BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Thursday his powerful group had suffered an “unprecedented” blow when thousands of operatives’ communication devices exploded in attacks it blamed on Israel.
Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 across Lebanon over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.
Delivering a speech after the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, which plunged Lebanon into panic, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks.
Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
“It could be a war crime or a declaration of war,” he said of the attacks, which he branded a “massacre.”
Nasrallah also vowed to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.
“The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops” despite “all this blood spilt,” he said.
Nasrallah addressed Israeli officials’ promises to return thousands of Israelis displaced by exchanges of fire across the border with Lebanon to their homes.
“You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north,” he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border.”
Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which on October 7 launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked Gaza’s deadliest ever war.
Up until now, the focus of Israel’s firepower had been on Gaza.
But Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has seen exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants almost every day since October.
The violence has killed hundreds of people, mostly fighters, on the Lebanese side, and dozens on the Israeli side.
Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut as Nasrallah spoke, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said, with AFP correspondents in Beirut reporting loud booms.
Nasrallah announced the launch of an internal probe into the attacks, which experts and some Israeli media have said bear all the hallmarks of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts
https://arab.news/8f6by
Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts
- Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks
- Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not“
Source close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah says slain chief Nasrallah temporarily buried
- An Israeli strike killed the Hezbollah leader last week
BEIRUT: A source close to Hezbollah said Friday that the Lebanese militant group’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah has been temporarily buried in a secret location for fear Israel would target a large funeral.
“Hassan Nasrallah has been temporarily buried, until the circumstances allow for a public funeral,” the source said, after an Israeli strike killed the leader last week.
The source said a public funeral had been impossible to hold “for fear of Israeli threats they would target mourners and the place of his burial.”
Shiite Muslim rites provide for such a temporary burial when circumstances prevent a proper funeral or the deceased cannot be buried where they wished.
A Lebanese official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Hezbollah had, through top Lebanese officials, sought but failed to obtain “guarantees” from the United States, a key ally of Israel, that Israel would not target a public funeral.
Amid intensifying Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah, a massive strike on its south Beirut stronghold on September 27 killed Nasrallah alongside an Iranian Revolutionary Guards general.
Israel said it killed around 20 members of the Iran-backed militant group.
Nasrallah still does not have a successor a week after he was killed.
His cousin Hashem Safieddine, a prominent Hezbollah figure touted as a possible successor, was the target of a recent Israeli air strike on south Beirut, US and Israeli media reported.
Tunisia votes Sunday in its third presidential election since the Arab Spring
- Tunisia’s President Kais Saied faces few obstacles to winning another term in the country’s presidential election Sunday because his major opponents have been imprisoned or left off the ballot
- The presidential election is Tunisia’s third since protests led to the 2011 ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the Arab Spring
TUNIS: With his major opponents imprisoned or left off the ballot, Tunisian President Kais Saied faces few obstacles to winning reelection on Sunday, five years after riding anti-establishment backlash to a first term.
The North African country’s Oct. 6 presidential election is its third since protests led to the 2011 ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — the first autocrat toppled in the Arab Spring uprisings that also overthrew leaders in Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
International observers praised the previous two contests as meeting democratic norms. However, a raft of arrests and actions taken by a Saied-appointed election authority have raised questions about whether this year’s race is free and fair. And opposition parties have called for a boycott.
What’s at stake?
Not long ago, Tunisia was hailed as the Arab Spring’s only success story. As coups, counter-revolutions and civil wars convulsed the region, the North African nation enshrined a new democratic constitution and saw its leading civil society groups win the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering political compromise.
But its new leaders were unable to buoy its struggling economy and were plagued by political infighting and episodes of violence and terrorism.
Amid that backdrop, Saied, then 61 and a political outsider, won his first term in 2019. He advanced to a runoff promising to usher in a “New Tunisia” and hand more power to young people and local governments.
This year’s election will offer a window into popular opinion about the trajectory that Tunisia’s fading democracy has taken since Saied took office.
Saied’s supporters appear to have remained loyal to him and his promise to transform Tunisia. But he isn’t affiliated with any political party, and it’s unclear just how deep his support runs among Tunisians.
It’s the first presidential race since Saied upended the country’s politics in July 2021, declaring a state of emergency, sacking his prime minister, suspending the parliament and rewriting Tunisia’s constitution consolidating his own power.
Those actions outraged pro-democracy groups and leading opposition parties, who called them a coup. Yet despite anger from career politicians, voters approved Saied’s new constitution the following year in a low-turnout referendum.
