Extremist militias in Lebanon ‘part of history,’ says Druze leader

Walid Jumblatt delivers a speech during a gathering in Ain Zhalta on June 25, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 16 February 2025
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Extremist militias in Lebanon ‘part of history,’ says Druze leader

  • Walid Jumblatt calls for ‘stability to prevail’ and end to violence
  • Iran halts flights to Beirut after Lebanese authorities suspend Iranian permits

BEIRUT: Extremist militias in Lebanon have become part of history, Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said on Sunday.

In a statement, the former Progressive Socialist Party leader also said that the situation in Lebanon “has changed due to political and military circumstances, as well as the Israeli aggression.”

He said: “We have also agreed to implement international resolutions.”

Jumblatt added: “No one opposes a political confrontation with Israel, but we have seen where the use of arms led us, despite Hezbollah’s significant sacrifices.”

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Lebanon’s army on Sunday urged residents against going to southern areas where its forces had not finished deploying under an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal, after Israeli gunfire killed a woman.

He added: “We do not want a segment of Lebanese society to be a tool in the hands of Iran. After all these wars, we have the right to see stability prevail.”

Jumblatt’s statement comes in the wake of a decision by Lebanese authorities to suspend Iranian flights to Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport until Feb. 18.

Hossein Pourfarzaneh, head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority, said that in light of “security issues” at Beirut airport, all flights to Lebanon have been canceled until Feb. 18 at the earliest.

Social media users on Sunday called for sit-ins on the airport road for the fourth consecutive day despite the Lebanese army’s decision to prevent the closure of public roads.

Troops used tear gas to disperse protesters who blocked the airport road on Saturday after demonstrations escalated into attacks on UNIFIL vehicles, resulting in injuries, and causing widespread outrage both in Lebanon and internationally.

The army command on Sunday said that its intervention during Saturday’s sit-in on the road to Rafic Hariri International Airport was pre-coordinated with the organizers.

Despite agreeing to stage a peaceful demonstration, a group of protesters blocked the road and attacked military personnel assigned to maintain security, the army statement said.

Vehicles were damaged and at least 23 soldiers, including three officers, were injured in the ensuing violence.

The statement added that military units had to intervene to protect personnel and reopen the road.

Lebanon is waiting to complete deployment of its army in areas that Israeli forces are due to vacate by Feb.18.

However, Israel announced it will not remove its troops from five strategic hills along the border.

With 48 hours remaining for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, further Israeli military action took place in several border towns, including Kfarshouba.

A woman was killed and several other people wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces fired on a group of residents attempting to return to the border town of Houla.

Five people, including two paramedics, were also arrested after residents tried to cross earth barriers set up by Israeli forces.

Families bypassed the Lebanese army’s positions and tried to enter the town with the aim of “recovering the bodies of their sons” who were affiliated with Hezbollah and were killed during clashes with Israeli forces.

Khadija Hussein Atwi was killed when Israeli troops fired on the group. Her father had been killed during confrontations with Israel.

Lebanon’s army later urged residents to avoid heading to border areas where its forces had not completed deployment.

In a statement, the army command said that “citizens must not go to the southern regions where the army has not completed its deployment and must adhere to the instructions of the deployed military units, to preserve their safety and avoid the fall of innocent people, given the danger of unexploded ordnance left behind by the Israeli enemy, in addition to the possibility of the presence of enemy forces in those areas.”

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam discussed the ceasefire agreement and the withdrawal of the Israeli troops in a phone call with his Qatari counterpart and Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani.

The Qatari foreign minister reiterated Qatar’s support for Lebanon, its unity and territorial integrity.

A statement from Qatar’s Foreign Ministry highlighted “the importance of fully adhering to the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation from the Lebanese territories.”

Israel is committed to the ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Speaking at a press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Netanyahu said that he expects Lebanon to commit to its role and to disarm Hezbollah.

The US secretary of state said that the Lebanese state “must be strong and able to disarm Hezbollah.”

