US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah

US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah
Lebanon’s Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack triggered war in the Gaza Strip, with repeated escalations during more than 11 months of the cross-border violence. (AFP)
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Updated 12 September 2024
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US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah

US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah
  • The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Wednesday issued sanctions on a Lebanese network it accused of smuggling oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to help fund the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels that the US Treasury Department said were overseen by a senior leader of Hezbollah’s finance team and used profits from illicit LPG shipments to Syria to aid generate revenue for the group.
Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith, in a statement, said Hezbollah “continues to launch rockets into Israel and fuel regional instability, choosing to prioritize funding violence over taking care of the people it claims to care about, including the tens of thousands displaced in southern Lebanon.”


Israel can’t confirm death of Hezbollah’s Safieddine, spokesperson says

Israel can’t confirm death of Hezbollah’s Safieddine, spokesperson says
Updated 47 sec ago
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Israel can’t confirm death of Hezbollah’s Safieddine, spokesperson says

Israel can’t confirm death of Hezbollah’s Safieddine, spokesperson says
JERUSALEM: Israel cannot confirm whether the potential successor to the slain Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been killed, a government spokesperson said on Monday, following reports that he was targeted in an Israeli air strike last week.
Asked if Israel could confirm the death of Hashem Safieddine, spokesperson David Mencer told an online briefing: “We don’t have that confirmation yet. When it is confirmed, as and when, it will be on the IDF (Israeli military) website.”
A Hezbollah official told Reuters on Sunday that Israel was obstructing search and rescue efforts in an area where Safieddine is thought to have been when Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday.
Israel has killed much of Hezbollah’s military command and senior leadership in nearly a year of fighting that began when Hezbollah opened a front in solidarity with Palestinians the day after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.

Commander of Iran’s Quds Force is ‘in good health’, force’s deputy commander says

Commander of Iran’s Quds Force is ‘in good health’, force’s deputy commander says
Updated 51 min 34 sec ago
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Commander of Iran’s Quds Force is ‘in good health’, force’s deputy commander says

Commander of Iran’s Quds Force is ‘in good health’, force’s deputy commander says
  • Qaani had traveled to Lebanon after the killing of Nasrallah

DAMASCUS: The top commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, is in “good health,” the force’s deputy commander Iraj Masjedi said on Monday, after two Iranian security sources told Reuters he had been out of contact since strikes on Beirut last week.
“He is in good health and is carrying out his activities. Some ask us to issue a statement... there is no need for this,” Masjedi was quoted as saying by Iranian state media in reference to Qaani.
The Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that a message from Qaani was conveyed to a conference in solidarity with Palestinian children held on Monday in Tehran, adding that the commander could not attend “due to his being in another important meeting.”
One of the security officials told Reuters that Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as the Dahiyeh, during a strike last week that was reported to have targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine. The official said he was not meeting Safieddine.
Israel has been hitting multiple targets in Dahiyeh as it pursues a campaign against Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Tehran named Qaani the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ overseas military-intelligence service after the United States assassinated his powerful predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.
The Quds Force heavily influences its allied armed groups across the Middle East.

 


HRW: Israeli strikes endanger civilians on Lebanon-Syria border

HRW: Israeli strikes endanger civilians on Lebanon-Syria border
Updated 07 October 2024
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HRW: Israeli strikes endanger civilians on Lebanon-Syria border

HRW: Israeli strikes endanger civilians on Lebanon-Syria border
  • Human Rights Watch said the strikes were "impeding civilians trying to flee and disrupting humanitarian operations"

