German defense minister from Lebanon: Withdrawing UNIFIL would send wrong signal

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and German FM Annalena Baerbock talk prior to a meeting of the German security cabinet at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Oct. 18, 2023. (AP Photo)
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Updated 19 October 2023
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German defense minister from Lebanon: Withdrawing UNIFIL would send wrong signal

  • Beirut prepares for the possibility of war — hospitals receive emergency surgical supplies
  • Pistorius’s visit comes against the backdrop of the escalation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza

BEIRUT: Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has warned against withdrawing the long-running UN peacekeeping mission from the country, arguing that such a move would send the wrong signal at this time.

Pistorius was visiting German soldiers serving in the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

Berlin has deployed some 140 soldiers on a corvette off the Lebanese coast and at UNIFIL mission headquarters in southern Lebanon.

UNIFIL includes 9,994 peacekeepers from 49 countries.

Pistorius’s visit came against the backdrop of the escalation between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and clashes on the Blue Line between Hezbollah and Palestinian groups with the Israel Defense Forces.

Arab and foreign embassies have already urged their citizens to leave or avoid Lebanon on Thursday.

The countries include the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

The warnings came as Pierre Al-Ashkar, head of the Federation of Tourist Syndicates, said the recent events affected the tourism sector’s regular activity after the summer.

He added that European visitors canceled their reservations in Lebanon in October and November due to travel warnings from their countries.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib met on Thursday with Arab ambassadors to Lebanon.

He emphasized the importance of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, providing aid, rejecting displacement, ending Israeli occupation, and establishing a Palestinian state as the solution.

The World Health Organization has delivered medical aid to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

It includes medicines and supplies necessary for emergency surgical operations from WHO’s logistical hub in Dubai.

The aid will be distributed to government and private hospitals and those at risk, especially in Beirut and the south.

It aims to provide medical assistance to injured patients in the event of a military conflict to prevent any potential health crisis.

The WHO noted that Lebanon’s health system has been “crippled while there are severe shortages of specialized medical doctors and health workers, and medicines and medical equipment.”

Also on Thursday, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati met with officials of the UN humanitarian, development, and relief agencies operating in Lebanon.

The discussion centered on emergency plans drawn up by the UN to keep pace with developments in Lebanon in terms of services, humanitarian, health, and social aspects.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed Al-Mustafa, secretary-general of the Supreme Defense Council, and Imran Riza, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, took part in the talks.

Caretaker ministers for health, interior, and environment were also present.

The protests that Lebanon witnessed on Wednesday in solidarity with the Gaza Strip turned into riots in the vicinity of the US Embassy in the Awkar area in Mount Lebanon.

Protesters assaulted neighboring buildings and set them on fire.

The protesters moved at night to the vicinity of the American University in Beirut, assaulted its walls, and smashed windows.

Police officers pursued the attackers, and strict security measures were implemented on Thursday morning.

Two missiles were fired from Lebanon on Thursday afternoon toward the settlements of Al-Manara and Misgav Am in the Upper Galilee, opposite the southern towns of Mays Al-Jabal and Hula.

IDF artillery targeted Lebanese border areas. Several villages in the western sector were subjected to direct Israeli bombardment in the early dawn.

Israeli warplanes raided the vicinity of the town of Naqoura, but no human casualties or material damages were recorded.


Five Iranian security forces killed in attack

Updated 8 sec ago
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Five Iranian security forces killed in attack

TEHRAN: At least five members of Iran’s security forces were killed Sunday in a “terror attack” in the restive southeast, where authorities have been conducting operations against rebels, local media reported.
The Fars news agency reported that in a “terror attack in Saravan county, in the south of the Sistan-Baluchistan province, five members of the security forces were killed.”
Sistan-Baluchistan borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces. It is one of the few mainly Sunni Muslim provinces in Shiite-dominated Iran.
For years it has faced unrest involving drug-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni extremists.
Fars said that after the attack in Saravan, “units stationed in the region were quickly deployed to pursue the criminals.”
Iranian forces launched a major operation in the area after an attack on October 26 killed 10 police officers.
That attack was later claimed by the Pakistan-based Sunni jihadist group Jaish Al-Adl (Arabic for Army of Justice).
Local media reported that those behind the October attack have been killed in the current security operation.
Some 15 militants have been reported killed in Sistan-Baluchistan province since the October attack, including three on Sunday, state television said.
It also said more than 30 suspects have been arrested.
Formed in 2012 by Baluch separatists, Jaish Al-Adl is designated a terrorist organization by both Iran and the United States.

