Israeli airstrikes alter landscape of Beirut’s southern suburbs

The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo)
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Updated 14 November 2024
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Israeli airstrikes alter landscape of Beirut’s southern suburbs

  • ‘Current priority is to achieve a ceasefire and halt the Israeli aggression,’ says Egyptian foreign minister during visit to Lebanon
  • Tayouneh roundabout, marking the border between Beirut and Shiyah, has become an impromptu refugee camp

BEIRUT: The Israeli army expanded its airstrikes on neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Wednesday, as part of a relentless campaign that has continued day and night over the past 48 hours.

Israel’s policy of maximum pressure against Hezbollah, targeting displaced individuals from the south and the Bekaa Valley, has increasingly resulted in mass fatalities.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdel Atti, said during a visit to Beirut on Wednesday that “the current priority is to achieve a ceasefire and halt the Israeli aggression.”

He stressed “the importance of preserving Lebanese state institutions, particularly the presidency, and the necessity of selecting a consensus president for Lebanon, one who is supported by all Lebanese sects and the entire Lebanese populace.”

The office of president has been vacant since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022, as rival political factions have been unable to agree on a successor.

Abdel Atti said: “The resolution of the presidential vacancy should not be a precondition for the cessation of hostilities. It must be a national issue (dealt with by) the Lebanese people.”

During his visit, the minister held long talks with Lebanese officials, the commander of the Lebanese Army, and the grand mufti.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on the suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday night and throughout the day on Wednesday caused significant damage that reportedly altered the very landscape of several neighborhoods.

The most recent attacks struck several suburban areas of the city, including Ghobeiry, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, and Lailaki. A medical center in Haret Hreik that contained clinics and laboratories was among the buildings completely destroyed. Even cemeteries serving both the Sunni and Shiite communities have been hit, and the Musharrafieh area was targeted for the first time.

The Tayouneh roundabout, marking the border between Beirut and Shiyah, has become an impromptu refugee camp. Residents gather there after being forced from homes they had only recently reluctantly returned to after previous Israeli attacks. Many have exhausted their life savings on temporary accommodation after finding government shelters filled to capacity.

Throughout the day on Wednesday, evacuation warnings issued by Israeli military spokesperson Avichai Adraei sent families fleeing. The realities of the escalating humanitarian crisis were revealed in the resulting scenes: mothers pushing young children in strollers to safety; young men carrying disabled siblings; and entire families seeking refuge in grassy areas where the Lebanese Civil Defense has established emergency shelters.

People endure hours of waiting in fear as the ground and buildings shake from airstrikes, and the pressure waves caused by the explosions spread panic. There have also been reports of strange chemical odors causing respiratory distress.

“Although the Israeli maps (for military action) do not include my house or its vicinity, who can trust the enemy’s plans?” said Fatima, who fled her home in Shiyah and went to the roundabout camp with elderly neighbors.

“Staying home under these Israeli missiles, which exceed human endurance, is madness.”

This feeling of distrust in Israeli evacuation orders appears justified, as some strikes reportedly hit areas considered safe, including locations outside the southern suburbs, with no warning.

A dawn raid on Wednesday struck Aramoun in Aley district, a densely populated area in which numerous displaced families were sheltering. The attack, which destroyed the first and second floors of a residential building, left eight people dead and 18 wounded, some of them critically. Civil Defense and Red Cross teams worked throughout the day to rescue survivors and recover the remains of the dead from the rubble and a nearby valley. Several children were reported missing.

Earlier, an airstrike on a residential building in Joun, in Chouf region, killed 16 civilians, including eight women and four children, and injured 12. Civil Defense teams later recovered a child’s body and the unidentifiable remains of two other people from the rubble.

Israeli raids also targeted several towns in the deep south of Lebanon, destroying houses, shops and other buildings, and the surrounding areas. Meanwhile, Hezbollah continues to target Israeli settlements in northern Israel.

Humanitarian flights carrying aid from Arab nations for displaced people continue to arrive at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. They included the 23rd delivery of aid from Saudi Arabia, which contained food and medical supplies. A similar cargo arrived on an Egyptian plane, which also brought the country’s foreign minister, Abdel Atti, for his meetings with officials in the capital.

The Israeli army said on Wednesday it had intercepted “two drones that infiltrated into northern Israel from Lebanon.”

Israeli media reported “a tragedy in Lebanon, as seven soldiers of the Golani Brigade were killed following the collapse of a building in a village in southern Lebanon.”


Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens

Updated 9 sec ago
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Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens

  • An investigation was being conducted to identify the cause of the blaze

AMMAN: Six residents died and dozens were injured after a fire broke out a nursing home in Jordan, state news agency Petra reported.

The fire at the White Beds Society’s, or Al-Asirra Al-Baydaa, elderly home killed six elderly, badly injuring five and moderately injuring fifty-five more, according to Wafa Bani Mustafa, Minister of Social Development.

The fire spread engulfed the entire 80-square-meter center, which houses 111 people, the minister added.

The injured were taken to government hospitals for treatment, while the remaining elderly were moved to other centers.

An investigation was being conducted to identify the cause of the blaze, the minister said.


Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports

Updated 13 December 2024
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Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports

  • Contacts with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham are ‘proceeding in constructive fashion’

MOSCOW Russia has established direct contact with the political committee of Syria’s Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying on Thursday.

Interfax reported that Bogdanov, speaking to journalists, also said Moscow aimed to maintain its military bases in Syria.