 


Hamas says open to 5-year Gaza truce, one-time hostages release

Updated 27 April 2025
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Hamas says open to 5-year Gaza truce, one-time hostages release

  • An Israeli pullout and a “permanent end to the war” would also have occurred — as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden — under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but collapsed two months later

CAIRO: Hamas is open to an agreement to end the war in Gaza that would see all hostages released and secure a five-year truce, an official said Saturday as the group’s negotiators held talks with mediators.
A Hamas delegation was in Cairo discussing with Egyptian mediators ways out of the 18-month war, while, on the ground, rescuers said Israeli strikes killed at least 35 people.
Nearly eight weeks into an Israeli aid blockade, the United Nations says food and medical supplies are running out.
The Hamas official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinian militant group “is ready for an exchange of prisoners in a single batch and a truce for five years.”
The latest bid to seal a ceasefire follows an Israeli proposal which Hamas had rejected earlier this month as “partial,” calling instead for a “comprehensive” agreement to halt the war ignited by the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The rejected Israeli offer, according to a senior Hamas official, included a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the return of 10 living hostages.
Hamas has consistently demanded that a truce deal must lead to the war’s end, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid.
An Israeli pullout and a “permanent end to the war” would also have occurred — as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden — under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but collapsed two months later.
Hamas had sought talks on the second phase but Israel wanted the first phase extended.
Israel demands the return of all hostages seized in the 2023 attack, and Hamas’s disarmament, which the group has rejected as a “red line.”
“This time we will insist on guarantees regarding the end of the war,” Mahmud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, said in a statement.
“The occupation can return to war after any partial deal, but it cannot do so with a comprehensive deal and international guarantees.”
Later on Saturday, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan reiterated that “any proposal that does not include a comprehensive and permanent cessation of the war will not be considered.”
“We will not abandon the resistance’s weapons as long as the occupation persists,” he said in a statement.

Israel pounded Gaza again on Saturday.
Mohammed Al-Mughayyir, an official with the territory’s civil defense rescue agency, told AFP that the death toll had risen to at least 35.
In Gaza City, in the territory’s north, civil defense said a strike on the Khour family home killed 10 people and left an estimated 20 more trapped in the debris.
Umm Walid Al-Khour, who survived the attack, said “everyone was sleeping with their children” when the strike hit and “the house collapsed on top of us.”
Elsewhere across Gaza, 25 more people were killed, rescuers said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes but it said that “1,800 terror targets” had been hit across Gaza since the military campaign resumed on March 18.
The military added that “hundreds of terrorists” were also killed.
Qatar, the United States and Egypt brokered the truce which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
With Israel and Hamas disagreeing over the ceasefire’s next phase, Israel cut all aid to Gaza before resuming bombardment, followed by a ground offensive.

Since then, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed, taking the overall war death toll in Gaza to 51,495 people, mostly civilians.
The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says the military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
On Friday, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the hot meal kitchens it was supplying with food in Gaza “are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days.”
On Saturday, AFP footage showed queues of people waiting for food in front of a community kitchen.
“There is no food in the free kitchen, there is no food in the markets... There is no flour or bread,” said north Gaza resident Wael Odeh.
A senior UN official, Jonathan Whittall, said Gazans were “slowly dying.”
“This is not only about humanitarian needs but also about dignity,” Whittall, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told journalists.

 


Houthis say 8 wounded in US strikes on Yemen capital

Smoke billows from the site of a U.S. air strike in Sanaa, Yemen April 26, 2025. (REUTERS)
Updated 26 April 2025
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Houthis say 8 wounded in US strikes on Yemen capital

  • Since US President Donald Trump took office, those attacks have intensified, with almost daily strikes for the past month

