Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions

Analysis Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions
A man holds a walkie talkie device after he removed the battery during the funeral of persons killed when hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024 (AFP)
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Updated 26 September 2024
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Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions

Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions
  • Communication devices exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing at least 15 people and injuring thousands
  • Suspected Israeli attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that Hezbollah has almost no choice but to respond

LONDON: At precisely 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, an estimated 3,000 pagers carried by Hezbollah members beeped several times before exploding simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon and parts of Syria.

At least eight of the dead were reportedly members of Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the many wounded included Mojtaba Amini, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, who may have lost at least one eye.

But clips from security cameras in shops in Beirut and other locations, circulated on social media, illustrated the dangerously indiscriminate nature of the attack.

 

 

Many civilians going about their day also fell victim to the blasts as pagers exploded in supermarkets, on the streets, and in cars and homes. Among the dead were two children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fleets of ambulances ferried a reported 2,700 wounded to hospitals across Lebanon, where overwhelmed medics struggled to cope with multiple victims suffering serious wounds, mainly to their hips, where pagers are generally worn on belts, and to hands and eyes.

On Wednesday afternoon, further blasts were reported across Lebanon, this time reportedly involving hand-held radios, causing at least three further fatalities and a hundred more wounded, according to Lebanese state media.

 

 

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack. But on Wednesday a US official told AP that Israel had briefed Washington on the attack after it had been carried out and, with no other feasible suspect in the frame, there is little doubt that it was the handiwork of Mossad, Israel’s lethally inventive foreign intelligence agency.

It is also clear that, figuratively and literally, the pager attack was both designed and timed to send a message.

The opportunity to use pagers as an offensive weapon arose in February when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly warned members to stop using cell phones, which are easily bugged and traced and have been linked with many assassinations executed by missile attacks.

 

According to a senior Lebanese security source quoted by The Times of Israel, Hezbollah then ordered 5,000 pagers, which were imported into Lebanon earlier this year.

Initial speculation was that Israel had somehow infected the pagers with code designed to cause lithium batteries inside them to overheat and explode. However, it has since emerged that the pagers used only ordinary AAA batteries.

Besides, the near-instantaneous and synchronized detonations, apparently triggered by incoming messages, suggest the pagers had all been fitted with a small amount of explosive and a miniature electronic detonator.

On Tuesday, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters: “The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means, even with any device or scanner.”

On Wednesday, Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese firm whose brand name was found on the pagers used in the attack, denied involvement, saying the AR-924 models widely identified after the blasts had been made under license by a Budapest-based company, BAC Consulting KFT.




Hsu Ching-kuang, head of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, speaks to the media outside the company's office in New Taipei City on Sept. 18, 2024, saying his company had nothing to do with the pager explosion attack in Lebanon. (AFP)

In a statement issued at 1:40 p.m. Taiwan time on Wednesday, Gold Apollo said: “This model is produced and sold by BAC. Our company only provides the brand trademark authorization and is not involved in the design or manufacturing of this product.”

Images of BAC’s headquarters — a modest, semi-detached building on Szonyi Street in the north of Budapest — have spread on social media, but BAC has yet to comment. Its website went offline on Wednesday and the profile of its owner and managing director was deleted from LinkedIn.

It is, however, extremely unlikely that any genuine company would knowingly take part in such an operation, risking Hezbollah’s wrath, knowing full well that the devices would be easily traced back to it. This has provoked some speculation that BAC, established only in 2022, might have been a front company operated by Israeli intelligence.




Combo image showing a walkie-talkie (right frame) that was exploded inside a house in Baalbek, east Lebanon, on Sept. 17, 2024, and a man holding a walkie talkie device after he removed the battery following the pager explosions. (AP/AFP)

A more likely scenario is that the batch of pagers ordered by Hezbollah were intercepted en route to Lebanon by Israeli agents — most probably at a port or airport, where typical customs and shipping delays may have given agents, working with local collaborators, enough time to meddle with the devices.

Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is a major transport hub on the River Danube and is home to Csepel Freeport, the country’s principal port.

Wherever the devices were tampered with, “the use of pagers bears the hallmark of Israel weaponizing digital technology to achieve political ends,” Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor in the Department of History at California State University San Marcos, told Arab News.




