BEIRUT: Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has stressed the role of the Lebanese army in “protecting security and stability,” amid the turbulence along its southern border with Israel.
His remarks followed a Cabinet meeting on Thursday night also attended by security leaders.
Mikati described the events in southern Lebanon, which has seen clashes following Hamas’s attack on Southern Israel on Oct. 7, as “concerning.”
The prime minister said he asked “those in charge to be on high alert to face any emergency and support the government’s efforts in sparing Lebanon the repercussions of what is happening and maintaining security and citizens’ safety.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Friday that Lebanon’s security and peace “is important to us,” after meeting with Mikati.
“One of the goals of our trip is to stress on Lebanon’s security,” he said.
Amir-Abdollahian arrived in Beirut on Thursday evening and held talks with Lebanese officials, including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Amir-Abdollahian said: “What matters to us today is Lebanon’s security and peace. This is the goal of my visit.”
He suggested that a special meeting should be convened for the region’s leaders to study the situation.
Amir-Abdollahian said violence could spread to other parts of the Middle East if Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, launched in retaliation for the Hamas attack that has left at least 1,200 Israelis dead, did not stop immediately.
Amid the continued Israeli military activity, Amir-Abdollahian said opening other fronts against the country “is possible.”
Caretaker Lebanese Interior Minister Abdallah Bou Habib clarified following his meeting with Amir-Abdollahian that Lebanon “has never wanted or sought war, and we warn that continued escalation will ignite the region and threaten its peace and security.”
Protests in solidarity with Gaza took place across Lebanon after Friday prayers.
Protesters including women and children waved the Palestinian flag and wore the Palestinian keffiyeh around their necks, while Palestinian refugees wore traditional clothes and chanted slogans denouncing Israel’s attacks on the people of the Gaza Strip.
One child held up a sign saying: “Kids like me should not be killed.”
However, solidarity demonstrations did not reach the Blue Line on Lebanon’s southern border.
The Lebanese Armed Forces set stringent security checkpoints adjacent to the Blue Line and checked the identities of all who approached.
Lebanese Army Chief Gen. Joseph Aoun informed the Cabinet on Thursday that his forces were conducting joint patrols with the UNIFIL to avoid violations.
A military source told Arab News that the situation was being controlled avoid any clash with mobilized Israeli troops on the other side of the border.
Fear prevails in many southern regions, where residents have fled their homes.
Elsewhere people took to the streets in Beirut’s working-class neighborhoods and southern suburbs and in the southern city of Tyre and its refugee camps.
They also gathered in Bekaa, praying in the street at the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, under the slogan “a unified Friday for a sacred cause.”
Other demonstrations took place in the northern cities of Baalbek and Tripoli.
Imams from Beirut’s mosques called some of the protests, while others were organized by Hezbollah and its ally, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, in Beirut.
Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy chief, said before the protesters in a southern suburb of Beirut: “Al-Aqsa Flood operation is successful by all standards.”
Qassem stressed that Hezbollah was fully aware of its responsibilities.
“We are ready, and we are following up the events minute-by-minute.
“We will confront the situation based on our vision and plan. We are watching the enemy’s movements and are ready to act whenever the time is right.”
PM Mikati highlights army role in Lebanon’s security
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PM Mikati highlights army role in Lebanon’s security
- In Beirut, Iran’s foreign minister warns war could spread if bombardment of Gaza continues
- Mikati described the events in southern Lebanon, which has seen clashes following Hamas’s attack on Southern Israel on Oct. 7, as “concerning”
UN says informed Israel of vehicle fatally hit in Gaza
- The employee killed was an Indian national, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez told a media briefing
- A second UN DSS staff member who was in the vehicle at the time was wounded in the attack
One UN security services member was killed and another wounded in the attack on Monday, the United Nations said, marking the first death of a UN international employee in the Palestinian territory since the war began more than seven months ago.
The employee killed was an Indian national, UN spokesman Rolando Gomez told a media briefing.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Col Waibhav Kale, working for the UN Department of Safety and Security in Gaza,” India’s mission to the UN in New York confirmed on X.
“Our deepest condolences are with the family during this difficult time.”
A second UN DSS staff member who was in the vehicle at the time was wounded in the attack, Gomez said, adding that the two had been traveling to the European Hospital in Rafah when their vehicle was hit.
“The UN informs Israeli authorities of the movement of all of our convoys. That has been the case in any theater of operation. This is a standard operating procedure,” said Gomez.
“This was the case yesterday (Monday) morning, so we have informed them. And it was a clearly marked UN vehicle.”
He added: “This is a sheer illustration that there’s really nowhere safe in Gaza at the moment.”
When asked about the attack, the Israeli military sent AFP a statement apparently drafted on Monday saying that the DSS had informed it of the hit.
“An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the vehicle was hit in an area declared an active combat zone,” the military said, maintaining that it had “not been made aware of the route of the vehicle.”
“The incident is under review,” it said, without attributing responsibility for the strike.
Gomez said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for a full investigation.
“Of course we want accountability. This is the ultimate aim of this investigation. International humanitarian workers are not targets, so such attacks must end,” he said.
While Monday’s attack marked the first time a UN international employee has been killed in the Gaza war, a large number of local staff have been killed.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, alone has lost 188 of its 13,000 Gaza staff, according to UN figures.
