Israeli strikes pound Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday
Israeli strikes pound Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday/node/2573581/middle-east
Israeli strikes pound Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday
Rescuers work at a site of an Israeli strike, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in south Beirut, Lebanon. (Reuters)
Israeli strikes pound Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday
Five Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early Wednesday
Israeli military said it was targeting sites of the Hezbollah group
Updated 02 October 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: At least five Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early Wednesday, a Lebanese security source said, as the Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah sites and issued several evacuation orders.
“At least five Israeli strikes targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs,” the source said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
AFP correspondents heard multiple explosions and saw smoke rising in one area while a fire appeared to burn.
The Israeli military said early Wednesday that it was “currently striking Hezbollah terror targets in Beirut.”
Israel has repeatedly bombarded Beirut’s southern suburbs since last week, a densely-populated Hezbollah bastion where Israel says it is targeting sites belonging to the group.
A massive raid in the area on Friday killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee had earlier on X issued several orders for residents to leave.
“You are located near dangerous Hezbollah facilities, which the IDF (Israeli military) will act against with force in the near future,” read one of the warnings, which mentioned the area of Haret Hreik.
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.
Updated 13 sec ago
AFP
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
The first strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed ‘at least 25’ people
Updated 36 min 38 sec ago
Reuters
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
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
Updated 10 November 2024
AFP
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.
Israelis fear for hostages as Qatar says Gaza mediation on hold
Thousands rally in Tel Aviv to demand return of Israeli hostages despite 400 days passing
Qatar pulls out of Gaza ceasefire mediation efforts till both sides show “willingness and seriousness”
Updated 10 November 2024
AFP
TEL AVIV: Israeli protesters expressed concern for hostages in Gaza Saturday, after Qatar said it was pulling back as a key mediator for a ceasefire that would help bring the captives home.
Thousands of people rallied in Tel Aviv holding signs reading “400,” the number of days since the hostages were taken when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7 last year.
Efforts to broker a truce in the ensuing war between Hamas and Israel have proven fruitless, and on Saturday Qatar put its mediation on hold until the two sides showed “willingness and seriousness” in talks.
Protester Ruti Lior said she was unsure how much sway Qatar had, but was still “very, very worried” by their decision to pull back from negotiations.
“This is further proof for me that there really is no seriousness, and these deals are being sabotaged,” the 62-year-old psychotherapist told AFP.
Fellow demonstrator Gal voiced his disappointment with Qatar, saying it was good the Gulf emirate was stepping back because it had done a “lousy” job.
Qatar “failed in the matter of mediation, and not only them, others also failed,” said the HR worker, also putting the blame on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Saturday’s rally featured an installation of masks representing Netanyahu along with signs bearing the word “Guilty.”
Other placards read “Hostage deal now” and “Drop your weapon, stop the war.”
“How many more tears must fall and how much more blood must be shed before someone does what needs to be done and brings our children home?” Niva Wenkert, mother of hostage Omer Wenkert, was quoted as saying in a statement released by campaign group Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
The Hamas attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,552 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.
Of the 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attack, 97 remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israelis have been protesting weekly to pressure their government to do more to secure the captives’ release.
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012 with US blessing, has been involved in months of protracted diplomacy aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
But the talks, also mediated by Cairo and Washington, have repeatedly hit snags since a one-week truce in November 2023 — the only one so far — with both sides trading blame for the impasse.
Israel army slams soldiers for burning Lebanese flag
In the video, some of the soldiers were jumping and singing a religious maxim as one of them sets fire to the flag with a lighter
Updated 10 November 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military on Saturday accused a group of soldiers of burning a Lebanese flag in southern Lebanon where they are fighting the Hezbollah militant group.
The military spoke after a video circulated on social media showing around half a dozen people dressed in Israeli uniforms jumping and singing a religious maxim as one of them sets fire to the flag with a lighter.
“We view the act of some soldiers burning the Lebanese flag in southern Lebanon as a violation of orders, inconsistent with the values of the defense forces, and misaligned with the goals of our military activities in Lebanon,” said military spokesman Avichay Adraee.
“Our war is against the terrorist Hezbollah, which has never been truly Lebanese in creed, ideology, or identity,” he added in an Arabic-language post on social media platform X.
The post did not mention any possible sanctions against the soldiers.
It did include a video allegedly showing a Hezbollah militant tearing a Lebanese flag off its pole and replacing it with the group’s banner.
Israel has been at war with Hezbollah since late September, when it broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border, even as the Gaza war continues.
Hezbollah began low intensity strikes on Israel in support of Hamas following its ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the Gaza war.