Social media photo showing a pager battery that exploded during an apparent Israeli attack on Sept. 17, 2024 against users of the device in southern Lebanon. (AFP)

Israel has “form” in such warfare. In 2010, “a code known as Stuxnet, snuck into a USB drive, caused Iranian centrifuges to accelerate to the point that they destroyed themselves.”

In 1996, Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash was killed when explosives hidden inside his cell phone were triggered remotely by Israeli agents.

“The advantage of the most recent attack in Lebanon is that it allows Israel to strike from a distance while claiming plausible deniability, avoiding a US rebuke at a time when Washington has pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike Hezbollah,” said Al-Marashi.

But the pager attack, he warned, could lead to a dangerous escalation.




Ambulances are surrounded by people at the entrance of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on Sept.17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon. (AFP)

“Hezbollah does have the ability to weaponize the digital in retaliation, raising the possibility that violent non-state actors might even pursue artificial intelligence to retaliate against their adversaries.”

Given the complexities of the operation, and the sheer workload involved in sabotaging thousands of devices, there is little doubt that the attack would have been weeks, if not months, in the planning.

But it is the timing of the attack that sends the most worrying signal.

The day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, its ally Hezbollah began firing missiles into northern Israel — a near-daily bombardment that has increased steadily in intensity, forcing the evacuation of thousands of Israelis from the border region.




Lebanese army soldiers stand guard in Beirut on September 17, 2024, after an Israeli pager device attack against the Hezbollah in southern  Lebanon on September 17. (AFP

After a meeting of its Security Cabinet on Monday night, barely 12 hours before the pagers were detonated, Netanyahu’s office announced that “the Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”

At the same time, reports suggested Netanyahu was on the brink of buckling to the extremist elements in his cabinet by sacking his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has criticized him for having no postwar plan for Gaza, and replacing him with Gideon Saar, leader of the New Hope — The United Right party.

On Wednesday, the day after the pager attack, reports in Israeli and other media, citing anonymous US and Israeli officials, suggested it had been planned originally as “an opening blow in an all-out war against Hezbollah.”





Relatives mourn Fatima Abdallah — a 10-year-old girl killed in Israel's pager device attack — during her funeral in the village of Saraain in the Bekaa valley on September 18, 2024. (AFP)
 

According to The Times of Israel, a Hezbollah operative “had come to suspect the devices had been tampered with.” He was killed before he could alert his superiors, but the decision was taken to detonate the pagers before the plot was uncovered.

The question now is whether Israel is poised to follow up the pager attack, perhaps as was planned, with an all-out assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“We have been teetering on the brink of a wider war for many months now,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told Arab News.

“Hezbollah and Iran have made it clear they don’t want this broader conflict to erupt, but Israel cannot end the war in Gaza without addressing the security crisis on its northern borders with Iran, Lebanon and Syria.




Mourners carry the coffin of Mohammed Mahdi, son of Hezbollah legislator Ali Ammar, who was killed Tuesday after his handheld pager exploded, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 18, 2024. (AP)

“In order to address this security imbalance, which puts at risk the safety of the broader population but also that of those displaced since the war began, Israel is trying to target and degrade the ‘Axis of Resistance’ to stave off further threats,” she said, referring to the loose network of Iranian proxies throughout the region.

“But this strategy could certainly push the groups and Iran to respond and eventually draw in regional states and above all the US.”

Most Israelis, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of the nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, “will tell you that war with Hezbollah is inevitable, but a large percentage say: ‘Not now.’

“The priorities for many are a ceasefire in Gaza, release of the hostages and dialing down the tension in Lebanon. Hezbollah can wait,” he told Arab News.

“Hezbollah, actively backed by Iran, is a much greater threat to Israel than Hamas and the general perception is that there will eventually be a war with Hezbollah, but Israelis know this will be much different than what we have witnessed in the past. It would mean years of war and vast devastation.

“But Netanyahu has a vested interest in the perpetuation of the war, which would be good for Netanyahu but intolerable for Israel.”

 

 

What happens next, added Seidemann, “is not only an Israeli decision. Will the US provide the munitions and the rest of the world the legitimization to pursue a protracted war in Lebanon?