Authorities subsequently began arresting Saied’s critics including journalists, lawyers, politicians and civil society figures, charging them with endangering state security and violating a controversial anti-fake news law that observers argue stifles dissent.
Fewer voters turned out to participate in parliamentary and local elections in 2022 and 2023 amid economic woes and widespread political apathy.
Who’s running?
Many wanted to challenge Saied, but few were able to.
Seventeen potential candidates filed paperwork to run and Tunisia’s election authority approved only three: Saied, Zouhair Maghzaoui and Ayachi Zammel.
Maghzaoui is a veteran politician who has campaigned against Saied’s economic program and recent political arrests. Still, he is loathed by opposition parties for backing Saied’s constitution and earlier moves to consolidate power.
Zammel is a businessman supported by politicians not boycotting the race. During the campaign, he has been sentenced to prison time in four voter fraud cases related to signatures his team gathered to qualify for the ballot.
Others had hoped to run but were prevented. The election authority, known as ISIE, last month dismissed a court ruling ordering it to reinstate three additional challengers.
With many arrested, detained or convicted on charges related to their political activities, Tunisia’s most well-known opposition figures are also not participating.
That includes the 83-year-old leader of Tunisia’s most well organized political party Ennahda, which rose to power after the Arab Spring. Rached Ghannouchi, the Islamist party’s co-founder and Tunisia’s former house speaker, has been imprisoned since last year after criticizing Saied.
The crackdown also includes one of Ghannouchi’s most vocal detractors: Abir Moussi, a right-wing lawmaker known for railing against Islamists and speaking nostalgically for pre-Arab Spring Tunisia. The 49-year-old president of the Free Destourian Party also was imprisoned last year after criticizing Saied.
Other less known politicians who announced plans to run have also since been jailed or sentenced on similar charges.
Opposition groups have called to boycott the race. The National Salvation Front — a coalition of secular and Islamist parties including Ennahda — has denounced the process as a sham and questioned the election’s legitimacy.
What are the other issues?
The country’s economy continues to face major challenges. Despite Saied’s promises to chart a new course for Tunisia, unemployment has steadily increased to one of the region’s highest at 16 percent, with young Tunisians hit particularly hard.
Growth has been slow since the COVID-19 pandemic and Tunisia has remained reliant on multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and the European Union. Today, Tunisia owes them more than $9 billion. Apart from agricultural reform, Saied’s overarching economic strategy is unclear.
Negotiations have long been stalled over a $1.9 billion bailout package offered by the International Monetary Fund in 2022. Saied has been unwilling to accept its conditions, which include restructuring indebted state-owned companies and cutting public wages. Some of the IMF’s stipulations — including lifting subsidies for electricity, flour and fuel — would likely be unpopular among Tunisians who rely on their low costs.
Economic analysts say that foreign and local investors are reluctant to invest in Tunisia due to continued political risks and an absence of reassurances.
The dire economic straits have had a two-pronged effect on one of Tunisia’s key political issues: migration. From 2019 to 2023, an increasing number of Tunisians attempted to migrate to Europe without authorization. Meanwhile, Saied’s administration has taken a harsh approach against migrants arriving from sub-Saharan Africa, many who have found themselves stuck in Tunisia while trying to reach Europe.
Saied energized his supporters in early 2023 by accusing migrants of violence and crime and portraying them as part of a plot to change the country’s demography. The anti-migrant rhetoric prompted extreme violence against migrants and a crackdown from authorities. Last year, security forces targeted migrant communities from the coast to the capital with a series of arrests, deportation to the desert and the demolition of tent camps in Tunis and coastal towns.
Bodies continue to wash ashore on Tunisia’s coastline as boats carrying Tunisians and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa manage only to make it a few nautical miles before sinking.
What does it mean overseas?
Tunisia has maintained ties with its traditional Western allies but also forged new partnerships under Saied.
Much like many populist leaders who’ve taken power worldwide, Saied emphasizes sovereignty and freeing Tunisia from what he calls “foreign diktats.” He has insisted that Tunisia won’t become a “border guard” for Europe, which has sought agreements with him to better police the Mediterranean.
Tunisia and Iran lifted visa requirements and in May announced plans to boost trade ties. It has also accepted millions in loans as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build hospitals, stadiums and ports.
Yet European countries remain Tunisia’s top trade partners and their leaders have maintained productive ties with Saied, hailing agreements to manage migration as a “model” for the region.