SANAA: Iran-backed Houthi rebels said Saturday that a series of US strikes on territory under their control including the Yemeni capital Sanaa had wounded at least eight people.
“Eight citizens, including two children, were wounded when the American enemy targeted a residential district” west of Al-Rawda in Sanaa, said the Houthi-run Saba news agency.
It cited the Houthi administration’s health ministry as the source for what it said was a provisional toll.
An AFP correspondent in Sanaa reported earlier Saturday having heard explosions.
The Houthis, who control large parts of the war-torn country, also reported strikes in other parts of the country, including their stronghold Saada in the north.
They said the fuel port of Ras Issa in the western Hodeida region — where they say 80 people were killed in strikes just over a week ago — had also been hit.
The Houthis, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, portray themselves as defenders of Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.
They have regularly launched missiles and drones at Israel and at cargo vessels plying the key Red Sea trade route.
The US military has since January 2024 been attacking their positions, saying it is targeting the “Iran-backed Houthi terrorists” to stop their attacks.
Since US President Donald Trump took office, those attacks have intensified, with almost daily strikes for the past month.
On Saturday, the Houthis said they had launched a missile and two drones at Israel, where the army said it had intercepted a missile from Yemen and a drone coming from the east.
On Saturday, CENTCOM, the US military command in the region, posted footage from the US aircraft carriers Harry S. Truman and Carl Vinson conducting strikes against the Houthis.
 

 


At least 11 Sudanese killed in RSF drone strike

Updated 26 April 2025
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At least 11 Sudanese killed in RSF drone strike

  • The escalation of such strikes, which have hampered the country’s electrical grid and plunged millions into weeks-long blackouts, comes two years into a damaging war as the army has been pushing the paramilitary force out of central Sudan

AL-DAMAR, Sudan: At least 11 people were killed after a drone strike by the Rapid Support Forces hit a displacement camp in Sudan’s River Nile state, the governor said in a statement, in an attack that also took out the regional power station for the fourth time.
The RSF, which denies carrying out drone attacks and did not respond to a request for comment, has targeted power stations in army-controlled locations in central and northern Sudan for the past several months, but the strikes had not previously left significant death tolls.
“We heard a large explosion and we found two families that had been burnt completely inside their tents, while they were sleeping,” said teacher Mashair Hemeidan as she shed tears.
“We had left Khartoum, fearful of the war, and now the war has followed us here. I don’t know where I will go with my family and children. We have no shelter or place to go to,” she added.

I don’t know where I will go with my family and children. We have no shelter or place to go to.

Mashair Hemeidan, Teacher

The escalation of such strikes, which have hampered the country’s electrical grid and plunged millions into weeks-long blackouts, comes two years into a damaging war as the army has been pushing the paramilitary force out of central Sudan.
Ground fighting in the war is now focused on the Darfur region, where the RSF is fighting to seize the army’s remaining foothold, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes.
There has also been fighting in western Omdurman, part of the capital, where the RSF remains.
The Friday morning attack by multiple missiles, which set some of the tents on fire, injured 23 other people, a medical official said.
Reuters witnesses saw at least nine children among the wounded.
“My nine-year-old son, Ahmed, was killed, and now my nine-year-old Fadi and my seven-year-old Omnia are in the hospital,” said Fadwa Adlan, a resident of the camp.
Some 179 families displaced by the fighting in the capital had been living in difficult conditions in an abandoned building and surrounding tents outside the town of Al-Damer, receiving little in the way of humanitarian assistance. The camp was located about 3 km from the Atbara power station, which was also struck.
On Friday, authorities could be seen hosing down the residents’ belongings destroyed in the fire and breaking down the camp. Residents were seen boarding buses to an unknown location.

 


Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new deputy in a major step in naming a successor

Updated 26 April 2025
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new deputy in a major step in naming a successor