Israel PM says okayed Lebanon pager attacks

Updated 10 November 2024
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Israel PM says okayed Lebanon pager attacks

  • Hand-held devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals in mid-Sept.
  • They killed nearly 40 people and wounded nearly 3,000, and preceded Israel’s ongoing military operation in Lebanon

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he okayed a deadly September attack on Hezbollah communications devices which exploded in Lebanon, the first time Israel has admitted involvement.
Hezbollah had previously blamed its arch-foe for the blasts that dealt a major blow to the Iran-backed militant group, and vowed revenge.
“Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon,” his spokesman Omer Dostri told AFP of the attacks.
Hand-held devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated two days in a row in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals in mid-September.
They killed nearly 40 people and wounded nearly 3,000, and preceded Israel’s ongoing military operation in Lebanon.
Hezbollah began low intensity strikes on Israel in support of Hamas following its ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the Gaza war.
Strikes have intensified since war broke out in Lebanon in late September, when Israel escalated its air campaign against Hezbollah and later sent ground troops into south Lebanon.


Israel PM says okayed Lebanon pager attacks

A photo taken on September 18, 2024, in Beirut’s southern suburbs shows the remains of exploded pagers on display.
Updated 10 November 2024
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Israel PM says okayed Lebanon pager attacks

  • Hand-held devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated two days in a row in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals in mid-September
  • They killed nearly 40 people and wounded nearly 3,000

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he okayed a deadly September attack on Hezbollah communications devices which exploded in Lebanon, the first time Israel has admitted involvement.
Hezbollah had previously blamed its arch-foe for the blasts that dealt a major blow to the Iran-backed militant group, and vowed revenge.
“Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon,” his spokesman Omer Dostri told AFP of the attacks.
Hand-held devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated two days in a row in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals in mid-September.
They killed nearly 40 people and wounded nearly 3,000, and preceded Israel’s ongoing military operation in Lebanon.
Hezbollah began low intensity strikes on Israel in support of Hamas following its ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the Gaza war.
Strikes have intensified since war broke out in Lebanon in late September, when Israel escalated its air campaign against Hezbollah and later sent ground troops into south Lebanon.


Netanyahu says spoke again with Trump about Iran ‘threat’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Sunday he had spoken three times with US president-elect Donald Trump.
Updated 10 November 2024
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Netanyahu says spoke again with Trump about Iran ‘threat’

  • “We see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in every aspect,” Netanyahu said
  • Analysts believe Netanyahu had hoped for a Trump return to the White House

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Sunday he had spoken three times with US president-elect Donald Trump over the past few days about the “Iranian threat” to Israeli security.
“In the last few days, I have spoken three times with President-elect Donald Trump... Talks designed to further tighten the strong alliance between Israel and the US,” Netanyahu said, quoted in a statement issued by his office.
“We see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in every aspect,” he added during a weekly cabinet meeting, according to the statement.
Netanyahu also said he had talked to Trump about “great opportunities before Israel in the field of peace and its expansion.”
The United States is Israel’s top ally and military backer, and the election came at a critical time for the Middle East amid wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Analysts believe Netanyahu had hoped for a Trump return to the White House, given the longstanding personal friendship between the two as well as the former president’s hawkishness on Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
During his first term, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and helped normalize ties between Israel and several Arab states under the so-called Abraham Accords.


Israeli strike near Damascus kills seven: war monitor

An Israeli strike on an apartment belonging to Hezbollah killed seven people Sunday in a stronghold of pro-Iran groups.
Updated 10 November 2024
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Israeli strike near Damascus kills seven: war monitor

  • “An Israeli strike killed seven people and wounded 14, including women and children, in the Sayyida Zeinab area,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights official says

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on an apartment belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah group killed seven people Sunday in a stronghold of pro-Iran groups south of Damascus, a war monitor said.
“An Israeli strike killed seven people and wounded 14, including women and children, in the Sayyida Zeinab area,” Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP, revising an earlier toll of three dead.
The Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria, earlier said that “the Israeli attack targeted (Hezbollah) figures in the building where Lebanese families and members of the movement live.”
Syria’s official SANA news agency reported an “Israeli aggression targeting a residential building in the Sayyida Zeinab” area, home to a major Shiite shrine, that killed and injured an unspecified number of people.
On Saturday, four pro-Iran fighters were among five people killed in Israeli strikes in north and northwest Syria, the Observatory reported.
Since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and fighters including from Hezbollah.
The strikes have increased since Israel entered an all-out war with Hezbollah in Lebanon on September 23.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.