“The bottom line is that right now, anything can happen.”

For Al-Marashi, “there are a lot of variables in regard to further escalation that make predictions difficult, more difficult than at any time in analyzing systemic conflicts in the Middle East.

“Despite US sanctions on Iran, news emerged over the weekend that Iran has launched a satellite into space and allegedly has provided ballistic missiles to Russia.

“Second, the Houthis in Yemen have overcome a technical hurdle, launching a ballistic missile against Israel and having it hit Israeli soil, meaning Israel’s system that intercepts such missiles failed.




An Israeli firefighter works to put out a blaze after rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israel, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in Kiryat Shmona, Israel, on Sept. 18, 2024. (REUTERS)

“From that perspective, both Israeli adversaries have demonstrated they can overcome technical hurdles, signaling to Israel that it is not invulnerable.”

Were a regional war to escalate, he added, “it would put US positions in Bahrain and Iraq in the crosshairs of the Axis of Resistance. Biden, seeking to ensure a Kamala Harris victory in the US election, is most likely going to pressure Israel not to escalate matters prior to the election.

“At the same time, if war in the Middle East helped Donald Trump, that would work to the advantage of Netanyahu, who would prefer a Trump presidency.”

The Middle East, said Brian Katulis, senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, “has been teetering on the edge of a wider escalation for much of this past year, with the risk of nation-states going directly to war with one another growing.”




An armored personnel carrier of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrols along al-Khardali road along the Israel-Lebanon border on September 17, 2024. (PhotAFP)

It was, he told Arab News, important to keep in mind the two core drivers of events — “a regime in Iran that operates with a revolutionary ideology that seeks to upend the state order of the Middle East, and an increasingly right-wing Israeli government that rejects a two-state solution and is unable to see the historic opportunity it has in opening relations with key Arab states if it took steps to define a clear end to this war that leads to a State of Palestine.”

In this context, “the US and outside actors such as Europe, China, and Russia can play important roles in trying to shape the trajectory of events in the region, but the main drivers are the regional actors themselves.

“One interesting pivotal grouping is the Arab Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, who do not want to see a wider regional escalation with Iran but do want to advance a two-state solution.”

Right now, however, even as uncertainty remains about Israel’s next move, much depends on how Hezbollah will respond to the extraordinary blow it suffered on Tuesday.

The attack, described by a Hezbollah official as “the targeting of an entire nation,” has been condemned as “an extremely concerning escalation” by Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon.

 

 

In the past year, Hezbollah has suffered the loss of more than 400 fighters, including senior commander Fuad Shukr, to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.

But the pager attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that if it is to save face, Hezbollah’s leadership has almost no choice but to respond with more than the usual daily delivery of a handful of rockets.




Hashim Safieddine, a Shiite Muslim cleric and the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council, speaks during the funeral of persons killed after hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024. (AFP)

After Israel’s multiple airstrikes in southern Lebanon last week and now the pager attack, “we are more on the precipice of a regional war than ever,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.

“We will have to see how Hezbollah will retaliate now, and the level of that response will determine where this goes. But these episodes are an indication that things are heating up and we are close to the precipice.”

As for Netanyahu, after almost a year of fighting in Gaza, the fear now is that his answer to growing domestic criticism over the apparent absence of a postwar plan may be an even more nightmarish scenario — more war, only this time in Lebanon.

 


WHO aims to begin second phase of polio campaign in Gaza on Oct. 14

WHO aims to begin second phase of polio campaign in Gaza on Oct. 14
Updated 5 sec ago
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WHO aims to begin second phase of polio campaign in Gaza on Oct. 14

WHO aims to begin second phase of polio campaign in Gaza on Oct. 14
  • Negotiations ongoing and a meeting with Israeli authorities about the next phase of the campaign planned for Sunday
GENEVA: A World Health Organization official on Friday said the organization has sent a request to Israel to begin the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza from Oct. 14.
“We have asked the Israeli authorities to consider a similar scheme that we had for the first round, something they call ‘tactical pauses’ (in fighting) during the working hours of the campaign,” said Ayadil Saparbekov, WHO lead for emergencies in the occupied Palestinian territory.
He said negotiations were ongoing and that a meeting with Israeli authorities about the next phase of the campaign was planned for Sunday.

