Lebanon says 22 dead in Israeli strikes on central Beirut

A building is destroyed after being hit by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 10 October 2024
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Lebanon says 22 dead in Israeli strikes on central Beirut

  • A Lebanese security source, without giving further details, said a “Hezbollah figure” was targeted

BEIRUT: At least 22 people were killed in Israeli strikes on a densely populated area of central Beirut on Thursday, the Lebanese health ministry said, with a security source saying a Hezbollah figure was the target.
Israel has repeatedly pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, the bastion of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, over the last two weeks but Thursday’s raid was only the third time the city center has been targeted.
“The Israeli enemy’s attacks on the capital Beirut this evening resulted in a new toll of 22 people killed and 117 injured,” the ministry said in an updated toll statement.
A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP that Israel had attempted to kill a Hezbollah official who often frequented the locations targeted.
It was unclear if the official was among the dead.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said the strikes hit the neighborhoods of Nweiri and Basta.
“The first strike in Beirut targeted the third floor of an eight-story building” in the Nweiri area, and a second strike hit “a four-story building... in Al-Basta Al-Fouqa,” NNA reported.
An AFP photographer at the site of the strike in the Basta area said two old buildings had collapsed, while the windows of surrounding homes had been blown out with the force of the explosion.
Rescue services and local residents were attempting to pull survivors out of the mountain of rubble, with some of them carried away on stretchers.
Firefighters worked to put out a blaze in a residential building hit in the Nweiri area, with residents being evacuated from the upper floors using a ladder, NNA reported.
Immediately after the raids, AFP live footage showed two plumes of smoke billowing in between densely-packed buildings.
Earlier this month, Israel carried out a deadly air raid in Beirut, hitting an emergency services rescue facility run by Hezbollah, killing seven workers, the service said.
On September 30, an Israeli drone strike on a building in Beirut’s busy Cola district killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the leftist armed group said.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and its foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire for nearly a year in fallout from the Gaza war.
But since September 23, Israel has escalated its air strikes on targets in Lebanon, killing more than 1,200 people and forcing more than one million to flee their homes, according to official figures.


Egypt, Iran foreign ministers discuss rising Middle East tensions to avert regional war

Updated 12 sec ago
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Egypt, Iran foreign ministers discuss rising Middle East tensions to avert regional war


Two Iran Guards killed in helicopter crash in province bordering Pakistan

Updated 16 min 37 sec ago
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Two Iran Guards killed in helicopter crash in province bordering Pakistan

  • “Ultra-light gyroplane” met accident while conducting combat operations in Sistan-Baluchestan
  • Province has experienced recurring clashes between Iranian security forces and Baloch rebels

TEHRAN: An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general and pilot were killed in a helicopter crash during an anti-terror operation in the country’s restive southeast, state media reported on Monday.

The “ultra-light gyroplane” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “had an accident while conducting combat operations” in a border area, IRNA news agency said.

It said the crash happened in Sirkan, a city in Sistan-Baluchistan province, and identified the dead as General Hamid Mazandarani, the commander of the Nineveh Brigade of Golestan province, and Hamed Jandaghi, a pilot of the IRGC ground forces.

Iran’s armed forces have been mounting an operation in the region since October 26, when 10 police officers were killed in an attack claimed by Sunni Muslim militants.

They have killed several militants and arrested others during the operation, according to Iranian media outlets.

Sistan-Baluchistan borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is one of the most impoverished provinces in the Islamic republic.

It is home to a large number of the Baloch minority, an ethnic group spread between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan who practice Sunni Islam in contrast to the country’s predominantly Shiite population.

The province has experienced recurring clashes between Iranian security forces and rebels from the Baloch minority, radical Sunni groups and drug traffickers.

Helicopter accidents are a rare sight in Iran, but former president Ebrahim Raisi was killed when his helicopter crashed into a mountainside in May, triggering snap elections in the country.

The ultra-conservative president was accompanied by then foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and six other people who were all killed.


