Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime

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Updated 28 September 2024
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Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime

Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime
  • Dr. Firass Abiad says Monday’s airstrikes created “environment of terror,” spurring mass flight from targeted areas
  • He made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking”

DUBAI: Dr. Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s minister of public health, has strongly condemned Israeli attacks on healthcare workers and medical infrastructure, describing them as war crimes under international humanitarian law.

“Do we consider this a war crime? Of course, we consider this a war crime,” said Abiad, adding that this was not just the view of the Lebanese government but echoed by international legal bodies.

“When we listen to the International Court of Justice, these are the experts on what is international humanitarian law and whether it has been violated. So, these are the experts telling us that what Israel is doing constitutes war crimes.”

Abiad made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking” amid escalating violence between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, which now threatens to spill over into a major regional war.




Abiad told Frankly Speaking that the Lebanese government had established 400 public shelters, which currently house about 70,000 people, amid the Israeli bombardment. (AN Photo)

On Saturday, Hezbollah confirmed that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli strike on the group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut. The attack follows days of Israeli strikes across Lebanon, which have left 1,030 people dead — including 156 women and 87 children.

Hezbollah began rocketing northern Israel last October in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Israel retaliated by mounting strikes on Hezbollah targets, including its leadership.

In early September, the tit-for-tat suddenly escalated when Hezbollah communication devices, including pagers and walkie-talkies, suddenly exploded simultaneously in a sophisticated coordinated attack blamed on Israel.

Since then, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets across the country have rapidly escalated, with significant collateral damage to residential areas. Health workers and medical infrastructure have not been spared amid the carnage.

“This is something that did not start these past few weeks,” Abiad told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen. “This is something that we have seen from the start of the hostilities, since last October.

“Even before the detonation of communication devices, we had recorded 25 healthcare professionals who had been killed, whether they were paramedics or whether they were healthcare professionals. And unfortunately, in the past two weeks, we have seen that number rise to almost 40 healthcare workers who have been killed in the atrocious attacks.”

The ongoing conflict has created a massive humanitarian crisis, with widespread displacement across the country. According to the Lebanese government’s estimates, nearly 500,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to escalating violence.

Abiad explained the magnitude of the displacement. “Before the attacks, the number released by the disaster management side was 130,000 displaced,” he said.

“Remember that by that time, there was an escalation of hostilities by Israel, and the populations were internally displaced still into southern areas.”

However, last Monday’s airstrikes, which saw the killing of approximately 600 people, including nine healthcare workers and two UN staff, in the single deadliest day in Lebanon since the 2006 war, was a watershed moment in the long-running crisis.

“That created this environment of terror, and really, this is where we saw people leave en masse from the targeted areas,” said Abiad.




A man walks on the rubble of damaged buildings in the aftermath of Israeli air strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon Sept. 28. (Reuters)

Lebanese highways were quickly overwhelmed with people fleeing their homes, causing massive traffic jams. Many spent up to 18 hours on the road, desperately seeking safety.

Abiad said the Lebanese government has established 400 public shelters, which currently house about 70,000 people. However, he said the total number of displaced people is far higher.

“We estimate that usually, from our past experience in the 2006 war, the number of people, whether they are living with friends, family, in homes they rented, or even across the border into neighboring countries, is four to five times as many as there are in shelters,” he said.

“And that’s why we really believe that the tally of people who have been displaced is probably around 400,000 to 500,000.”


Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say

Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say
Updated 10 November 2024
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Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say

Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say
  • Strike on Sunday occurred in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut, and far from the areas in the south and east of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a major presence

DEIR AL-BALAH: Lebanon’s Health Ministry says an Israeli airstrike has killed at least 20 people.
It says the strike on Sunday occurred in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut and far from the areas in the south and east of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a major presence.
 


UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media
Updated 23 min 12 sec ago
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UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

TEHRAN: The chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, will visit Iran in days for talks with senior officials, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
“The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency will arrive in Iran on Wednesday ... at the official invitation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
Grossi will meet Iranian officials on Thursday, the agency added.
The IAEA confirmed Grossi’s visit to Iran this week, without specifying the date in a post on X.
It said the visit would include talks with Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.
The agency also quoted Grossi as calling for “substantive progress” on a March 2023 deal that had outlined basic cooperation, including on safeguards and monitoring.
In a September interview with AFP, Grossi said Iran was showing “willingness” to re-engage on the nuclear issue, but it was not willing to walk back on a decision it took to ban some of the IAEA’s inspectors.
Iran withdrew the accreditation of several inspectors last year, a move the UN agency described at the time as “extreme and unjustified.”
Tehran had said then its decision was a consequence of “political abuses” by the United States, France, Germany and Britain.
Grossi last visited Iran in May, when he called for “concrete” measures to help bolster cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program at a news conference in Isfahan province, home to the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
His visit this month will come after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
During his first term in office, Trump unilaterally withdrew Washington from a pivotal nuclear deal that aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Efforts mediated by the European Union have failed to bring Washington back on board and to get Tehran to again comply with the terms of the accord.
Iran has rolled back its commitments to caps on nuclear activities under the deal, and tensions have repeatedly flared between Tehran and the IAEA over its compliance.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office in July, has favored reviving that agreement and called for ending his country’s isolation.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “not looking to do damage to Iran” but noted that Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Iran has always denied having ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon, insisting its activities are entirely peaceful.
On Saturday, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif urged Trump to reassess his “maximum pressure” policy which has seen the US impose punishing sanctions on Tehran.
He blamed that policy for leading to the surge in enrichment levels “to reach 60 percent from 3.5 percent.”
Enrichment levels of around 90 percent are required for military use.
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
Updated 10 November 2024
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
  • They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed
  • In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.

