UN verifies 103 civilians killed in Lebanon since ceasefire

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Jarmaq on September 28, 2025. (AFP)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Jarmaq on September 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 01 October 2025
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UN verifies 103 civilians killed in Lebanon since ceasefire

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Jarmaq on September 28, 2025.
  • UN Human Rights Office called for renewed efforts for a durable truce, more than 10 months on from the agreed ceasefire
  • Israel has kept up near daily strikes on Lebanon despite the truce that sought to end more than a year of hostilities

GENEVA: The United Nations said Wednesday it had verified the deaths of 103 civilians in Lebanon since the November 2024 ceasefire with Israel, demanding a halt to the ongoing suffering.
The UN Human Rights Office called for renewed efforts for a durable truce, more than 10 months on from the agreed ceasefire.
“We are still seeing devastating impacts of jet and drone strikes in residential areas, as well as near UN peacekeepers in the south,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
Israel has kept up near daily strikes on Lebanon, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah operatives or sites, despite the truce that sought to end more than a year of hostilities including two months of open war with the Iran-backed group.
“Families are simply unable to make a start on rebuilding their homes and their lives, and instead are faced by the real and present danger of more strikes,” Turk said.
“Hundreds of damaged schools, health facilities, places of worship, among other civilian sites, are still no-go zones, or at best, only partly useable.”
The Human Rights Office said that until the end of September, it had verified 103 civilians killed in Lebanon since the ceasefire.
There have been no reports of killings from projectiles fired from Lebanon toward Israel since the truce, it said.
Turk’s office said five people, including three children, were killed when an Israeli drone struck a vehicle and a motorcycle in the border area of Bint Jbeil on September 21.
Turk demanded an independent and impartial investigation into the incident, along with others he said raised concerns about compliance with international humanitarian law.
Lebanon’s health ministry said one person was killed and five others wounded in an Israeli strike on Wednesday on the country’s south, without specifying whether the casualties were civilians.
More than 80,000 people remain displaced in Lebanon as a result of ongoing violence, with around 30,000 people from northern Israel reportedly still displaced.
“At all times during the conduct of hostilities, civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected and international humanitarian law fully respected, irrespective of claims of breaches of a ceasefire,” said Turk.
“Good faith implementation of the ceasefire is the only path toward a durable peace, and its terms need to be respected.”


Blood oozing from corpses haunts escapees from Sudan’s El-Fasher

Blood oozing from corpses haunts escapees from Sudan’s El-Fasher
Updated 14 November 2025
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Blood oozing from corpses haunts escapees from Sudan’s El-Fasher

Blood oozing from corpses haunts escapees from Sudan’s El-Fasher
  • The United Nations estimates nearly 90,000 have fled El-Fasher in the past two weeks, many going days without food

TINE: It took 16-year-old Mounir Abderahmane 11 days to reach the Tine refugee transit camp in Chad, crossing arid plains after fleeing the bloodshed in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher.
When the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) entered the city in late October, Abderahmane was at the Saudi hospital, watching over his father, a soldier in the regular army who had been wounded fighting the militia several days earlier.
“They summoned seven nurses and ushered them into a room. We heard gunshots and I saw blood seeping out for under the door,” he told AFP, his voice cracking with emotion.
Abderahmane fled the city the same day with his father, who died several days on the route westwards to Chad.
The RSF, locked in civil war with the army since April 2023, captured El-Fasher, the army’s last stronghold in the vast western Darfur region, on October 26 after an 18-month siege.
Both sides have been accused of atrocities.
The RSF traces its origins back to the Janjaweed, a largely Arab militia armed by the Sudanese government to kill mainly black African tribes in Darfur two decades ago.
Between 2003 and 2008, an estimated 300,000 people were slaughtered in those campaigns of ethnic cleansing and nearly 2.7 million were displaced.

- ‘Never look back’ -

At the Tine camp in eastern Chad — more than 300 kilometers (185 miles) from El-Fasher — escapees said drone attacks had intensified in the city on October 24, just before it fell to the RSF.
Locals crammed into makeshift shelters to escape the bombs, with only “peanut shells” for food, 53-year-old Hamid Souleymane Chogar said.
“Every time I went up to get some air, I saw new corpses in the street, often those of local people I knew,” he shuddered.
Chogar took advantage of a lull to flee in the night.
Crippled, he said, by the Janjaweed in 2011, he had to be hoisted onto a cart that zigzagged through the city between the debris and corpses.
They moved without speaking or lights to avoid detection.
When the headlights of an RSF vehicle swept the night, Mahamat Ahmat Abdelkerim, 53, dived into a nearby house with his wife and six children.
The seventh child had been killed by a drone days earlier.
“There were about 10 bodies in there, all civilians,” he said. “The blood was still oozing from their corpses.”
Mouna Mahamat Oumour, 42, was fleeing with her family when a shell struck the group.
“When I turned round, I saw my aunt’s body torn to pieces. We covered her with a cloth and kept going,” she said through tears.
“We walked on without ever looking back.”

- Extortion -

At the southern edge of the city, they saw corpses piled up in the huge trench the RSF had dug to surround it.
Samira Abdallah Bachir, 29, said she and her three young children had to climb down into the ditch to escape, negotiating the morass of bodies “so we wouldn’t step on them.”
Once past the trench, refugees had to negotiate checkpoints on the two main roads leading out of El-Fasher, where witnesses reported rape and theft.
At each roadblock, the fighters demanded cash — $800 to $1,600 — for safe passage.
The United Nations estimates nearly 90,000 have fled El-Fasher in the past two weeks, many going days without food.
“People are being relocated from Tine to reduce crowding and make room for new refugees,” said Ameni Rahmani, 42, of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The power struggle between the RSF and the army — in part to control Sudan’s gold and oil — has killed tens of thousands of people since April 2023, displaced nearly 12 million and triggered what the UN calls the world’s most extensive hunger crisis.