Jordan, UN aid body discusses urgent needs in Palestinian refugee camps

Updated 04 November 2024
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Jordan, UN aid body discusses urgent needs in Palestinian refugee camps

  • Israel’s actions against UN workers condemned by Jordan, other officials

AMMAN: Jordan’s Department of Palestinian Affairs and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East held talks on Sunday to address the growing needs and challenges of the displaced and vulnerable in camps across the country.

During the meeting, Department of Palestinian Affairs Director-General Rafiq Khirfan condemned what he described as a “systematic campaign and political assassination” aimed at weakening UNRWA’s role, according to reports.

He pointed to Tel Aviv’s recent actions, including a decision by the Israeli Knesset to restrict UNRWA activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, such as East Jerusalem, and to withdraw diplomatic privileges from its staff.

Khirfan said the measures were a violation of international law and an attempt to undermine UNRWA’s mission of supporting Palestinian refugees, advocating for their right to return, and compensation.

Despite these challenges, Khirfan underscored Jordan’s continued commitment to backing UNRWA at regional and international levels, recognizing the agency’s critical role in providing services and stability for Palestinian refugees.

UNRWA’s Jordan Affairs Director Olaf Becker thanked Amman for the ongoing support of the agency’s work in the refugee camps.


Israel says top Hezbollah commander killed in Lebanon strike

Updated 04 November 2024
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Israel says top Hezbollah commander killed in Lebanon strike

  • Abu Ali Rida, the Hezbollah commander of the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon, was “eliminated” in an air strike
  • Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it fired rockets at the northern Israeli city of Safed

BEIRUT: The Israeli military said on Monday it had killed a top Hezbollah commander it accused of overseeing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
Abu Ali Rida, the Hezbollah commander of the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon, was “eliminated” in an air strike, the military said, without specifying when he was killed.
Rida “was responsible for planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on IDF (military) troops and oversaw the terrorist activities of Hezbollah operatives in the area,” the military said in a statement.
Israel has continued to pound Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since the war between the two sides broke out in late September.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it fired rockets at the northern Israeli city of Safed on Monday, the latest attack in more than a month of war.
Hezbollah fighters launched a “big rocket salvo” at the city, the group said in a statement.

In recent weeks, Israel has killed several of the movement’s militant commanders and top leaders, including former chief Hassan Nasrallah.
The war began after nearly a year of cross-border skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, with the Lebanese group firing rockets into northern Israel almost daily in support of its ally in Gaza, Hamas.
Israel is fighting its deadliest war in Gaza against Hamas after the Palestinian militant group launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year.


Iran executes Jewish Iranian man in murder case: NGO

Updated 04 November 2024
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Iran executes Jewish Iranian man in murder case: NGO

  • Arvin Ghahremani was hanged in prison in the western city of Kermanshah after being convicted of a murder during a street fight
  • Ghahremani’s mother, Sonia Saadati, had asked for his life to be spared

PARIS: Iran on Monday executed a member of the country’s Jewish minority who had been convicted of murder, an NGO said, at a time of rising tensions with Israel.
Arvin Ghahremani was hanged in prison in the western city of Kermanshah after being convicted of a murder during a street fight, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group.
“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jewish citizen,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding the legal case had “significant flaws.”
“However, in addition to this, Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalized anti-Semitism in the Islamic republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the execution of his sentence,” Amiry-Moghaddam added.
The once sizeable Jewish community in Shiite Muslim-dominated Iran has dwindled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution but remains the largest in the Middle East outside Israel.
While Jewish Iranians were executed in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the execution of a Jewish Iranian is unprecedented in recent years.
Ghahremani’s mother, Sonia Saadati, had asked for his life to be spared.
His family urged the victim’s relatives to accept blood money under Iran’s Islamic law of retribution (qesas), which permits this alternative.
The Mizan Online website of the Iranian judiciary confirmed Ghahremani’s execution, saying the victim’s family had “refused to give consent” to such a deal.
Iran and Israel have traded unprecedented air attacks this year following the outbreak of Israel’s wars with armed groups backed by the Islamic republic in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.