Saied has spoken ardently in support of Palestinians as war has swept the Middle East and opposes moves made to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel.
“We don’t want to die here”: Sierra Leone housekeepers trapped in Lebanon
- With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper made her way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance
- The situation for the country’s migrant workers is particularly precarious, as their legal status is often tied to their employer
Freetown: When an Israeli air strike killed her employer and destroyed nearly everything she owned in southern Lebanon, it also crushed Fatima Samuella Tholley’s hopes of returning home to Sierra Leone to escape the spiralling violence.
With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper told AFP that she and her cousin made their way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance.
Bewildered and terrified, the pair were thrust into the chaos of the bombarded city — unfamiliar to them apart from the airport where they had arrived months before.
“We don’t know today if we will live or not, only God knows,” Fatima told AFP via video call, breaking down in tears.
“I have nothing... no passport, no documents,” she said.
The cousins have spent days sheltering in the cramped storage room of an empty apartment, which they said was offered to them by a man they had met on their journey.
With no access to TV news and unable to communicate in French or Arabic, they could only watch from their window as the city was pounded by strikes.
The spike in violence in Lebanon since mid-September has killed more than 1,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes, as Israel bombards Hezbollah strongholds around the country.
The situation for the country’s migrant workers is particularly precarious, as their legal status is often tied to their employer under the “kafala” sponsorship system governing foreign labor.
Rights groups say the system allows for numerous abuses including the withholding of wages and the confiscation of official documents — which provide workers their only lifeline out of the country.
“When we came here, our madams received our passports, they seized everything until we finished our contract” said 29-year-old Mariatu Musa Tholley, who also works as a housekeeper.
“Now [the bombing] burned everything, even our madams... only we survived.”
Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon, with the aim of providing emergency travel certificates to those without passports, Kai S. Brima from the foreign affairs ministry told AFP.
The poor west African country has a significant Lebanese community dating back over a century, which is heavily involved in business and trade.
Scores of migrants travel to Lebanon every year, with the aim of paying remittances to support families back home.
“We don’t know anything, any information,” Mariatu said.
“[Our neighbors] don’t open the door for us because they know we are black,” she wept.
“We don’t want to die here.”
Fatima and Mariatu said they had each earned $150 per month, working from 6:00 am until midnight seven days a week.
They said they were rarely allowed out of the house.
AFP contacted four other Sierra Leonean domestic workers by phone, all of whom recounted similar situations of helplessness in Beirut.
Patricia Antwin, 27, came to Lebanon as a housekeeper to support her family in December 2021.
She said she fled her first employer after suffering sexual harassment, leaving her passport behind.
When an airstrike hit the home of her second employer in a southern village, Patricia was left stranded.
“The people I work for, they left me, they left me and went away,” she told AFP.
Patricia said a passing driver saw her crying in the street and offered to take her to Beirut.
Like Fatima and Mariatu, she has no money or formal documentation.
“I only came with two clothes in my plastic bag,” she said.
Patricia initially slept on the floor of a friend’s apartment, but moved to Beirut’s waterfront after strikes in the area intensified.
She later found shelter at a Christian school in Jounieh, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital.
“We are seeing people moving from one place to another,” she said.
“I don’t want to lose my life here,” she added, explaining she had a child back in Sierra Leone.
Housekeeper Kadij Koroma said she had been sleeping on the streets for almost a week after fleeing to Beirut when she was separated from her employer.
“We don’t have a place to sleep, we don’t have food, we don’t have water,” she said, adding that she relied on passers by to provide bread or small change for sustenance.
Kadij said she wasn’t sure if her employer was still alive, or if her friends who had also traveled from Sierra Leone to work in Lebanon had survived the bombardment.
“You don’t know where to go,” she said, “everywhere you go, bomb, everywhere you go, bomb.”
Israel blocks Lebanon’s main crossing to Syria, targets Hezbollah in Beirut
- transport minister said that the crossing was subject to the authority of the Lebanese state
- Israeli air raids at night targeted Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumored successor to its assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israeli strikes sealed off Lebanon’s main border crossing with Syria early on Friday, hours after an intense Israeli attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs that is thought to have targeted the heir apparent to Hezbollah’s slain secretary general.
The strikes added to fears inside Lebanon that Israel’s targeting of Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militants will bring an all-out conflict, with Israel also poised to respond to Tuesday’s Iranian missile barrage on its territory. US President Joe Biden said on Thursday Israel’s response could include a strike on Iran’s oil facilities.
Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters Friday’s strike on the Syrian border hit inside Lebanese territory near the crossing, creating a four-meter (12 feet) wide crater.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had accused Hezbollah on Thursday of using the crossing with Syria to transport military equipment into Lebanon.
“The IDF will not allow the smuggling of these weapons and will not hesitate to act if forced to do so, as it has done throughout this war,” IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
According to Lebanese government statistics, more than 300,000 people — a vast majority of them Syrian — had crossed from Lebanon into Syria over the last 10 days to escape escalating Israeli bombardment.
The southern suburb of Dahiye, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, came under renewed strikes near midnight on Thursday after Israel ordered people to leave their homes in some areas, residents and security sources said.
The air raids targeted Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumored successor to its assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah, in an underground bunker, Axios reporter Barak Ravid said on X, citing three Israeli officials.
Safieddine’s fate was not clear, he said.
Israel’s military declined comment and Hezbollah made no comment on Safieddine’s fate.
Huge explosions shook the sky in the vicinity of Beirut’s main airport in the early hours of Friday, and Lebanese civilians said they were living in constant fear.
“It’s like you’re alive but not alive. We’re alive but don’t know for how long, we’re alive but don’t know when the rockets will hit you and your family,” said Nouhad Chaib, a 40-year-old man already displaced from the south.
The Israeli military on Friday told the residents of over 20 southern towns in Lebanon to evacuate immediately, spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X as Israel pressed ahead with its incursions in the region. Nearly 90 villages in the south have been told to evacuate so far, as well as parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Three Hezbollah-linked rescue workers were wounded by a strike in a southern suburb, a Lebanese security source told Reuters.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah announced several attacks on Friday at positions within Israel, including a salvo of missiles on Israel’s Ilania base.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Beirut on Friday, according to Lebanese state media. He is set to meet Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, who is a close ally of Hezbollah.
Oil Target?
US President Joe Biden said he did not believe there is going to be an “all-out war” in the Middle East, as Israel weighs options for retaliation, but that more needed to be done to prevent one.
While the United States, the European Union, and other allies have called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict, Biden said the US was discussing with Israel its options for responding to Tehran’s assault, which included Israel striking Iran’s oil facilities.
His comments contributed to a surge in global oil prices, and rising Middle East tension has made traders worry about potential supply disruptions.
However, Biden added: “There is nothing going to happen today.” Asked later if he was urging Israel not to attack Iran’s oil installations, Biden said he would not negotiate in public.
On Wednesday, the president said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed Iran will pay for Tuesday’s missile attack, and Washington has said it would work with its longtime ally to ensure Iran faced “severe consequences.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking in Doha, said on Thursday that Tehran would be ready to respond.
“Any type of military attack, terrorist act or crossing our red lines will be met with a decisive response by our armed forces,” he said.
Nations worldwide have prepared contingency plans to evacuate citizens from Lebanon after a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah.
Although no country has launched a large-scale military evacuation yet, some are chartering aircraft. People are also fleeing on their own.
Israel, which has been fighting Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza for almost a year, sent troops into southern Lebanon on Tuesday after two weeks of intense airstrikes.
Israel says its operations in Lebanon seek to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments during the Gaza war forced them to evacuate from its north.
More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced by Israeli attacks, and nearly 2,000 people have been killed since the start of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the last year, most of them in the past two weeks, Lebanese authorities said.
Hezbollah says it has repelled several land operations by Israeli troops, with measures such as ambushes and direct clashes.
Israel deadliest West Bank strike in decades
- The Israeli military said its strike in the northern West Bank killed Hamas leader Zahi Yaser Abd Al-Razeq Oufi
BEIRUT: A source within the Palestinian security services told AFP that an air raid on the refugee camp of Tulkarm, killing 18 people, was the deadliest in the occupied West Bank since 2000.
The Israeli military said its strike in the northern West Bank killed Hamas leader Zahi Yaser Abd Al-Razeq Oufi, who it accused of participating in numerous attacks.
Alaa Sroji, a social activist from the area, said an Israeli warplane had “hit a cafeteria in a four-story building.”
Israel, at war in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack, has expanded its military campaign to secure its northern border and ensure the safe return of more than 60,000 people displaced by Hezbollah attacks over the past year.
On the Gaza front, the military said a strike three months ago killed three senior Hamas leaders, including Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of the militant movement’s government in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
Hezbollah began strikes on Israeli troops a day after Hamas staged its October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,788 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has described the figures as reliable.
The ministry toll Thursday included 99 fatalities over the past 24 hours.
