BEIRUT: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned on Wednesday that “Lebanon is on the brink of collapse” as she arrived in the war-torn country for a visit.
As Israel clashes with militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, she also said that “any deliberate attack on UN peacekeepers violates international humanitarian law.”
Baerbock was on her 12th trip to the Middle East since the Hamas attack of October 7 last year set off Israel’s war in Gaza and now against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is becoming more desperate by the day,” she said at the start of her trip, which Berlin had not previously announced because of security concerns.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing with their last belongings, children are being separated from their parents, hospitals are working at the limit of their capacity.
“Lebanon is on the brink of collapse.”
She said Hamas allies Hezbollah are “hiding behind civilians and continuing to fire rockets at Israel” but also cautioned that Israel must operate within “the narrow limits of the right to self-defense and international humanitarian law.”
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has accused Israel of attacking its peacekeepers multiple times in recent weeks.
“All parties to the conflict also have an obligation to protect UN peacekeepers,” said Baerbock. “The soldiers of UNIFIL have our full support. They are needed for a political solution to the conflict.
“Any deliberate attack on UN peacekeepers violates international humanitarian law.”
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 42,718 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the UN considers reliable.
Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon in late September, vowing to secure its northern border under fire from Hezbollah.
Baerbock urged efforts involving the United States, Europe and the Arab world “to develop a viable diplomatic solution that protects the legitimate security interests of Israel and Lebanon.”
German foreign minister warns Lebanon ‘on brink of collapse’
https://arab.news/6bn2k
German foreign minister warns Lebanon ‘on brink of collapse’
- Annalena Baerbock said the task was to find a viable diplomatic solution between Israel and Lebanon
Mass shooting at a South African bar leaves 11 dead, including 3 children
- Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital
- The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl
CAPE TOWN: A mass shooting carried out Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 11 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the South African Police Services. Police didn’t give details on the ages of those who were injured or their conditions.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and the 11th died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
There have been several mass shootings at bars — sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa — in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
Recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars, however. Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings minutes apart at two houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.
Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.