Beirut, Lebanon: Human Rights Watch on Monday said Israeli strikes near the main Lebanon-Syria border crossing were putting civilians at "grave risk" as they prevented them from fleeing and hampered humanitarian operations.
The Israeli military said Friday its fighter jets struck Hezbollah positions near the Masnaa border crossing in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley.
Syrian transport ministry official Sleiman Khalil told AFP on Monday that the road was still "completely cut off to vehicle traffic", but people could still cross on foot.
Human Rights Watch said the strikes were "impeding civilians trying to flee and disrupting humanitarian operations", adding "the situation places civilians at grave risk."
"An Israeli attack on a legitimate military target may still be unlawful if it can be expected to cause immediate civilian harm disproportionate to the anticipated military gain," it said in a statement.
If Hezbollah used the crossing to transfer weapons, the Iran-backed group too "may be failing to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians under their control", HRW added.
The Israeli military said it "struck an underground tunnel" crossing the border that "enables the transfer and storage of large quantities of weapons underground".
"The tunnel's operations were led by the 4400 Unit, the unit responsible for the transportation of weapons from Iran and its proxies to Hezbollah in Lebanon," the military added.
On Friday, an AFP photographer saw people carrying bags and children as they walked around a crater where a strike had hit.
The head of the United Nations refugee agency Filippo Grandi warned Sunday that the bombing of the road "has de facto blocked many people from seeking safety in Syria".
Lebanese authorities said Friday that more than 370,000 people had crossed from Lebanon into Syria since September 23, most of them Syrian nationals.
More than 774,000 Syrian refugees were registered with the UN in Lebanon before the latest escalation, though the tiny country said that it hosted some two million of them -- the world's highest ratio of refugees per capita.
HRW's Lama Fakih said that "by making a border crossing inaccessible at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing fighting and many others are in need of aid, the Israeli military threatens considerable civilian harm."
Even if the crossing were used for military purposes, "Israel would need to take into account the expected civilian harm compared to the anticipated military gain", she added in the statement.


Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy in West Bank confrontations, health ministry says

Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy in West Bank confrontations, health ministry says
Updated 07 October 2024
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Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy in West Bank confrontations, health ministry says

Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy in West Bank confrontations, health ministry says
  • Video from the area of Qalandia showed youths blocking a road with burning tires, with Israeli army vehicles and ambulances at the scene
  • Violence has surged across the West Bank since last October

QALANDIA, West Bank: A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in confrontations between youths and Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it was checking the report.
Video from the area of Qalandia showed youths blocking a road with burning tires, with Israeli army vehicles and ambulances at the scene.
Monday marked the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip and set off the worst bloodletting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Violence has surged across the West Bank since last October. Hundreds of Palestinians — including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths and civilian bystanders — have been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian street attacks over the past year.
Israel said it was on high alert for attacks on Monday. Movement in the West Bank was further restricted as many checkpoints shut down, residents said and some Palestinians with entry permits received notices on their mobile phones saying they will not be allowed into Israel.


Erdogan says on Gaza war anniversary that Israel will pay price for ‘genocide’

Erdogan says on Gaza war anniversary that Israel will pay price for ‘genocide’
Updated 07 October 2024
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Erdogan says on Gaza war anniversary that Israel will pay price for ‘genocide’

Erdogan says on Gaza war anniversary that Israel will pay price for ‘genocide’
  • A vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause, including Hamas, Erdogan has often attacked Israel

Istanbul: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday vowed that Israel would pay a price for the “genocide” in Gaza as he marked the first anniversary of the war in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.
“It should not be forgotten that Israel will sooner or later pay the price for this genocide that it has been carrying out for a year and is still continuing,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.
A vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause, including Hamas, Erdogan has often attacked Israel, branding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and comparing him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network will be stopped in the same way,” Erdogan said.
“A world in which no account is held for the Gaza genocide will never find peace.”
The Turkish leader, who often lauded Hamas as freedom fighters, said what has been massacred before the eyes of the entire world for exactly one year “is actually all of humanity, and all of humanity’s hopes for the future.”
Erdogan also criticized the international system’s failure to stop the conflict in Gaza and now in Lebanon and said: “Israel’s long-standing policy of genocide, occupation and invasion must now come to an end.”