Source close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah says slain chief Nasrallah temporarily buried

Source close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah says slain chief Nasrallah temporarily buried
Updated 18 min 16 sec ago
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Source close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah says slain chief Nasrallah temporarily buried

Source close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah says slain chief Nasrallah temporarily buried
  • An Israeli strike killed the Hezbollah leader last week

BEIRUT: A source close to Hezbollah said Friday that the Lebanese militant group’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah has been temporarily buried in a secret location for fear Israel would target a large funeral.
“Hassan Nasrallah has been temporarily buried, until the circumstances allow for a public funeral,” the source said, after an Israeli strike killed the leader last week.
The source said a public funeral had been impossible to hold “for fear of Israeli threats they would target mourners and the place of his burial.”
Shiite Muslim rites provide for such a temporary burial when circumstances prevent a proper funeral or the deceased cannot be buried where they wished.
A Lebanese official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Hezbollah had, through top Lebanese officials, sought but failed to obtain “guarantees” from the United States, a key ally of Israel, that Israel would not target a public funeral.
Amid intensifying Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah, a massive strike on its south Beirut stronghold on September 27 killed Nasrallah alongside an Iranian Revolutionary Guards general.
Israel said it killed around 20 members of the Iran-backed militant group.
Nasrallah still does not have a successor a week after he was killed.
His cousin Hashem Safieddine, a prominent Hezbollah figure touted as a possible successor, was the target of a recent Israeli air strike on south Beirut, US and Israeli media reported.


Tunisia votes Sunday in its third presidential election since the Arab Spring

Tunisia votes Sunday in its third presidential election since the Arab Spring
Updated 04 October 2024
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Tunisia votes Sunday in its third presidential election since the Arab Spring

Tunisia votes Sunday in its third presidential election since the Arab Spring
  • Tunisia’s President Kais Saied faces few obstacles to winning another term in the country’s presidential election Sunday because his major opponents have been imprisoned or left off the ballot
  • The presidential election is Tunisia’s third since protests led to the 2011 ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the Arab Spring

