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A displaced young girl holds a loaf of bread at an unofficial camp for displaced people on Beirut’s waterfront area. AFP Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Thursday that there was no end in sight to a war that had already displaced a million people over the last month, as families fleeing Israeli strikes said they were exhausted by repeated rounds of conflict.Lebanon is entering the second month of conflict between Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah and Israel, which has pledged to occupy swathes of southern Lebanon as part of a “security zone” to protect its own northern residents.”Lebanon has become a victim of a war – one whose outcomes and end date no one can predict,” Salam told reporters Thursday after a meeting of his cabinet.”The positions of Israeli officials, and the practices of their army, reveal far-reaching goals, including a significant expansion in the occupation of Lebanese territories, dangerous talk about establishing buffer zones or security belts, and the displacement of more than 1mn Lebanese,” he said.Israel’s assertion that its military will retain control of southern Lebanon has fuelled fears of a long-term occupation, after a two-decade Israeli presence ended in 2000.Salam said his government would redouble diplomatic and political efforts to end the war.A call by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun for direct talks with Israel has so far received no response.Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Lebanon after a 2024 ceasefire ended its last war with Hezbollah, while keeping troops stationed on five hilltop positions in southern Lebanon.Israel launched a full-scale air and ground campaign after Hezbollah fired into Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Iran after the US and Israel began their war on Tehran.Salam, without naming Hezbollah, condemned co-ordinated attacks carried out with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.More than 1,300 people have been killed in Israeli strikes and about a fifth of Lebanon’s population has been displaced.Israel has issued evacuation orders covering around 15% of Lebanese territory.”I want to direct the biggest salute to our people who are staying in their hometowns and villages in the south, and want to reiterate that we stand by them,” Salam said.Tens of thousands of Lebanese have remained in their homes in southern Lebanon, even as Lebanese troops withdraw from the area to avoid confronting Israeli troops.They include around 9,000 Lebanese Christians living in a cluster of border towns, who told Reuters that they were determined to stay despite the advancing military operations.Salam also stressed the need to preserve internal stability as the war strains Lebanon’s sectarian political faultlines.Some communities have been reluctant to host displaced families.As the war drags on, Lebanon is examining ways to house those families in the long-run.Mohammad al-Badran, a Syrian who had lived for years in Beirut’s southern suburbs, said he and his family were turned away when they sought refuge in a mountainous area outside the capital.Badran, his wife and their four children – the youngest of whom was born barely two weeks before the war started – are now sleeping in a makeshift tent area in the capital.His 10-year-old daughter, Nour, can hear the sound of Israeli strikes on the nearby southern suburbs.”The sound is loud, the children are crying, and I feel like the missiles are flying above us,” she said.Ali al-Aziz, who also fled the southern suburbs, told Reuters that Israel should withdraw from Lebanon so that the conflict could end and he could go back home.”We want the war to end once and for all. Not for a war to happen every year or every ten years,” he said. Related Story Source link
Women light candles in memory of the victims of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Lebanon during a rally Thursday in support in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square.…
Palestinian demonstrators gather at the Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza Strip, yesterday, during a protest against the Israeli parliament’s approval of a new death penalty…
A man stands at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut, yesterday. (AFP) Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander yesterday, two sources said, in a Beirut strike that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed seven people. A Lebanese security source and a Hezbollah source told AFP that the commander, Youssef Hashem, had been responsible for the group’s military affairs in Iraq and was in a meeting inside a tent when Israel struck.Israel’s military said Hashem was Hezbollah’s commander for its south Lebanon front. Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war in early March when the Hezbollah launched rockets towards Israel to avenge a US-Israeli attack that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel has responded with massive strikes across Lebanon and a ground offensive. A source close to Hezbollah said Hashem is “the highest-ranking official to be targeted since the start of the war”.Another Hezbollah member, Mohammad Baqir al-Nabulsi, was also killed in the strike on the Beirut area of Jnah, the group said. Several large blasts were heard across the city yesterday and a column of smoke was seen rising from Jnah, which is home to apartment buildings, cafes and shops.Hassan Jalwan, who lives nearby, told AFP he heard “big explosions” overnight. “Nobody knows what’s happening,” he said, adding that “displaced people have been sleeping in the open” across the area.Lebanese authorities say the war has forced more than 1mn people from their homes. An earlier strike on a car in Khaldeh, just south of the capital, late on Tuesday killed two more people and wounded three, the health ministry said.An AFP correspondent there saw a charred vehicle and paramedics taking a wounded person away on a stretcher. Lebanese state media also reported a strike early yesterday on the Hadath district near Beirut’s southern suburbs, which has largely emptied of residents following repeated Israeli strikes.State media said Israeli artillery and airstrikes also hit Lebanon’s south and east. In the south near the border, Israel has said it intends to reoccupy a swathe of Lebanon to create what officials have called a buffer zone to push back Hezbollah. Israel already occupied southern Lebanon for around two decades until 2000. Defence Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that “all the houses in the villages adjacent to the border in Lebanon will be demolished”.Katz’s Lebanese counterpart Michel Menassa decried those plans, while Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced what he called an “illegal invasion”. The Lebanese army announced yesterday “a repositioning and redeployment operation” in the south “as a result of the escalation of the Israeli aggression”.A Lebanese military source told AFP that the army had withdrawn from some southern towns but remained in others. “Where there is an Israeli incursion or advance, we evacuate,” the source said. Source link