Paris: After jihadists jailed him in 2014, Iraqi religious scholar Muhammad Al-Attar said he would sometimes pull his prison blanket over his head to cry without other detainees noticing.
Daesh group extremists arrested Attar, then 37, at his perfume shop in Mosul in June 2014 after overrunning the Iraqi city, hoping to convince the respected community leader to join them.
But the former preacher refused to pledge allegiance, and they threw him into prison where he was tortured.
In his group cell of at least 148 detainees at Mosul’s Ahdath prison, at times “there was nothing left but to weep,” Attar said.
But “I couldn’t bear the thought of the younger men seeing me cry. They would have broken down.”
So he hid under his blanket.
Daesh, also called Daesh, seized control of large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate there in 2014, implementing its brutal interpretation of religion on inhabitants.
The militants banned smoking, mandated beards for men and head-to-toe coverings for women, publicly executed homosexuals and cut off the hands of thieves.
They threw perceived informants or “apostates” into prison or makeshift jails, many of whom never returned.
Attar’s story is one of more than 500 testimonies that dozens of journalists, filmmakers and human rights activists in Syria and Iraq have collected since 2017 as part of an online archive called the Daesh Prisons Museum.
The website, which includes virtual visits of former jihadist detention centers and numerous tales about life inside them, became public this month.
The project is holding its first physical exhibition, including virtual reality tours, at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN’s culture and education agency, until November 14.
Syrian journalist Amer Matar, 38, is director of the web-based museum.
“IS abducted my brother in 2013, and we started to look for him,” he told AFP.
After US-backed forces started to expel jihadists from parts of Syria and Iraq in 2017, “I and my team got the chance to go inside certain former IS prisons,” he said.
They found thousands of prison documents from the group whose caliphate was eventually defeated in 2019, but also detainee scratchings on the walls.
Etched inside the football stadium in the Syrian city of Raqqa, for example, the team found prisoner names and Qur’anic verses, as well as lyrics from a 1996 television drama about peace eventually prevailing.
Inside one solitary cell, they discovered exercise instructions to keep fit in English.
Matar says he was detained twice at the start of the Syrian civil war, in a government jail for covering protests against President Bashar Assad.
“I too would write my name on the wall because I didn’t know if I’d get out or if they’d kill me,” he said.
“People usually write their names, cries for help or stories about someone who was killed,” he added.
“They’re messages into the future so that people can find someone.”
Matar and his team decided to film the former prison sites and archive all the material within them before they disappeared.
“Many were homes, clinics, government buildings, schools or shops” that people were returning to and starting to repair, said Matar, who is now based in Germany.
They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed, he said.
In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.
Younes Qays, a 30-year-old journalist from Mosul, was in charge of data collection in Iraq.
“To hear and see the crimes inflicted on my people was really tough,” he said, recounting being particularly shocked by the tale of a woman from the Yazidi minority who was raped 11 times in IS captivity.
Robin Yassin-Kassab, the website’s English editor, said the project aimed to “gather information and cross-reference it” so it could be used in court.
“We want legal teams around the world to know that we exist so that they can come and ask us for evidence,” he said.
Matar has not found his brother.
But within the coming year, he hopes to launch a sister website called Jawab, “Answer” in Arabic, to help others find out what happened to their loved ones.


Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
Updated 10 November 2024
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Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
  • The first strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed ‘at least 25’ people

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, Palestinian medics said.
Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid to the ground at a hospital. Residents said the building that was hit had housed at least 30 people.
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
The Civil Emergency Service says its operations have been halted by an ongoing Israeli raid into two towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza that began on Oct 5. It also could not provide a figure for those killed in the attack.
Israel says it sent forces into Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the north of the enclave to fight Hamas militants waging attacks from there and to prevent them from regrouping. It says its troops have killed hundreds of militants in those areas since the new offensive began.
In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Sabra neighborhood killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at the Welfare Ministry, and seven other members of his family including his wife and children on Sunday, medics and relatives said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports on the strike in Jabalia and in the Sabra neighborhood.


US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says

US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says
Updated 10 November 2024
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US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says

US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says
  • Houthi media and residents said about nine raids had targeted the Sanaa, its suburbs and Amran governorate
  • Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November last year

Washington: US warplanes staged multiple strikes Saturday night on Iran-backed Houthi advanced weapons storage facilities in Yemen, the Pentagon said.
The facilities contained various weapons used to target military and civilian vessels navigating international waters throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to information provided to AFP by the Pentagon.
The Houthi-run Al Masirah television network reported three American and British raids that targeted the capital Sanaa’s southern Al Sabeen district.
“Eyewitnesses said they heard intense flying, along with explosions in different parts of the capital Sanaa,” Al Masirah said.
The United States and Britain have repeatedly struck Houthi targets in Yemen since January in response to attacks by the rebels on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The rebels say the strikes, which have disrupted maritime traffic in a globally important waterway, target vessels linked to Israel and are intended to signal solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.
The attacks have seriously disrupted the Red Sea route which carries 12 percent of global trade.
In more than 100 Houthi attacks over nearly a year, four sailors have been killed and two ships have sunk, while one vessel and its crew remain detained since being hijacked last November.
Saturday’s strikes come three days after the Houthi’s leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi criticized US president-elect Donald Trump for supporting Israel.
Houthi said that normalization deals between Arab countries and Israel brokered by Trump had failed to bring an end the Middle East conflict and that he would fail again in his second term.