BEIRUT: Lebanon on Sunday reported 166 coronavirus cases, its highest daily infection toll since the country’s outbreak began in February.
The new figures announced by the health ministry bring the total number of infections to 2,334 including 36 deaths, according to figures carried by the state-run National News Agency (NNA).
New cases have leapt since Friday, with over 300 registered in three days, after daily numbers had appeared to be stabilising in recent weeks.
The Lebanese Red Cross said on Twitter that its teams were transporting 131 company employees who had tested positive to a quarantine center.
Health Minister Hamad Hassan said those cases were among the 166 announced Sunday, and that the figure represented a “peak.”
But he appeared to play down the spike, saying the latest infections were from a “known source” and telling local media that the chances of further transmissions existed but were “not big.”
Lebanon had started to gradually lift lockdown measures since the end of April and opened its airport to commercial flights at the start of this month, after a more than three-month closure.
In May, the government ordered a four-day return to lockdown after an uptick in new cases.
The pandemic arrived with Lebanon already mired in its worst-ever economic crisis, marked by an unprecedented plunge in the currency and with nearly half of the population in poverty.
Lebanon daily coronavirus cases spike
https://arab.news/rtu5r
Lebanon daily coronavirus cases spike
- New cases have leapt since Friday, with over 300 registered in three days
- The Lebanese Red Cross said on Twitter that its teams were transporting 131 company employees who had tested positive to a quarantine center
UN-sanctioned migrant smuggler killed in western Libya
- Libyan authorities report that a notorious militia leader, Ahmed Oumar Al-Fitouri Al-Dabbashi, was killed in a raid by security forces on Friday
- In 2018, the UN and US sanctioned him for controlling migrant departure areas and exposing migrants to fatal conditions
CAIRO: A notorious militia leader in Libya, sanctioned by the UN for migrant trafficking across the Mediterranean Sea, was killed on Friday in a raid by security forces in the west of the country, according to Libyan authorities.
Ahmed Oumar Al-Fitouri Al-Dabbashi, nicknamed Ammu, was killed in the western city of Sabratha when security forces raided his hideout. The raid came in response to an attack on a security outpost by Al-Dabbashi’s militia, which left six members of the security forces severely wounded, according to a statement issued by the Security Threat Enforcement Agency, a security entity affiliated with Libya’s western government.
Al-Dabbashi, who was also sanctioned by the US Treasury for trafficking, was the leader of a powerful militia, the “Brigade of the Martyr Anas Al-Dabbashi,” in Sabratha, the biggest launching point in Libya for Europe-bound African migrants.
Al-Dabbashi’s brother Saleh Al-Dabbashi, another alleged trafficker, was arrested in the same raid, added the statement.
In June 2018, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Al-Dabbashi, along with another five Libyan traffickers. At the time, the UN report said that there was enough evidence that Al-Dabbashi’s militia controlled departure areas for migrants, camps, safe houses and boats.
Al-Dabbashi himself exposed migrants, including children, to “fatal circumstances” on land and at sea, and of threatening peace and stability in Libya and neighboring countries, according to the same report.
Al-Dabbashi was also sanctioned by the US Treasury for the same reason.
Libya has been a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The country was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
The country has been fragmented for years between rival administrations based in the east and the west of Libya, each backed by various armed militias and foreign governments.
