Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues

Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon, near Acre in northern Israel on October 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon, near Acre in northern Israel on October 11, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 14 October 2024
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Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues

Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon, near Acre in northern Israel on October 11, 2024.
  • After claiming the Binyamina attack, Hezbollah said it had launched missiles at a “maintenance and rehabilitation base” of the army, also south of Haifa

BEIRUTU, Lebanon: Lebanese militant group Hezbollah threatened Israel with more attacks if its offensive in Lebanon continued, after a drone attack on a base near Israel’s Haifa Sunday killed four soldiers.
Israel’s military said four soldiers were killed in the attack, the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah “promises the enemy that what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our... people,” it said.
In what it described as a “complex” operation, the Iran-backed group said it had launched dozens of missiles toward Nahariya and Acre north of Haifa “with the goal of keeping Israeli defense systems busy.”
At the same time, it launched “squadrons of various drones, some of which were being used for the first time, toward various areas in Acre and Haifa, where they were able to get past Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and hit the training camp in Binyamina south of Haifa, it added.
They “exploded in the rooms where dozens of officers and soldiers of the Israeli enemy were present.”
After claiming the Binyamina attack, Hezbollah said it had launched missiles at a “maintenance and rehabilitation base” of the army, also south of Haifa.
The incident comes two days after air raid sirens sounded in central Israel after two aerial drones entered the country from Lebanon. At least one building north of Tel Aviv was damaged during the incident.
Hezbollah has been regularly firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year, but has reached further since the fighting escalated in late September.
Israel’s air defenses, including the Iron Dome system, have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.
The escalation in Lebanon has killed more than 1,300 people and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.
 

 


Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391

Updated 6 sec ago
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Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391

Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391
The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours

GAZA STRIP: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday that at least 43,391 people have been killed in the year-old war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 102,347 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands
Updated 22 min 46 sec ago
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Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands
  • At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents
  • Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps

ATHENS: Some islands in the southeast of the Aegean sea, including Rhodes, are seeing an increase in migrants arriving by boat from Turkiye, Greek migration and asylum minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said Tuesday.
“The southeast of the Aegean and the island of Rhodes are experiencing migratory pressure right now,” he said on public television station ERT, though he said the increase does not appear to be linked to rising tensions in the Middle East.
At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents and local authorities.
According to local media Rodiaki, more than 700 migrants arrived during the last week of October.
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps on the mainland or in other islands.
Previously, Aegean islands further north such as Lesbos and Samos had received the brunt of migrants crossing from Turkish shores.
Crete, which has likewise seen an increase in arrivals from Libya, also needs to build facilities to process migrants.
Greece has seen a 25 percent increase this year in the number of people fleeing war and poverty, with a 30 percent increase alone to Rhodes and the south-east Aegean, according to the Migration Ministry.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 48,158 arrivals have been recorded so far in 2024, of which around 42,000 arrived by boat and 6,000 by crossing the land frontier with Turkiye.
“The camps on the islands have an occupancy rate of 100 percent. But on the mainland they are only 55 percent full, which provides a margin in the event of an increase in arrivals on the islands,” Panagiotopoulos said.


Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister
Updated 35 min 23 sec ago
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Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister
  • Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army-backed government on Tuesday accused neighboring Chad of supplying arms to rebel militias, likely referring to the paramilitary forces it is battling.
The northeast African country has been engulfed by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the regular army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Justice minister Muawiya Osman said Burhan’s administration had lodged the complaint against Chad at the African Union.
Speaking to reporters, including AFP, Osman said the government demanded compensation and accused Chad of “supplying arms to rebel militias” and causing “harm to Sudanese citizens.”
“We will present evidence to the relevant authorities,” he added from Port Sudan, where Burhan relocated after fighting spread to the capital, Khartoum.
Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF.
“We do not support any of the factions that are fighting on Sudanese territory — we are in favor of peace,” foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said at the time.
The United Nations has been using the Adre border crossing between the two countries to deliver humanitarian aid.
Sudan had initially agreed to keep the crossing open for three months, a period set to expire on November 15. Authorities in Khartoum have yet to decide whether to extend the arrangement.
The Sudanese war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders.


Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12
Updated 53 min 33 sec ago
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Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12
  • The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations

ANKARA: An explosion at an oil refinery in northwestern Turkiye on Tuesday left at least 12 employees slightly injured, the company said. A fire at the facility was quickly brought under control.
The Turkish Petroleum Refineries company, TUPRAS, said a fire broke out at its facilities in Izmit, in Kocaeli province, during maintenance work on a compressor. The company’s emergency teams responded immediately to the incident, it said in a statement.
The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations, the company said.
The company said the unit where the incident occurred “was deactivated in a controlled manner” and that other operations at the refinery were “continuing as normal.”
Earlier, Tahir Buyukakin, the mayor for Kocaeli told private NTV television that the blast occurred during a drill. The fire was quickly brought under control by the company’s own crews and no request for help was made, he said.
Video footage from the site showed smoke rising from the refinery, which is one of Turkiye’s largest. Izmit is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The Borsa Istanbul stock exchange temporarily halted trading of TUPRAS shares, until the company provides a detailed explanation of the incident.


Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region
Updated 05 November 2024
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Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

BEIRUT: At least one Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in a beach town south of Beirut on Tuesday, Lebanese state media said, as other deadly strikes hit scattered locations across the country and armed group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel.
The attack on the beach town of Jiyyeh left a massive smoke column billowing out of an apartment building. It was not immediately clear if the strike was an assassination attempt, and no evacuation warning was given before it was carried out.
The Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war, but hostilities have escalated over the last six weeks. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them since late September, according to health authorities.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday also killed five people near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, including two killed in a strike on a car, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Lebanon’s state news agency said on Tuesday that it estimated Israeli air strikes and widespread detonation of homes had destroyed more than 40,000 housing units in the country’s border region.