TUNIS: With his major opponents imprisoned or left off the ballot, Tunisian President Kais Saied faces few obstacles to winning reelection on Sunday, five years after riding anti-establishment backlash to a first term.
The North African country’s Oct. 6 presidential election is its third since protests led to the 2011 ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — the first autocrat toppled in the Arab Spring uprisings that also overthrew leaders in Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
International observers praised the previous two contests as meeting democratic norms. However, a raft of arrests and actions taken by a Saied-appointed election authority have raised questions about whether this year’s race is free and fair. And opposition parties have called for a boycott.
What’s at stake?
Not long ago, Tunisia was hailed as the Arab Spring’s only success story. As coups, counter-revolutions and civil wars convulsed the region, the North African nation enshrined a new democratic constitution and saw its leading civil society groups win the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering political compromise.
But its new leaders were unable to buoy its struggling economy and were plagued by political infighting and episodes of violence and terrorism.
Amid that backdrop, Saied, then 61 and a political outsider, won his first term in 2019. He advanced to a runoff promising to usher in a “New Tunisia” and hand more power to young people and local governments.
This year’s election will offer a window into popular opinion about the trajectory that Tunisia’s fading democracy has taken since Saied took office.
Saied’s supporters appear to have remained loyal to him and his promise to transform Tunisia. But he isn’t affiliated with any political party, and it’s unclear just how deep his support runs among Tunisians.
It’s the first presidential race since Saied upended the country’s politics in July 2021, declaring a state of emergency, sacking his prime minister, suspending the parliament and rewriting Tunisia’s constitution consolidating his own power.
Those actions outraged pro-democracy groups and leading opposition parties, who called them a coup. Yet despite anger from career politicians, voters approved Saied’s new constitution the following year in a low-turnout referendum.
Authorities subsequently began arresting Saied’s critics including journalists, lawyers, politicians and civil society figures, charging them with endangering state security and violating a controversial anti-fake news law that observers argue stifles dissent.
Fewer voters turned out to participate in parliamentary and local elections in 2022 and 2023 amid economic woes and widespread political apathy.
Who’s running?
Many wanted to challenge Saied, but few were able to.
Seventeen potential candidates filed paperwork to run and Tunisia’s election authority approved only three: Saied, Zouhair Maghzaoui and Ayachi Zammel.
Maghzaoui is a veteran politician who has campaigned against Saied’s economic program and recent political arrests. Still, he is loathed by opposition parties for backing Saied’s constitution and earlier moves to consolidate power.
Zammel is a businessman supported by politicians not boycotting the race. During the campaign, he has been sentenced to prison time in four voter fraud cases related to signatures his team gathered to qualify for the ballot.
Others had hoped to run but were prevented. The election authority, known as ISIE, last month dismissed a court ruling ordering it to reinstate three additional challengers.
With many arrested, detained or convicted on charges related to their political activities, Tunisia’s most well-known opposition figures are also not participating.
That includes the 83-year-old leader of Tunisia’s most well organized political party Ennahda, which rose to power after the Arab Spring. Rached Ghannouchi, the Islamist party’s co-founder and Tunisia’s former house speaker, has been imprisoned since last year after criticizing Saied.
The crackdown also includes one of Ghannouchi’s most vocal detractors: Abir Moussi, a right-wing lawmaker known for railing against Islamists and speaking nostalgically for pre-Arab Spring Tunisia. The 49-year-old president of the Free Destourian Party also was imprisoned last year after criticizing Saied.
Other less known politicians who announced plans to run have also since been jailed or sentenced on similar charges.
Opposition groups have called to boycott the race. The National Salvation Front — a coalition of secular and Islamist parties including Ennahda — has denounced the process as a sham and questioned the election’s legitimacy.
What are the other issues?
The country’s economy continues to face major challenges. Despite Saied’s promises to chart a new course for Tunisia, unemployment has steadily increased to one of the region’s highest at 16 percent, with young Tunisians hit particularly hard.
Growth has been slow since the COVID-19 pandemic and Tunisia has remained reliant on multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and the European Union. Today, Tunisia owes them more than $9 billion. Apart from agricultural reform, Saied’s overarching economic strategy is unclear.
Negotiations have long been stalled over a $1.9 billion bailout package offered by the International Monetary Fund in 2022. Saied has been unwilling to accept its conditions, which include restructuring indebted state-owned companies and cutting public wages. Some of the IMF’s stipulations — including lifting subsidies for electricity, flour and fuel — would likely be unpopular among Tunisians who rely on their low costs.
Economic analysts say that foreign and local investors are reluctant to invest in Tunisia due to continued political risks and an absence of reassurances.
The dire economic straits have had a two-pronged effect on one of Tunisia’s key political issues: migration. From 2019 to 2023, an increasing number of Tunisians attempted to migrate to Europe without authorization. Meanwhile, Saied’s administration has taken a harsh approach against migrants arriving from sub-Saharan Africa, many who have found themselves stuck in Tunisia while trying to reach Europe.
Saied energized his supporters in early 2023 by accusing migrants of violence and crime and portraying them as part of a plot to change the country’s demography. The anti-migrant rhetoric prompted extreme violence against migrants and a crackdown from authorities. Last year, security forces targeted migrant communities from the coast to the capital with a series of arrests, deportation to the desert and the demolition of tent camps in Tunis and coastal towns.
Bodies continue to wash ashore on Tunisia’s coastline as boats carrying Tunisians and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa manage only to make it a few nautical miles before sinking.
What does it mean overseas?
Tunisia has maintained ties with its traditional Western allies but also forged new partnerships under Saied.
Much like many populist leaders who’ve taken power worldwide, Saied emphasizes sovereignty and freeing Tunisia from what he calls “foreign diktats.” He has insisted that Tunisia won’t become a “border guard” for Europe, which has sought agreements with him to better police the Mediterranean.
Tunisia and Iran lifted visa requirements and in May announced plans to boost trade ties. It has also accepted millions in loans as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build hospitals, stadiums and ports.
Yet European countries remain Tunisia’s top trade partners and their leaders have maintained productive ties with Saied, hailing agreements to manage migration as a “model” for the region.
Saied has spoken ardently in support of Palestinians as war has swept the Middle East and opposes moves made to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel.