Bogdanov said contacts with HTS, the most powerful force in the country after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, were “proceeding in constructive fashion.”

Russia, he said, hoped the group would fulfil its pledges to “guard against all excesses,” maintain order and ensure the safety of diplomats and other foreigners.

Bogdanov said Russia hoped to maintain its two bases in Syria – a naval base in Tartous and the Khmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia – to keep up efforts against international terrorism.

“The bases are still there, where they were on Syrian territory. No other decisions have been made for the moment,” he was quoted as saying.

“They were there at the Syrians’ request with the aim of fighting terrorists from the Islamic State. I am proceeding on the basis of the notion that everyone agrees that the fight against terrorism, and what remains of IS, is not over.”

Maintaining that fight, he said, “requires collective efforts and in this connection, our presence and the Khmeimim base played an important role in the context of the overall fight against international terrorism.”

Another Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Vershinin, and the UN’s special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, called for measures to destabilize the situation in and around Syria, according to a statement on the foreign ministry’s website.

The statement said the two diplomats discussed by telephone finding a political settlement in a way to be determined by the Syrian people and ensuring Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.


Syria’s militant victors expose ousted government’s drug trade

Updated 13 December 2024
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Syria’s militant victors expose ousted government’s drug trade

DAMASCUS: The dramatic collapse of Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.

Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.

Led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group, the militants say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.

On Wednesday, HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.

“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek Al-Shami.

Maher Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.

Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs.”

In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilizers.

“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.

Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.

Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.

Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.

Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP during a 2022 investigation.

The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.

Journalists from AFP this week found a bonfire of captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh air base, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.

Behind the smoldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged $100 bills.

“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab.”

“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”

Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbors by exporting the drug — a trade worth billions of dollars.


UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad

Updated 13 December 2024
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UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad

BEIRUT: The United Nations humanitarian agency said Thursday that more than a million people, mostly women and children, had been newly displaced in Syria since militants launched an offensive ousting President Bashar Assad.
“As of 12 December, 1.1 million people have been newly displaced across the country since the start of the escalation of hostilities on 27 November. The majority are women and children,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.


Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 58, hit flour trucks

Updated 13 December 2024
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Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 58, hit flour trucks

  • Around 30 people, most of them children, were wounded in the two strikes

GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense agency said a series of Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed at least 58 people, including 12 guards securing aid trucks, while the military said it targeted militants planning to hijack the vehicles.
The latest bloodshed came despite growing optimism that negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal might finally succeed, with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying on Thursday that the regional “context” had changed in favor of an agreement.
Seven guards were killed in a strike in Rafah, in southern Gaza, while another attack left five guards dead in nearby Khan Yunis, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said.
“The (Israeli) occupation once again targeted those securing the aid trucks,” Basal told AFP, though the military said it “does not strike humanitarian aid trucks.”
Basal added that around 30 people, most of them children, were wounded in the two strikes.
“The trucks carrying flour were on their way to UNRWA warehouses,” Basal noted, referring to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Witnesses later told AFP that residents looted flour from the trucks after the strikes.
The military said its forces “conducted precise strikes” overnight on armed Hamas militants present in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza.
“All of the terrorists that were eliminated were members of Hamas and planned to violently hijack humanitarian aid trucks and transfer them to Hamas in support of continuing terrorist activity,” a military statement said.
The United Nations and aid agencies have repeatedly warned about the acute humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip, exacerbated by the war that has persisted for more than 14 months.
“Conditions for people across the Gaza Strip are appalling and apocalyptic,” UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told journalists during a visit to Nuseirat in central Gaza.
She added that life-saving aid to “besieged areas in north Gaza governorate has been largely blocked” since the Israeli military launched a sweeping assault there in early October.
In southern Gaza, UNRWA said earlier this week it had successfully delivered enough food aid for 200,000 people.
But on Thursday it said “a serious incident” meant that only one truck out of a convoy of 70 traveling along Gaza’s southern border reached its destination.
The agency did not provide any details on the incident, but called on “all parties to ensure safe, unimpeded and uninterrupted” aid deliveries.
As diplomacy aimed at ending the war appeared to be gaining pace again, the violence continued.
The civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes on two homes, near Nuseirat refugee camp — which was again hit later in the evening — and Gaza City killed 21 people.
Fifteen people, at least six of them children, died “as a result of an Israeli bombing” of a building sheltering displaced people near Nuseirat, Bassal said.
Bassam Al-Habash, a relative of the dead in Nuseirat said: “These people are innocent, they are not wanted. They have nothing to do with the war.”
“They are civilians, and this is not a war between two armies, but a war armed with weapons, planes and Western support against a defenseless people who own nothing.”
Another strike late on Thursday killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defense said.
In the latest diplomatic effort to secure an end to the violence, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Wednesday calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
The non-binding resolution was rejected by the United States, Israel’s main military backer.
However, in recent days, there have been indications that previously stalled ceasefire negotiations could be revived.
Families of the 96 hostages still in Gaza since the Hamas attack that triggered the war, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead, are pressing for their release.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who visited Israel on Thursday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he “got the sense” that the Israeli leader was “ready to do a deal.”
He also said that the Hamas approach to negotiations had changed, attributing it to the overthrow of their ally Bashar Assad in Syria and the ceasefire that went into effect in the war between Israel and another ally, Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Militants abducted 251 hostages during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
This count includes hostages who died or were killed while held in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.