Lebanon’s rescuers struggle to respond to Israeli offensive while under fire and using old equipment

Lebanon’s rescuers struggle to respond to Israeli offensive while under fire and using old equipment
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People and rescue teams search for victims after an Israeli airstrike hit two adjacent buildings, in Ain el-Delb neighbourhood east of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Sept. 29, 2024. (AP)
Lebanon’s rescuers struggle to respond to Israeli offensive while under fire and using old equipment
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Residents and rescue teams inspect the damage following an overnight Israeli airstrike on the Ain al-Helweh camp for Palestinian refugees on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon early on October 1, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 03 October 2024
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Lebanon’s rescuers struggle to respond to Israeli offensive while under fire and using old equipment

Lebanon’s rescuers struggle to respond to Israeli offensive while under fire and using old equipment
  • An economic crisis that began in 2019 and a massive 2020 port explosion have left Lebanon struggling to provide basic services such as electricity and medical care
  • “We have zero capabilities, zero logistics. We have no gloves, no personal protection gear,” says Mohamed Arkadan, head of a local emergency response team

BEIRUT: When Israel bombed buildings outside the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, Mohamed Arkadan and his team rushed to an emergency unlike anything they had ever seen.
About a dozen apartments had collapsed onto the hillside they once overlooked, burying more than 100 people. Even after 17 years with the civil defense forces of one of the world’s most war-torn nations, Arkadan was shocked at the destruction. By Monday afternoon — about 24 hours after the bombing — his team had pulled more than 40 bodies, including children’s, from the rubble, along with 60 survivors.
The children’s bodies broke his heart, said Arkadan, 38, but his team of over 30 first responders’ inability to help further pained him more. Firetrucks and ambulances haven’t been replaced in years. Rescue tools and equipment are in short supply. His team has to buy their uniforms out of pocket.
An economic crisis that began in 2019 and a massive 2020 port explosion have left Lebanon struggling to provide basic services such as electricity and medical care. Political divisions have left the country of 6 million without a president or functioning government for more than two years, deepening a national sense of abandonment reaching down to the people the country depends on in emergencies.
“We have zero capabilities, zero logistics,” Arkadan said. “We have no gloves, no personal protection gear.”
War has upended Lebanon again
Israel’s intensified air campaign against Hezbollah has upended the country. Over 1,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Sept. 17, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry.
On Wednesday, two Israeli strikes hit an Islamic rescue center, affiliated with Hezbollah, in Lebanon’s south, killing six medics and destroying the building, according to Lebanon’s National News agency. Before those deaths were reported, the ministry said it had documented the deaths of over 40 medics and rescuers.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, sleeping on beaches and streets.
The World Health Organization said over 30 primary health care centers around Lebanon’s affected areas have been closed.
On Tuesday, Israel said it began a limited ground operation against Hezbollah and warned people to evacuate several southern communities, promising further escalation.
Lebanon is “grappling with multiple crises, which have overwhelmed the country’s capacity to cope,” said Imran Riza, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, who said the UN had allocated $24 million in emergency funding for people affected by the fighting.
Exhausted medical staff are struggling to cope with the daily influx of new patients. Under government emergency plans, hospitals and medical workers have halted non-urgent operations.
Government shelters are full
In the southern province of Tyre, many doctors have fled along with residents. In Nabatiyeh, the largest province in southern Lebanon, first responders say they have been working around the clock since last week to reach hundreds of people wounded in bombings that hit dozens of villages and towns, often many on the same day.
After the bombing in Sidon nearly 250 first responders joined Arkadan’s team, including a specialized search-and-rescue unit from Beirut, some 45 kilometers (28 miles) to the north. His team didn’t have the modern equipment needed to pull people from a disaster.
“We used traditional tools, like scissors, cables, shovels,” Arkadan said.
“Anyone here?” rescuers shouted through the gaps in mounds of rubble, searching for survivors buried deeper underground. One excavator removed the debris slowly, to avoid shaking the heaps of bricks and mangled steel.
Many sought refuge in the ancient city of Tyre, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the border with Israel, thinking it was likely to be spared bombardment. More than 8,000 people arrived, said Hassan Dbouk, the head of its disaster management unit.
He said that there were no pre-positioned supplies, such as food parcels, hygiene kits and mattresses, and moving trucks now is fraught with danger. Farmers have been denied access to their land because of the bombings and the municipality is struggling to pay salaries.
The humanitarian situation is catastrophic
Meanwhile, garbage is piling up on the streets. The number of municipal workers has shrunk from 160 to 10.
“The humanitarian situation is catastrophic,” Dbouk said.
Wissam Ghazal, the health ministry official in Tyre, said in one hospital, only five of 35 doctors have remained. In Tyre province, eight medics, including three with a medical organization affiliated with Hezbollah, were killed over two days, he said.
Over the weekend, the city itself became a focus of attacks.
Israeli warplanes struck near the port city’s famed ruins, along its beaches and in residential and commercial areas, forcing thousands of residents to flee. At least 15 civilians were killed Saturday and Sunday, including two municipal workers, a soldier and several children, all but one from two families.
It took rescuers two days to comb through the rubble of a home in the Kharab neighborhood in the city’s center, where a bomb had killed nine members of the Al-Samra family.
Six premature babies in incubators around the city were moved to Beirut. The city’s only doctor, who looked after them, couldn’t move between hospitals under fire, Ghazal said.
One of the district’s four hospitals shut after sustaining damage from a strike that affected its electricity supply and damaged the operations room. In two other hospitals, glass windows were broken. For now, the city’s hospitals are receiving more killed than wounded.
“But you don’t know what will happen when the intensity of attacks increases. We will definitely need more.”
Making do with what they have
Hosein Faqih, head of civil defense in the Nabatiyeh province, said that “we are working in very difficult and critical circumstances because the strikes are random. We have no protection. We have no shields, no helmets, no extra hoses. The newest vehicle is 25 years old. We are still working despite all that.”
At least three of his firefighters’ team were killed in early September. Ten have been injured since then. Of 45 vehicles, six were hit and are now out of service.
Faqih said he is limiting his team’s search-and-rescue missions to residential areas, keeping them away from forests or open areas where they used to put out fires.
“These days, there is something difficult every day. Body parts are everywhere, children, civilians and bodies under rubble,” Faqih said. Still, he said, he considers his job to be the safety net for the people.
“We serve the people, and we will work with what we have.”


Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza

Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza
Updated 30 November 2024
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Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza

Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza
  • The family of hostage soldier Edan Alexander, 20, declined to comment but permitted the 3-1/2 minute video to be published
  • The video shows a pale-looking Alexander sitting in a dark space against a wall

JERUSALEM: Palestinian militant group Hamas published a video of an Israeli-American hostage on Saturday, in which he pleads for US President-elect Donald Trump to secure his release from captivity.
The family of hostage soldier Edan Alexander, 20, declined to comment but permitted the 3-1/2 minute video to be published. Alexander was abducted to Gaza during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel.
The video shows a pale-looking Alexander sitting in a dark space against a wall, identifying himself, addressing his family, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump. It is unclear whether his statement was scripted by his captors.
Netanyahu said in a statement that the video was cruel psychological warfare and that he had told Alexander’s family in a phone call that Israel was working tirelessly to bring the hostages home.
Around half of the 101 foreign and Israeli hostages still held incommunicado in Gaza are believed to still be alive.
Hamas leaders were expected to arrive in Cairo on Saturday for ceasefire talks with Egyptian officials to explore ways to reach a deal that could secure the release of hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners.
The fresh bid comes after Washington said this week it was reviving efforts toward that goal.
The Hostages Families Forum urged the administrations of both outgoing US President Joe Biden and Trump — who takes office in January — to step up efforts in order to secure a hostage release.
“The hostages’ lives hang by a thread,” it said.


World Central Kitchen says pausing Gaza operations after Israeli strike

World Central Kitchen says pausing Gaza operations after Israeli strike
Updated 33 min 36 sec ago
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World Central Kitchen says pausing Gaza operations after Israeli strike

World Central Kitchen says pausing Gaza operations after Israeli strike
  • WCK in a statement said it “had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7 Hamas attack“
  • “All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said

GAZA: US charity World Central Kitchen said Saturday it was “pausing operations in Gaza at this time” after an Israeli air strike hit a vehicle carrying its workers.
The Israeli military confirmed that a Palestinian employee of WCK was killed in a strike, accusing the worker of being a “terrorist” who “infiltrated Israel and took part in the murderous October 7 massacre” last year.
WCK in a statement said it “had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7 Hamas attack,” and did not confirm any deaths.
Earlier Saturday, Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed, including “three employees of World Central Kitchen,” in the strike in the main southern city of Khan Yunis.

“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
WCK confirmed a strike had hit its workers, but added: “At this time, we are working with incomplete information and are urgently seeking more details.”
The Israeli army statement said representatives from the unit responsible for overseeing humanitarian needs in Gaza had “demanded senior officials from the international community and the WCK administration to clarify the issue and order an urgent examination regarding the hiring of workers who took part in the October 7 massacre.”
It also said its strike in Khan Yunis had hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike, but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The UN said last week that 333 aid workers had been killed since the start of the war in October of last year, 243 of them employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Palestinian militants’ October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

 


Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Lebanon days into fragile truce

Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Lebanon days into fragile truce
Updated 30 November 2024
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Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Lebanon days into fragile truce

Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Lebanon days into fragile truce
  • The army said it had also struck “military infrastructure” on the Syria-Lebanon border, where it accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons in violation of the truce
  • Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported “continued violations of the ceasefire” by Israel

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military carried out air strikes in Lebanon Saturday against Hezbollah activities that it said “posed a threat,” days into a fragile ceasefire between it and the Iran-backed group.
The army said it had also struck “military infrastructure” on the Syria-Lebanon border, where it accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons in violation of the truce.
In a speech this week announcing his government was ready to accept a ceasefire after more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that Israel would maintain “full military freedom of action” in the event of any breach.
In a statement on Saturday, the military listed four separate strikes in Lebanon on facilities, weapons and vehicles belonging to Hezbollah, saying it had acted “against activities in Lebanon that posed a threat to the State of Israel, violating the ceasefire understandings.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said that an Israeli “strike on a car in Majdal Zoun wounded three people including a seven-year-old child.”
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported “continued violations of the ceasefire” by Israel, including an incident in which an Israeli tank “crushed a number of cars and surrounded some families” who were later evacuated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Separately, Israel’s military said it had launched a “strike on military infrastructure sites adjacent to border crossings between Syria and Lebanon that were actively used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons,” adding that the alleged smuggling took place after the ceasefire took effect.
The ceasefire deal, which was intended to end more than a year of cross-border exchanges of fire and two months of all-out war, went into effect early on Wednesday.
As part of the terms of the agreement, the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers will deploy in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws over a period of 60 days.
Hezbollah is also meant to withdraw its forces north of the Litani river, approximately 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
On Friday, the group’s chief Naim Qassem vowed to cooperate with the Lebanese army “to implement the commitments of the agreement.”
NNA reported that army chief Joseph Aoun met US Major General Jasper Jeffers to discuss “the general situation and coordination mechanisms between concerned parties in the south.”
The US military’s Central Command said Jeffers arrived in Beirut this week “to serve as co-chair for the implementation and monitoring mechanism of the cessation of hostilities.”
According to Lebanon’s health ministry, at least 3,961 people have been killed in the country since October 2023 as a result of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, most of them in recent weeks.
On the Israeli side, the hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.
Israel stepped up its campaign in south Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas following the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.


West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
Updated 30 November 2024
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West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
  • MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
  • ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’

LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.

Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.

Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”

Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”

In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.

In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.


Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
Updated 30 November 2024
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Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
  • Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City

The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.