“We don’t want to die here”: Sierra Leone housekeepers trapped in Lebanon

“We don’t want to die here”: Sierra Leone housekeepers trapped in Lebanon
Updated 04 October 2024
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“We don’t want to die here”: Sierra Leone housekeepers trapped in Lebanon

“We don’t want to die here”: Sierra Leone housekeepers trapped in Lebanon
  • With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper made her way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance
  • The situation for the country’s migrant workers is particularly precarious, as their legal status is often tied to their employer

Freetown: When an Israeli air strike killed her employer and destroyed nearly everything she owned in southern Lebanon, it also crushed Fatima Samuella Tholley’s hopes of returning home to Sierra Leone to escape the spiralling violence.
With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper told AFP that she and her cousin made their way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance.
Bewildered and terrified, the pair were thrust into the chaos of the bombarded city — unfamiliar to them apart from the airport where they had arrived months before.
“We don’t know today if we will live or not, only God knows,” Fatima told AFP via video call, breaking down in tears.
“I have nothing... no passport, no documents,” she said.
The cousins have spent days sheltering in the cramped storage room of an empty apartment, which they said was offered to them by a man they had met on their journey.
With no access to TV news and unable to communicate in French or Arabic, they could only watch from their window as the city was pounded by strikes.
The spike in violence in Lebanon since mid-September has killed more than 1,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes, as Israel bombards Hezbollah strongholds around the country.
The situation for the country’s migrant workers is particularly precarious, as their legal status is often tied to their employer under the “kafala” sponsorship system governing foreign labor.
Rights groups say the system allows for numerous abuses including the withholding of wages and the confiscation of official documents — which provide workers their only lifeline out of the country.
“When we came here, our madams received our passports, they seized everything until we finished our contract” said 29-year-old Mariatu Musa Tholley, who also works as a housekeeper.
“Now [the bombing] burned everything, even our madams... only we survived.”
Sierra Leone is working to establish how many of its citizens are currently in Lebanon, with the aim of providing emergency travel certificates to those without passports, Kai S. Brima from the foreign affairs ministry told AFP.
The poor west African country has a significant Lebanese community dating back over a century, which is heavily involved in business and trade.
Scores of migrants travel to Lebanon every year, with the aim of paying remittances to support families back home.
“We don’t know anything, any information,” Mariatu said.
“[Our neighbors] don’t open the door for us because they know we are black,” she wept.
“We don’t want to die here.”
Fatima and Mariatu said they had each earned $150 per month, working from 6:00 am until midnight seven days a week.
They said they were rarely allowed out of the house.
AFP contacted four other Sierra Leonean domestic workers by phone, all of whom recounted similar situations of helplessness in Beirut.
Patricia Antwin, 27, came to Lebanon as a housekeeper to support her family in December 2021.
She said she fled her first employer after suffering sexual harassment, leaving her passport behind.
When an airstrike hit the home of her second employer in a southern village, Patricia was left stranded.
“The people I work for, they left me, they left me and went away,” she told AFP.
Patricia said a passing driver saw her crying in the street and offered to take her to Beirut.
Like Fatima and Mariatu, she has no money or formal documentation.
“I only came with two clothes in my plastic bag,” she said.
Patricia initially slept on the floor of a friend’s apartment, but moved to Beirut’s waterfront after strikes in the area intensified.
She later found shelter at a Christian school in Jounieh, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital.
“We are seeing people moving from one place to another,” she said.
“I don’t want to lose my life here,” she added, explaining she had a child back in Sierra Leone.
Housekeeper Kadij Koroma said she had been sleeping on the streets for almost a week after fleeing to Beirut when she was separated from her employer.
“We don’t have a place to sleep, we don’t have food, we don’t have water,” she said, adding that she relied on passers by to provide bread or small change for sustenance.
Kadij said she wasn’t sure if her employer was still alive, or if her friends who had also traveled from Sierra Leone to work in Lebanon had survived the bombardment.
“You don’t know where to go,” she said, “everywhere you go, bomb, everywhere you go, bomb.”