Medical sources in the Gaza Strip announced Wednesday that the death toll from the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip has risen to 72,289, with 172,040 injured since the start of the aggression on October 7, 2023.Hospitals across Gaza received four martyrs and 12 wounded people over the past 24 hours, the sources added.Since the start of ceasefire on Oct. 11, 2025, the total number of Palestinians martyred has risen to 713, with 1,940 injuries recorded. In addition, 756 bodies have been recovered.Sources noted that several victims remain trapped under rubble and in the streets, as medical and civil defense teams are unable to reach them at this time. Source link
The death toll from the Israeli airstrike on Beirut has risen to seven dead and 26 wounded.In a statement on Wednesday, the Lebanese Ministry of Health confirmed that an Israeli airstrike on the Al Janah area of Beirut led to seven dead and 26 wounded.Earlier today, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced that five people were killed and 21 others were injured in an Israeli Airstrike on the Al Janah area in Beirut. Related Story Source link
The Lebanese army announced that it had carried out a redeployment and repositioning operation involving a number of units as a result of the escalation of Israeli aggression against Lebanon, particularly in areas witnessing hostile incursions around the southern border towns, which leads to the encirclement and isolation of deployed army units and the cutting off of their supply lines.In a statement, the Lebanese army said that the leadership continues to stand by the residents according to the available capabilities, by keeping a group of soldiers in those towns as the Israeli attacks continue without distinction between soldiers and civilians in various areas. Related Story Source link
The Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC) announced the arrival of the first fuel oil convoys coming from Iraq through Al-Tanf crossing towards the Baniyas oil terminal, as part of land transport operations designated for re-export.SPC indicated that the first convoy includes 299 tankers, where technical teams will begin unloading operations at the designated site, in preparation for transporting the shipments via sea carriers to their final destinations.In this context, Director of Corporate Communications at SPC, Safwan Sheikh Ahmad, said in an exclusive statement to Qatar News Agency (QNA) that fuel transfer operations are carried out according to organized logistical coordination between the Syrian and Iraqi sides, reaching the oil ports on the Syrian coast.Specialized teams are working to implement unloading and loading operations within specific timetables, ensuring the smooth movement of convoys and their continued flow, he added, noting that these operations fall under the activity of oil transit through Syrian territory.Ahmad also explained that work is underway to prepare the necessary logistical infrastructure to receive additional quantities during the next phase, including enhancing the readiness of oil facilities and expanding the scope of re-export operations through Syrian ports to regional and international markets. Source link
The United Nations has called on Israel to repeal a law passed by the Knesset on Monday that would reinstate the death penalty, almost exclusively to Palestinian prisoners.UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk described the law as discriminatory in a press statement, saying it violates Israel’s obligations under international law.”It is deeply disappointing that this bill has been approved by the Knesset”, he said, highlighting that it is patently inconsistent with Israel’s international law obligations, including in relation to the right to life, Turk said.He added that “it raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”Given the UN’s opposition to the death penalty, the High Commissioner noted the difficulty of reconciling this punishment with human dignity, and that the penalty increases the unacceptable risk of innocent people being executed.The Israeli Knesset approved the bill on Monday, which aims to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, a move that has been met with widespread international condemnation. Related Story Source link
The Palestinian Authority condemned yesterday the adoption of a law by Israel’s parliament that would allow the execution of Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks, calling it a “dangerous escalation”. In a post on X, the Ramallah-based Palestinian foreign ministry said that “Israel has no sovereignty over Palestinian land”, adding that: “This law once again reveals the nature of the Israeli colonial system, which seeks to legitimise extrajudicial killing under legislative cover”. The Hamas group said the Israeli parliament’s approval of the bill reflects what it described as Israel’s policy of “killing and terrorism”. The approval of the bill “reflects the bloody nature of the occupation and its policy based on killing and terrorism”, Hamas said in a statement. Earlier, Israel’s parliament passed a law yesterday making the death penalty a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks, fulfilling a pledge by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies, Reuters reported. The legislation has drawn international criticism of Israel, which is already under scrutiny for increasing violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The measure includes provisions requiring an execution by hanging within 90 days of sentencing, with some allowance for a delay but no right to clemency and the option of imposing a life imprisonment sentence instead of capital punishment. Israel abolished the death penalty for murder in 1954. The only person ever executed in Israel after a civilian trial was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1962. Military courts in the West Bank can already impose a death sentence on Palestinian convicts but have never done so. The measure was promoted by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister who has worn noose-shaped lapel pins in the run-up to the vote. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the legislation as a breach of international law and a doomed bid meant to intimidate Palestinians. “Such laws and measures will not break the will of the Palestinian people or undermine their steadfastness,” Abbas’ office said in a statement. “Nor will they deter them from continuing their legitimate struggle for freedom, independence, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Israel’s leading rights groups decried the law as “an act of institutionalised discrimination and racist violence against Palestinians.” The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said it filed an appeal against the law with Israel’s Supreme Court. Source link