencies have warned repeatedly about the increasingly terrible price being paid by children in the conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa.

It is a refrain which, against the backdrop of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, has all but faded into the general cacophony of horror that in 2025 has become the soundtrack to life for so many in the region.

So when Edouard Beigbeder, MENA region director at UNICEF, the UN children’s fund, announced that more than 12 million children had been maimed, killed, or displaced by conflict in the region over the past two years, this gargantuan figure caused barely a ripple.

“A child’s life is being turned upside down the equivalent of every five seconds due to the conflicts in the region,” Beigbeder said.

“Half of the region’s 220 million children live in conflict-affected countries. We cannot allow this number to rise. Ending hostilities — for the sake of children — is not optional; it is an urgent necessity, a moral obligation, and it is the only path to a better future.”

UNICEF estimates that 45 million children across the region will require humanitarian assistance this year “due to continued life-threatening risks and vulnerabilities” — up from 32 million in 2020, a 41 percent increase in just five years.

The analysis is based on reported figures for children killed, injured, or displaced in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen since September 2023, combined with demographic data from the UN Population Division.

Ali, 2, survived 14 hours trapped under rubble after an attack in Lebanon in October 2024 that killed his entire family — mother, father, sister and grandmother — and cost him a hand. (UNICEF)

But only those who have seen firsthand the suffering of children can fully understand the true meaning of such statistics. UNICEF staff on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere in the region are among those who have witnessed the true meaning of children’s suffering up close.

One of them is Salim Oweis, a communications specialist with UNICEF’s MENA office. Based in Jordan, his job is to go where, thanks to Israeli restrictions, international journalists cannot go, to tell stories from the scene.

It is a job which, he freely admits, gives him nightmares.

Oweis was in Gaza in August last year during one of the peaks in violence, when UNICEF was trying to reunite children separated from their families. And during the temporary ceasefire in February this year, when UNICEF worked with the World Health Organization to administer polio vaccines to hundreds of thousands of children.

Sila was four years old when her mother, father and sisters were killed in an airstrike on her home in December 2023. Her leg, badly burnt, had to be amputated and she is now learning to walk with a prosthetic. (UNICEF)

When he first joined UNICEF, nine years ago, it was at the height of the civil war in Syria. “I wasn’t in the field yet, but I was receiving all these disturbing stories and images,” said Oweis. “I used to have nightly nightmares about me running away with my nephews, who were babies at the time.”

His job is harrowing, he says, but “how could I be sleeping safely at home, knowing this is happening, without doing anything?”

Oweis even describes as “selfish” the “reward” he gets from telling stories that might otherwise remain untold. “I’ve been there, I’ve spoken to people, I’ve been able to hug a child, or smile with a child, or listen to a mother,” he said.

Wounded Syrian children receive medical care at a makeshift clinic in the town of Maaret Misrin following Syrian government forces airstrikes on March 5, 2020 in the country's northwestern Idlib province. (AFP/File)

“Maybe I can’t directly help her in the moment, but our job is to deliver the story, especially in places like Gaza, where no international media is allowed, and I think that is crucially important, in terms of letting people know what’s happening with children, and for their voices not to go unheard.

“Yes, I have my daily reminders of being exposed to that. But I think the cause is bigger than me, I believe in it — and I want to be on the right side of history.”

The message Oweis wants the world to hear, loud and clear, is that, whether in Gaza or Sudan, children are facing “a total disruption of whatever you think normal daily life for a child should be.

“Everything is disrupted. There is no sense of safety, no sense, even, of belonging, no sense of connection with others, no sense of community, because they are being constantly ripped away from places and communities to which they belong are under constant threat of death or displacement.”

Displaced Sudanese children gather at a camp near the town of Tawila in North Darfur on February 11, 2025, amid the ongoing war between the army and paramilitary forces. (AFP)

Oweis says when he was in Gaza, “I didn’t meet any child, or adult, for that matter, who hadn’t lost someone, and mostly it’s either a father, a mother, a sister or a brother.”

For Oweis, meeting children in Gaza who had lost a father was hard, but looking into the eyes of children who had lost siblings was equally distressing.

“For a child to lose a brother or a sister, who they play marbles with, climb with, even fight with. When all that suddenly goes.

“We like to say that children have a high tolerance, but I think that is a dangerous word to use, because we say it and then we expect them to be resilient, but not every child is equally resilient.”

IN NUMBERS

12 million Children maimed, killed, or displaced by MENA conflicts in the past two years.

1/2 Proportion of the region’s 220m children who live in conflict-affected countries.

45 million Children across the region who will require humanitarian assistance this year.

(Source: UNICEF)

In Gaza, UNICEF has been doing its best to offer as much psycho-social support as possible to a generation of children in danger of being brutalized by war.

“The UN has been very clear that there are no such thing as ‘safe zones’ in Gaza,” said Oweis. “But we create child-friendly spaces where children can go for a couple of hours a day.”

Part of the objective is to maintain a basic level of education in four main subjects — maths, science, English and Arabic — “but school is not only for learning,” added Oweis. “It’s also for bonding, for community, for emotional and social connection.”