Israel blocks Lebanon’s main crossing to Syria, targets Hezbollah in Beirut

Israel blocks Lebanon’s main crossing to Syria, targets Hezbollah in Beirut
Updated 53 min 37 sec ago
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Israel blocks Lebanon’s main crossing to Syria, targets Hezbollah in Beirut

Israel blocks Lebanon’s main crossing to Syria, targets Hezbollah in Beirut
  • transport minister said that the crossing was subject to the authority of the Lebanese state
  • Israeli air raids at night targeted Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumored successor to its assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israeli strikes sealed off Lebanon’s main border crossing with Syria early on Friday, hours after an intense Israeli attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs that is thought to have targeted the heir apparent to Hezbollah’s slain secretary general.
The strikes added to fears inside Lebanon that Israel’s targeting of Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militants will bring an all-out conflict, with Israel also poised to respond to Tuesday’s Iranian missile barrage on its territory. US President Joe Biden said on Thursday Israel’s response could include a strike on Iran’s oil facilities.
Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters Friday’s strike on the Syrian border hit inside Lebanese territory near the crossing, creating a four-meter (12 feet) wide crater.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had accused Hezbollah on Thursday of using the crossing with Syria to transport military equipment into Lebanon.
“The IDF will not allow the smuggling of these weapons and will not hesitate to act if forced to do so, as it has done throughout this war,” IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
According to Lebanese government statistics, more than 300,000 people — a vast majority of them Syrian — had crossed from Lebanon into Syria over the last 10 days to escape escalating Israeli bombardment.
The southern suburb of Dahiye, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, came under renewed strikes near midnight on Thursday after Israel ordered people to leave their homes in some areas, residents and security sources said.
The air raids targeted Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumored successor to its assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah, in an underground bunker, Axios reporter Barak Ravid said on X, citing three Israeli officials.
Safieddine’s fate was not clear, he said.
Israel’s military declined comment and Hezbollah made no comment on Safieddine’s fate.
Huge explosions shook the sky in the vicinity of Beirut’s main airport in the early hours of Friday, and Lebanese civilians said they were living in constant fear.
“It’s like you’re alive but not alive. We’re alive but don’t know for how long, we’re alive but don’t know when the rockets will hit you and your family,” said Nouhad Chaib, a 40-year-old man already displaced from the south.
The Israeli military on Friday told the residents of over 20 southern towns in Lebanon to evacuate immediately, spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X as Israel pressed ahead with its incursions in the region. Nearly 90 villages in the south have been told to evacuate so far, as well as parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Three Hezbollah-linked rescue workers were wounded by a strike in a southern suburb, a Lebanese security source told Reuters.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah announced several attacks on Friday at positions within Israel, including a salvo of missiles on Israel’s Ilania base.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Beirut on Friday, according to Lebanese state media. He is set to meet Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, who is a close ally of Hezbollah.

Oil Target?
US President Joe Biden said he did not believe there is going to be an “all-out war” in the Middle East, as Israel weighs options for retaliation, but that more needed to be done to prevent one.
While the United States, the European Union, and other allies have called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict, Biden said the US was discussing with Israel its options for responding to Tehran’s assault, which included Israel striking Iran’s oil facilities.
His comments contributed to a surge in global oil prices, and rising Middle East tension has made traders worry about potential supply disruptions.
However, Biden added: “There is nothing going to happen today.” Asked later if he was urging Israel not to attack Iran’s oil installations, Biden said he would not negotiate in public.
On Wednesday, the president said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed Iran will pay for Tuesday’s missile attack, and Washington has said it would work with its longtime ally to ensure Iran faced “severe consequences.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking in Doha, said on Thursday that Tehran would be ready to respond.
“Any type of military attack, terrorist act or crossing our red lines will be met with a decisive response by our armed forces,” he said.
Nations worldwide have prepared contingency plans to evacuate citizens from Lebanon after a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah.
Although no country has launched a large-scale military evacuation yet, some are chartering aircraft. People are also fleeing on their own.
Israel, which has been fighting Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza for almost a year, sent troops into southern Lebanon on Tuesday after two weeks of intense airstrikes.
Israel says its operations in Lebanon seek to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments during the Gaza war forced them to evacuate from its north.
More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced by Israeli attacks, and nearly 2,000 people have been killed since the start of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the last year, most of them in the past two weeks, Lebanese authorities said.
Hezbollah says it has repelled several land operations by Israeli troops, with measures such as ambushes and direct clashes.