France returns flag to Damascus embassy as new Syria authorities build contacts with West

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Amnesty International said on Wednesday that Israel’s attacks on ambulances, paramedics and health facilities during its recent war with Hezbollah should be investigated as war crimes.
A November 27 truce agreement largely halted more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of all-out war during which Israel sent in ground troops.
During the conflict, the Israeli military accused the Iran-backed group of using ambulances belonging to the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee for transporting fighters and weapons, accusations the group denied.
According to Amnesty, “the Israeli military’s repeated unlawful attacks during the war in Lebanon on health facilities, ambulances and health workers, which are protected under international law, must be investigated as war crimes.”
It urged the Lebanese government to provide the International Criminal Court with “jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes within the Rome Statute committed on Lebanese territory, and ensure victims’ right to remedy.”
In December, Lebanon’s then health minister Firass Abiad said that during the hostilities, there were “67 attacks on hospitals, including 40 hospitals that were directly targeted,” killing 16 people.
“There were 238 attacks on emergency response organizations, with 206 dead,” he said, adding that 256 emergency vehicles including fire trucks and ambulances were also “targeted.”
Amnesty said it investigated four Israeli attacks on health facilities and vehicles in Beirut and south Lebanon from October 3 to 9 last year that killed 19 health care workers, wounded 11 others and “damaged or destroyed multiple ambulances and two medical facilities.”
“Amnesty International did not find evidence that the facilities or vehicles were being used for military purposes at the time of the attacks,” the statement said.
The rights group said it wrote to the Israeli military in November with its findings but had not received a response by the time of publication.
“The Israeli military has not provided sufficient justifications, or specific evidence of military targets being present at the strike locations” to account for the “repeated attacks, which weakened a fragile health care system and put lives at risk,” Amnesty added.
According to Lebanese authorities, more than 4,000 people were killed in more than the year of hostilities.
Swathes of the south and east and parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs were heavily damaged in the Israeli bombardment, with reconstruction costs expected to top $10 billion, Lebanese authorities have said.
 

CAIRO: Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun held talks Tuesday with his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Cairo, during which the pair agreed on containing incidents along their shared border.
Syria shares a 330-kilometer (205-mile) border with Lebanon, with no official demarcation at various points, rendering it porous and prone to smuggling.
Syria and Lebanon have a fraught history of conflict and violence, with the ouster in December of Assad after five decades of rule by his clan, offering an opening for a new start.
Aoun’s January 9 election ended a two-year-long presidential vacuum in Lebanon, after Hezbollah, long the country’s dominant force, suffered staggering losses in a war with Israel.
Hezbollah also lost its key supply route from backer Iran through Syria after Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) rebels ousted Assad.
Sharaa then became Syria’s interim president.
“President Aoun and Syria’s President Sharaa tackled several issues,” the Lebanese presidency said on X Tuesday, adding that they agreed on “the need to control the border between the two countries.”
While Aoun and Sharaa had spoken by phone in February, Tuesday marked their first in-person meeting.
Syria’s new authorities announced last month the launch of a security campaign in the border province of Homs, aimed at shutting down arms and goods smuggling routes.
They accused Hezbollah of launching attacks, saying it was sponsoring cross-border smuggling gangs.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, the security campaign targeted drug smugglers and operators from the area with links to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah fought side by side with Assad’s troops after intervening in the Syrian civil war, which the ousted leader sparked by cracking down on democracy protests in 2011.