SIDON: An Israeli airstrike hit two vehicles near a Lebanese army checkpoint in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing a Hezbollah member and wounding several other people, including civilians, Lebanese state media and health officials reported.
The strike appeared to be part of a shift in Israeli strategy toward targeted killings in Lebanon after more than three months of near-daily clashes with Hezbollah militants on the border against the backdrop of the war in Gaza.
Hezbollah announced that one of its members, identified as Fadel Shaar, had been killed in the strike in the town of Kafra. Local civil defense and hospital officials said seven people were wounded, including two women, one of whom was in critical condition.
Video from the scene showed a passenger sedan in flames next to a small truck stopped in the middle of the road.
The Israeli military did not comment on the strike.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, Hezbollah forces have engaged in near-daily clashes with Israeli troops along the border.
While the clashes had previously been limited mainly to a narrow strip within a few kilometers (miles) from the border, Israel in recent weeks appears to have moved to a strategy of targeted killings of figures from Hezbollah and allied groups, sometimes hitting in areas relatively far from the border, as was the case in Sunday’s strike.
On Saturday, another strike near the Lebanese port city of Tyre killed two people in a car — one of them a Hezbollah commander — and two people in a nearby orchard. The commander, Ali Hudruj, was buried Sunday in south Lebanon. The other occupant of the car, tech sector businessman Mohammad Baqir Diab, was identified as a civilian and was buried in Beirut on Sunday.
On Jan. 2, a presumed Israeli airstrike killed a top Hamas official, Saleh Arouri, in a suburb of Beirut, the first such strike in Lebanon’s capital since Israel and Hezbollah fought a brutal one-month war in 2006.
Speaking at Hudruj’s funeral Sunday, Hezbollah Member of Parliament Hussein Jeshi said Israel had “resorted to the method of assassinating some members of the resistance" to compensate for being unable to reach a military victory against Hamas after more than 100 days of war in Gaza.
The Lebanese militant group said in a statement later Sunday that it had launched an attack against the town of Avivim in northern Israel in retaliation for a civilian woman killed in the Israeli strike in Kafra and for other “attacks that targeted Lebanese villages and civilians.”
It later modified the statement to remove the reference to the civilian death after hospital officials and family members said the woman was still alive.
Israel did not comment on the strike in Kafra but announced it had struck Hezbollah targets in several locations in Lebanon on Sunday. It later said that an anti-tank missile had hit a house in Avivim and no injuries were reported.
With dangers of a regional conflict flaring on multiple fronts, officials from the United States and Europe have engaged in a flurry of shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between Israel and Lebanon, attempting to head off an escalation of the conflict into a full-on war on the Lebanese front.
Strike kills Hezbollah official in Lebanon, amid apparent Israeli shift to targeted killings
https://arab.news/ztg2q
Strike kills Hezbollah official in Lebanon, amid apparent Israeli shift to targeted killings
- Hezbollah announced that one of its members, identified as Fadel Shaar, had been killed in the strike in the town of Kafra
UN rights chief shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