Through games, singing, and other activities, children are encouraged to be children, if only for a couple of hours a day, and to express themselves.

Oweis visited one camp for displaced people in Gaza where UNICEF had partners delivering activities, one of which was a session in creative writing.


Palestinian school children queue up at a temporary educational centre under the supervision and funding of UNICEF in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, on September 19, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.

Asked to write about their least favorite color, many of the children, who had seen more bloodshed than any child should ever see, unhesitatingly nominated red, followed by grey, the color of the rubble of devastated buildings.

Each child, Oweis found, is affected differently by the trauma they have experienced. “Some of them are very withdrawn. They don’t speak to you, they don’t respond to you. They don’t even look you in the eye. They seem broken by what they’ve been through.

“Others are more active and engaging. There is no one mold that fits all, but you know that every one of them is affected in some way.”

Affected, and affecting. Oweis will never forget one young boy he met, who had lost a leg. “He was in a wheelchair, and he was the sweetest person, very smiley. We asked him what he wanted for the future, and he said, ‘I want to go back and play football.’

“Me and my colleague and the boy’s father were there and all of us were taken aback, because we knew he was never going to do that in the way he thinks he will.”

Palestinian medics attend to children wounded in an Israeli strike on a camp for displaced people near Khan Yunis, at the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip city late on July 8, 2025. (AFP/File)

Oweis fears that the conflicts in Gaza and elsewhere are breeding a generation of lost souls. “I truly hope not,” he said.

“Before all this we had an initiative with a lot of global partners in Syria called No Lost Generation. But unfortunately, each day that war continues, and hostilities impact children — not only in Gaza, but also in Sudan, in Syria, and now in Yemen, which is unfortunately almost forgotten — the risk of losing that generation, those childhoods, grows.

“I don’t want to believe that, because I really believe that we can still do something. But unfortunately, we know that many of the children that we will be able to provide with psychological support will not benefit from it. For them it will be too late, because the trauma is not a one-off, but is a daily thing for months on end.

“So yes, each day we are risking many more children being lost, and we’re talking about not only the impact on their lives, but also on the community, because they’re not going to be productive, they’re going to be needing a lot of support, medical, social and psychological, and that will have impact on the very core of these communities.”

There is also the fear that the brutality unleashed in Gaza will simply perpetuate the seemingly never-ending violence by breeding a new generation of terrorists.

“The best way for a government to fight terrorist movements is to avoid killing civilians, otherwise the cycle of victimization just breeds more terrorists,” said Jessica Stern, a research professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, whose work focuses on connections between trauma and terror.

In a co-authored article published in Foreign Affairs magazine two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that triggered the war on Gaza, Stern wrote: “Those who study trauma know that ‘hurt people hurt people,’ and the adage holds true for terrorists.”

People who live in a state of existential anxiety, she argued, “are prone to dehumanizing others.”

Children inspect the scene in the aftermath of overnight Israeli bombardment on a camp sheltering displaced people in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 5, 2025. (AFP)

“Hamas, for instance, calls Israelis ‘infidels,’ while the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has referred to members of Hamas as ‘human animals,’ and both sides have called the other ‘Nazis.’

“Such dehumanizing language makes it easier to overcome inhibitions against committing atrocities.”

UNICEF’s wake-up call about the suffering of children across the MENA region comes as the agency is experiencing major funding shortfalls.

As of May, its programs in Syria were facing a 78 percent funding gap, while its 2025 appeal on behalf of the people of Palestine fared little better, with a 68 percent shortfall.

Looking ahead, says UNICEF, “the outlook remains bleak.”

A health worker measures the arm of a malnourished child at a treatment centre in the Khokha district of the western Yemeni province of Hodeida on July 26, 2023. 9AFP/File)

As things stand, the agency expects its funding in MENA to decline by up to a quarter by 2026 — a loss of up to $370 million — “jeopardizing life-saving programs across the region, including treatment for severe malnutrition, safe water production in conflict zones, and vaccinations against deadly diseases.”

As the plight of children in the region worsens, said UNICEF’s regional director Beigbeder, “the resources to respond are becoming sparser.

“Conflicts must stop. International advocacy to resolve these crises must intensify. And support for vulnerable children must increase, not decline.”

 

 


Hamas accuses Netanyahu of ‘series of lies’ during Gaza press conference

Hamas accuses Netanyahu of ‘series of lies’ during Gaza press conference
Updated 10 August 2025
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Hamas accuses Netanyahu of ‘series of lies’ during Gaza press conference

Hamas accuses Netanyahu of ‘series of lies’ during Gaza press conference

GAZA STRIP: Hamas slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for telling what it called a “series of lies” at a press conference Sunday where he laid out his vision for victory in Gaza.

“Netanyahu continues to lie, deceive and try to mislead the public. Everything Netanyahu said in the press conference is a series of lies, and he cannot face the truth; instead, he works on distortion and hiding it,” Taher Al-Nunu, the media adviser to the head of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP.