Israelis threaten to destroy town of Taraya in Bekaa

Update Israelis threaten to destroy town of Taraya in Bekaa
Israel’s military launched an intensified wave of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon, killing more than 1,110 people since September 23. (AFP)
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Updated 06 October 2024
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Israelis threaten to destroy town of Taraya in Bekaa

Israelis threaten to destroy town of Taraya in Bekaa
  • Israeli strike hits Tripoli in north Lebanon, source says
  • More nightly raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs

BEIRUT: The Israeli military has threatened to destroy a town in Bekaa, believing it contains weapons that may be used by the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Mayors in the town of Taraya — Ali Hamieh, Ahmed Mohsen Hamieh, and Yasser Mehdi Hamieh — have received calls from Israel informing them that Hezbollah weapons are being held in their town and if they are not removed within a day, the town will be destroyed.

Taraya is located in central Bekaa and is part of the Baalbek district, 74 km from Beirut. It is considered a supportive environment for Hezbollah and has been targeted by numerous Israeli airstrikes in the past two weeks.

This is the first time a direct threat has been made to completely destroy an entire town. Previous threats have been limited to southern towns and neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Israeli attacks intensified on Saturday on Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern towns. According to a report by the Higher Defense Council, the death toll in the past 24 hours had reached 37, with 151 injured, raising the total number of victims in Lebanon since the confrontations began to 2,011 dead and 9,535 wounded.

The scope of Israeli targeting is no longer confined to a specific area, or with any restrictions.

Israeli attacks have reached the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, specifically the Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp, where a combat drone targeted an apartment in a residential building inside the camp, killing Hamas’ leader Saeed Atallah Ali and three members of his family.

Airstrikes have also resumed in Beirut’s southern suburbs, targeting the area of Mrayjeh and Ain Al-Sikka Square in Burj Al-Barajneh, killing two people and injuring others.

The area had not been fully evacuated because some residents believed “there were no Hezbollah security zones,” while other people had “no other place to go.”

Airstrikes for the first time have targeted the road leading to Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam Hospital in a Hezbollah stronghold.

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told residents in neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate in preparation for further strikes.

Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids following the warning, targeting the vicinity of Al-Qaim Mosque, Burj Al-Barajneh, the Sayed Al-Shuhada Complex, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abd, Al-Ruwais, Al-Abyad, Choueifat Al-Ajneha, Al-Khamseh, and Al-Marija.

The Israel Broadcasting Authority said that “Israel attacked the southern suburbs of Beirut at least six times within a span of 20 minutes.”

Rescue teams have not yet been able to clear the debris from a location that was targeted late on Thursday — a Hezbollah command center underground in Al-Marija — due to Israeli threats to target anyone who approaches the area.

It is believed that the target of the airstrike was Hashem Safieddine, a prominent Hezbollah leader and one of the leading candidates to succeed its former chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted the party’s command center a week ago.

While Hezbollah has not provided any clarification about the fate of Safieddine and his companions, Al Arabiya quoted a Lebanese security source as saying that “contact with Safieddine has been cut off since Friday’s raids” and that “he was most likely assassinated in the raids.”

Israeli airstrikes targeted the area of the Masnaa border crossing with Syria for a second day on Saturday, with crossing now only possible on foot.

Raids also targeted the road to Baalbek. A young woman lost her life due to injuries incurred during a raid on the town of Ain, located in northern Bekaa, where she was serving with the Lebanese Red Cross.

One person was killed in a raid on the Saadnayel plain in central Bekaa while two fatalities occurred as a result of a guided missile strike on a vehicle along the Marj Zebdine-Nabatieh road.

Operations conducted in the southern region on Friday night resulted in the deaths of two young men in Harouf in the Nabatieh district while one person was killed and another injured in the town of Majdal Selm in Tyre.

Three people lost their lives during a raid on a residence in the eastern town of Zawtar.

Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil received intense shelling following an Israeli appeal for its evacuation. The bombardment resulted in injuries to nine members of the medical and nursing staff, with the hospital later being evacuated and medical operations suspended.

Hezbollah continued its attacks on Israeli military installations. The group said it had aimed at “enemy positions and assemblies near the Dan settlement, the city of Safed, the Karmiel settlement, and the Sasa settlement using two Falaq-2 missiles.”

The Israeli military said it had “intercepted some of Hezbollah’s missiles, while others fell in open areas,” adding that “the air force will intensify its strikes on the southern suburbs.”

Hezbollah said its members were “monitoring, tracking, and responding to any hostile movements at the front line in southern Lebanon; actively pursuing Israeli soldiers in their bases and rear positions along the border in the occupied territories; (and) utilizing artillery shells and rocket barrages.”


Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building

Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building
Updated 13 min 38 sec ago
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Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building

Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building
  • Video footage showed some parked cars engulfed in flames as the blaze intensified

CAIRO: A large explosion on Beirut’s Hamra district on Saturday sparked a fire that engulfed several cars at a parking lot and caused smoke to spread massively across the area, local media reported.
Video footage showed some parked cars engulfed in flames as the blaze, which resulted from the electrical generator explosion, intensified.
The fire also spread to a nearby building, the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) said. 
The incident triggered panic as firefighting teams rushed to the scene, battling the blaze that remained out of control. 
Civil defense teams were working to extinguish the blaze and evacuate adjacent buildings, NNA added.


Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report

Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report
Updated 09 November 2024
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Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report

Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report
  • UN projects the number of people in Gaza facing ‘catastrophic’ food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000
  • Vast areas of the Gaza Strip have been devastated by Israel’s retaliatory assault

ROME: Famine is looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid, a UN-backed assessment said Saturday.
The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.”
“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” said the alert.
On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing “catastrophic” food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report classified that as IPC Phase 5 — a situation when “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.”
Since that report, conditions have worsened in the north of Gaza, with a collapse of food systems, a drop in humanitarian aid and critical water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, the committee said.
“It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas,” it read.
Vast areas of the Gaza Strip have been devastated by Israel’s retaliatory assault launched after the October 7 attack last year by Hamas.
Israeli forces have intensified their operations in large swathes of the Gaza Strip’s north since early October, where evacuation orders are in place.
Aid shipments allowed to enter the Gaza Strip were now lower than at any time since October 2023, said the report.
Access to food continues to deteriorate, with prices of essentials on the black market soaring. Cooking gas rose by 2,612 percent, diesel by 1,315 percent and wood by 250 percent, it said.
“Concurrent with the extremely high and increasing prices of essential items has been the total collapse of livelihoods to be able to purchase or barter for food and other basic needs,” said the alert.
The body expressed concern over Israel’s cutting ties last month with the UN aid agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), warning of “extremely serious consequences for humanitarian operations” in Gaza.


Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes
Updated 09 November 2024
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Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes

GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Saturday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children.
An air strike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Yunis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The Palestinian Red Crescent also confirmed the toll, saying 11 others were wounded in the strike and were taken to Nasser Hospital.
A second air strike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al-Sabah school,” which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al-Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said.
The dead and injured were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, he added.

In recent months, the military has struck several schools-turned-shelters where Israel has said Palestinian militants are operating.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said its troops killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation for more than a month to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
Israeli forces also killed several militants in the area of Rafah in the territory’s south, the military added.
The military is currently engaged in a two-front war, with troops fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
“Over the past day, the IAF (air force) struck over 50 terror targets in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement.
“Among the targets struck were military structures, weapons storage facilities and launchers,” it added.
Israel’s war in Gaza broke out after Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people on Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which included those who died and were killed in captivity.
During the attack, militants abducted 251 people, 97 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 43,508 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers to be reliable.


South Sudan floods affect 1.4 million, displace 379,000: UN

South Sudan floods affect 1.4 million, displace 379,000: UN
Updated 09 November 2024
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South Sudan floods affect 1.4 million, displace 379,000: UN

South Sudan floods affect 1.4 million, displace 379,000: UN
  • The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said about 1.4 million people were affected by floods in 43 counties

Nairobi: Devastating flooding in South Sudan is affecting around 1.4 million people, with more than 379,000 displaced, according to a United Nations update that warned about an upsurge in malaria.
Aid agencies have said that the world’s youngest country, highly vulnerable to climate change, is in the grip of its worst flooding in decades, mainly in the north.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said about 1.4 million people were affected by floods in 43 counties and the disputed Abyei region, which is claimed by both South Sudan and Sudan.
“Over 379,000 individuals are displaced in 22 counties and Abyei,” it added in a statement issued late on Friday.
A surge in malaria has been reported in several states, it said, “overwhelming the health system and exacerbating the situation and impact in flood-hit areas.”
Since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, the world’s youngest nation has remained plagued by chronic instability, violence and economic stagnation as well as climate disasters such as drought and floods.

The World Bank said last month that the latest floods were “worsening an already critical humanitarian situation marked by severe food insecurity, economic decline, continued conflict, disease outbreaks, and the repercussions of the Sudan conflict,” which has seen several hundred thousand people pour into South Sudan.
More than seven million people are food insecure in South Sudan and 1.65 million children are malnourished, according to the UN’s World Food Programme.
The country also faces another period of political paralysis after the president’s office announced in September yet another extension to a transitional period agreed in a 2018 peace deal, delaying elections by two years to December 2026.
Key provisions of the transitional agreement remain unfulfilled — including the creation of a constitution and the unification of the rival forces of President Salva Kiir and his foe Reik Machar.
The delay has left South Sudan’s partners and the United Nations exasperated, with UN envoy Nicholas Haysom on Thursday describing it as a “regrettable development.”
All local and international parties involved “must collectively seize the opportunity to make this extension the last, and deliver the peace and democracy that the people of South Sudan deserve,” added Haysom.
South Sudan boasts plentiful oil resources but the vital source of revenue was decimated in February when an export pipeline was damaged in neighboring war-torn Sudan.


Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon's Tyre kill 7, Lebanon says

Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon's Tyre kill 7, Lebanon says
Updated 7 sec ago
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Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon's Tyre kill 7, Lebanon says

Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon's Tyre kill 7, Lebanon says
  • The strikes targeted three buildings in the city
  • Israel had issued no evacuation warning ahead of the strikes

BEIRUT: At least seven have been killed and 46 others injured in an initial toll following Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon's coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday.
The official National News Agency said the strikes targeted three buildings in the city and caused heavy damage to neighboring apartment blocks.
It said Israel had issued no evacuation warning ahead of the strikes.
Israel has been at war with Lebanese militant group 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 Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the Gaza war.