“No one is safe in Gaza, including aid workers,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X, formerly Twitter.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,173 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Turkiye says to apply to intervene in ICJ genocide case against Israel
- Ankara steps up measures against Israel over its assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 35,000 people
ANKARA: Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday that Turkiye decided to submit its declaration of official intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Earlier this month Fidan announced the decision to join the case launched by South Africa as Ankara steps up measures against Israel over its assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 35,000 people and launched after militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage.
“We condemned civilians being killed on October 7,” he told a press conference with his Austrian counterpart.
“But Israel systematically killing thousands of innocent Palestinians and rendering a whole residential area uninhabitable is a crime against humanity, attempted genocide, and the manifestation of genocide,” he added.
A foreign ministry official said Turkiye had not yet submitted the formal application to the ICJ.
The World Court will hold hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss new emergency measures sought by South Africa over Israel’s attacks on Rafah during the war in Gaza, the tribunal said Monday.
The hearings on May 16 and 17 will deal with South Africa’s request to the court to order more emergency measures against Israel over its attacks on Rafah, the tribunal added, part of an ongoing case which accuses Israel of acts of genocide against Palestinians.
Israel has previously said it is acting in accordance with international law in Gaza, and has called South Africa’s genocide case baseless and accused Pretoria of acting as “the legal arm of Hamas.”
Lebanon resumes ‘voluntary’ repatriations of Syrians
- Vans and small trucks gathered in the Arsal area near the border early in the morning to ferry home the returnee
- Human rights group Amnesty International said at the time that Lebanese authorities were putting Syrians at risk of “heinous abuse and persecution upon their return,”
Beirut: Beirut repatriated several hundred Syrians on Tuesday in coordination with Damascus, an AFP photographer reported, as pressure mounts in cash-strapped Lebanon for the hundreds of thousands refugees to go home.
Vans and small trucks gathered in the Arsal area near the border early in the morning to ferry home the returnees, the photographer said.
The vehicles were piled high with mattresses and other belongings and some were even accompanied by livestock.
“I’m going back alone for the moment, in order to prepare for my family’s return,” said a 57-year-old man originally from Syria’s Qalamun area, declining to be identified by name.
“I am happy to go back to my country after 10 years” as a refugee, he told AFP.
Around 330 people had registered to be part of the “voluntary return,” Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said.
Syrian state news agency SANA reported an unspecified number of people arrived from Lebanon as part of the initiative.
Lebanon, which has been mired in a crushing economic crisis since late 2019, says it hosts around two million Syrians, the world’s highest number of refugees per capita, with almost 785,000 registered with the United Nations.
Earlier this month, the European Union announced $1 billion in aid to Beirut to help stem irregular migration to the bloc, but in Lebanon the package has been criticized for failing to meet growing public demands for Syrians to leave.
Parliament is set to hold a session on Wednesday to discuss the EU assistance.
Lebanon began the “voluntary” return of small numbers of Syrians in 2017 based on lists sent to the government in Damascus, with the last such group crossing the border in 2022.
Human rights group Amnesty International said at the time that Lebanese authorities were putting Syrians at risk of “heinous abuse and persecution upon their return,” adding that the refugees were “not in a position to take a free and informed decision about their return.”
On Monday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah urged Lebanese authorities to open the seas for migrant boats to put pressure on the European Union, whose easternmost member, Cyprus, is less than 200 kilometers away.
Red Cross sets up Rafah emergency field hospital
- Staff at the new facility will be able to treat around 200 people a day and can provide emergency surgical care
GENEVA: The International Red Cross and partners are opening a field hospital in southern Gaza on Tuesday to try to meet what it described as “overwhelming” demand for health services since Israel’s military operation on Rafah began last week.
Some health clinics have suspended activities while patients and medics have fled from a major hospital as Israel has stepped up bombardments in the southern sliver of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of uprooted people are crowded together.
“People in Gaza are struggling to access the medical care they urgently need due, in part, to the overwhelming demands for health services and the reduced number of functioning health facilities,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said. “Doctors and nurses have been working around the clock, but their capacity has been stretched beyond its limit.”
Staff at the new facility will be able to treat around 200 people a day and can provide emergency surgical care and manage mass casualties as well as provide pediatric and other services, the ICRC said.
“Medical staff are faced with people arriving with severe injuries, increasing communicable diseases which could lead to potential outbreaks, and complication related to chronic diseases untreated that should have been treated days earlier.”
The ICRC will maintain medical supplies to the facility while the Red Cross societies from 11 countries including Canada, Germany, Norway and Japan are providing staff and equipment.
Israel’s Rafah attack set Hamas talks ‘backward’: Qatar PM tells forum
- Emir says Israel looks set to stay in Gaza waging war
DOHA, QATAR: Israel’s military operation in Rafah has set truce negotiations with Hamas “backward,” mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks have reached “almost a stalemate.”
“Especially in the past few weeks, we have seen some momentum building but unfortunately things didn’t move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate,” Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum.
“Of course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward.”
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged — along with Egypt and the United States — in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian militant group.
Israel continued to fight Hamas in Rafah on Monday, despite US warnings against a full-scale assault on the south Gaza city that is crowded with displaced Palestinians.
“There is no clarity how to stop the war from the Israeli side. I don’t think that they are considering this as an option... even when we are talking about the deal and leading to a potential ceasefire,” Sheikh Mohammed said.
Israeli politicians were indicating “by their statements that they will remain there, they will continue the war. And there is no clarity on what Gaza will look like after this,” he added.