  • The appointment of Hussein Al-Sheikh does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president
  • It makes him the front-runner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday named a veteran aide and confidant as his new vice president. It’s a major step by the aging leader to designate a successor.
The appointment of Hussein Al-Sheikh as vice president of the Palestine Liberation Organization does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president. But it makes him the front-runner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party who hope to succeed the 89-year-old Abbas.
The move is unlikely to boost the image among many Palestinians of Fatah as a closed and corrupt movement out of touch with the general public.
Abbas hopes to play a major role in postwar Gaza. He has been under pressure from Western and Arab allies to rehabilitate the Palestinian Authority, which has limited autonomy in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He has announced a series of reforms in recent months, and last week his Fatah movement approved the new position of PLO vice president.
The PLO is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people and oversees the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Abbas has led both entities for two decades.
Under last week’s decision, the new vice president, coming from the PLO’s 16-member executive committee, would succeed Abbas in a caretaker capacity if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.
That would make him the front-runner to replace Abbas on a permanent basis, though not guarantee it. The PLO’s executive committee would need to approve that appointment, and the body is filled with veteran politicians who see themselves as worthy contenders.
The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, would have a separate caretaker leader, Rawhi Fattouh, the speaker of the Palestinians’ non-functioning parliament. But within 90 days, it would have to hold elections. If that is not possible, the new PLO president would likely take over the position.
Al-Sheikh, 64, is a veteran politician who has held a series of top positions over decades, most recently as the secretary-general of the PLO’s executive committee for the past three years. He spent 11 years in Israeli prisons in his youth and is a veteran of the Palestinian security forces — experiences that could give him credibility with Palestinian security figures and the broader public.
Now he finds himself in a strong position to shore up his power.
He is Abbas’ closest aide and, most critically, maintains good working relations with Israel and the Palestinians’ Arab allies, including wealthy Gulf countries. As Abbas’ point man with Israel, Al-Sheikh is responsible for arranging coveted travel permits for Palestinians, including VIP leaders, giving him an important lever of power over his rivals.
However, polls show Al-Sheikh, like most of Fatah’s leadership, to be deeply unpopular with the general public. This week’s decision behind closed doors by the PLO’s aging leadership is likely to reinforce its image as being stodgy and out of touch.
The most popular Palestinian, Marwan Barghouti, is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison, and Israel has ruled out releasing him as part of any swap for Israeli hostages held in Gaza by the Hamas militant group.
As Israel’s war with Hamas drags on, with talk by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of uprooting Palestinians in Gaza to relocate them elsewhere, Al-Sheikh will be under mounting pressure to unite the Palestinian leadership.
The PLO is a rival for Hamas, which won the last national elections in 2006 and is not in the PLO. Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas’ forces in 2007, and reconciliation attempts have repeatedly failed.
In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, Al-Sheikh defended his unpopular coordination with Israel, saying there was no choice under the difficult circumstances of the occupation.
“I am not a representative for Israel in the Palestinian territories,” he said at the time. “We undertake the coordination because this is the prelude to a political solution for ending the occupation.”


Syria’s Kurds hold conference on vision for country’s future

Mazloum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), speaks during the pan-Kurdish "Unity and Consensus" conf
Updated 26 April 2025
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Syria’s Kurds hold conference on vision for country’s future

  • More than 400 people, including representatives from major Kurdish parties in Syria, Iraq and Turkiye, took part in the “Unity of the Kurdish Position and Ranks” conference in Qamishli

QAMISHLI: Syria’s Kurdish parties held a conference on Saturday aimed at presenting a unified vision for the country’s future following the fall of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, a high-ranking participant told AFP.
Eldar Khalil, an official in the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, said that since Kurds were a major component of the country, they “must present a solution and a project proposal for the future of Syria.”
On the question of federalism, Khalil said it was “one of the proposals on the table.”
More than 400 people, including representatives from major Kurdish parties in Syria, Iraq and Turkiye, took part in the “Unity of the Kurdish Position and Ranks” conference in Qamishli, according to the Kurdish Anha news agency.
The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which has controlled large swathes of Syria’s northeast since the early years of the country’s civil war, was represented at the gathering, as were groups opposed to it.
Last month, the Kurdish administration struck a deal to integrate into state institutions, with the new Islamist-led leadership seeking to unify the country following the December overthrow of Assad.
The agreement, however, has not prevented the Kurdish administration from criticizing the new authorities, including over the formation of a new government and a recent constitutional declaration that concentrated executive power in the hands of interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa during the transition period.
Mazloum Abdi, head of the administration’s armed wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said at the conference that “my message to all Syrian constituents and the Damascus government is that the conference does not aim, as some say, at division.”
It was being held, he added, “for the unity of Syria.”
Abdi included a call for “a new decentralized constitution that includes all components” of society.
“We support all Syrian components receiving their rights in the constitution to be able to build a decentralized democratic Syria that embraces everyone,” he said.
Khalil said that the participants will also discuss ways to address the role of the Kurds in the new Syria.