All posts tagged: Lebanon

The Iran-led axis of resistance in the aftermath of Syria’s upheaval | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The Iran-led axis of resistance in the aftermath of Syria’s upheaval | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Published by Sam

Tehran, Iran – For decades, authorities in Iran have been meticulously building an “axis of resistance” of like-minded factions to oppose Israel and the United States across the region. The alliance has included armed entities and government actors in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, along with Palestinian groups. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Tehran lost not only a four-decade alliance with the ruling family in Damascus but also major axis lifelines. Amid claims that the axis has collapsed, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asserted last week such views are “ignorant” and wrong. The span of resistance, he said, would “encompass the entire region” as the axis is not hardware that can be destroyed, rather it is faith and commitment that only grows stronger under pressure and will succeed in expelling the US from the region. Kicking the US out, especially from neighbouring Iraq, remains a top goal for Tehran to avenge the January 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and a main architect of the axis. Cutting off access …

Revealed: Israel used US weapons in strike that killed journalists in Lebanon – video explainer | Israel-Gaza war

Revealed: Israel used US weapons in strike that killed journalists in Lebanon – video explainer | Israel-Gaza war

Published by Sam

A Guardian investigation has found that Israel used a US munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three more in an attack in south Lebanon on 25 October that legal experts have called a potential war crime. The Guardian’s reporter William Christou explains what he uncovered when he visited the site of the strike Source link

A Christmas miracle in Syria

A Christmas miracle in Syria

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — At a time when most of the international news is full of gloom and doom, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria is a happy surprise, almost a Christmas miracle. Bashar al-Assad, the last scion of the family that ruled Syria for 50 years through fear and terror, is gone. Assad was a King Herod of our time. He arrested, tortured and killed thousands of Syrians and forced millions more into exile. He used barrel bombs and chemical weapons against his own people. Cities harboring opponents to his regime were leveled with no regard for the cost in civilian deaths, children or adults. Nowhere was safe, not churches, not hospitals. Like Herod, he slaughtered the innocent. Assad was aided and abetted by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon. The West imposed economic sanctions to try to squeeze him out of power, but in latter years was more concerned about quashing the Islamic State group and al-Qaida than the plight of the Syrian people under Assad. American troops are still in …

Israeli strikes kill dozens in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, medics say : NPR

Israeli strikes kill dozens in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, medics say : NPR

Published by Sam

Lebanese Red Cross volunteers and other rescuers search for victims at a house that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in Baalchmay village east of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. Hassan Ammar/AP hide caption toggle caption Hassan Ammar/AP DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past day, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone, medics said. In Lebanon, warplanes struck Beirut’s southern suburbs and killed 33 people elsewhere in the country on Tuesday. The latest bombardment came as the United States said it would not reduce its military support for Israel after a deadline passed for allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza. The State Department cited some progress, even as international aid groups said Israel had failed to meet the U.S. demands. In Lebanon, large explosions shook Beirut’s southern suburbs — an area known as Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah has a significant presence — soon after the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for 11 houses there. There was no immediate …

‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’ | Andrew Arsan

‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’ | Andrew Arsan

Published by skeptic

Once again Lebanon’s inhabitants are living through—and dying in—a conflict they are powerless to end. Western leaders like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer talk of pulling “back from the brink,” as though doing so were still possible. But what is this if not war? Since last October, when Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging cross-border fire in the aftermath of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood attacks, more than 2,800 people have died in Lebanon. Over 13,000 more have been injured. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.3 million people—over a fifth of the population—have fled their homes, in what the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, described as possibly “the largest displacement” in the country’s history. Of these, more than 500,000 have crossed the border into Bashar al-Asad’s empire of ruins.  Each day and each night bring more bombardments, more deaths. After months of border fighting, Israel escalated matters on July 30, assassinating the Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr—who the IDF blamed for a missile strike on the occupied Golan Heights—in an air strike on the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik. …

Lebanon: One war too many

Lebanon: One war too many

Published by Sam

It’s the deadliest conflict in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war. The current war between Hezbollah and Israel has set the whole country ablaze. The provisional death toll on the Lebanese side stands at more than 2,300, with 11,000 wounded, while thousands more are missing. The violence of the Israeli strikes has also provoked a mass exodus of the population: some 1.2 million people already have been forced to leave their homes, or a fifth of the population. Our Lebanon correspondents Chloé Domat and Sophie Guignon report. Source link

The Path to Regional War | Joost Hiltermann

The Path to Regional War | Joost Hiltermann

Published by skeptic

There are at least two ways for mutual deterrence between states—also known as mutually assured destruction—to come to an end. As the Cold War taught us, one side in the conflict can simply collapse. But deterrence can also break down when one party decides to upend the equilibrium. For more than nine months after Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack on southern Israel and the start of Israel’s devastating onslaught in Gaza, hostilities between Israel and the Iran-led “axis of resistance” (the alliance that also includes Hezbollah, Syria, Iraqi paramilitary groups, and Ansar Allah—commonly known as the Houthis—in Yemen) built steadily. The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in particular defied both sides’ previous red lines. Yet they appeared to steer clear of provoking all-out war. Then, in late July, Israel attacked a residential guesthouse in Tehran, killing Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas. Just hours earlier he had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. For Israel to assassinate Haniyeh while he was staying in the Iranian capital as an official state guest …

Ethiopian Shield Pillaged by British to Be Repatriated

Ethiopian Shield Pillaged by British to Be Repatriated

Published by skeptic

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. The Headlines MAQDALA SHIELD REPATRIATION. A 19th-century Maqdala shield pillaged in Ethiopia during the 1868 Battle of Maqdala will be repatriated in November, and displayed at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, reports The Art Newspaper. The Ethiopian government identified the shield as a British army-looted treasure after seeing it come up in an auction, and requested it be restituted from the UK. After a short loan for an exhibit at Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art ending this month, that is precisely what will happen. The shield “is a symbol of Ethiopia’s history and resilience,” said Ermias Sahle Selassi, grandson of Emperor Haile Selassie and founder of the Royal Ethiopian Trust that negotiated the restitution. During the same 1868 battle, the British army helped themselves to other Ethiopian treasures which remain in UK museums, including ceremonial objects considered holy and weapons, though some have been returned in recent years. Related Articles LEBANON HERITAGE SITES AT RISK. Lebanon’s culture minister has warned that …

‘Why Us?’: A Tide of Grief in Lebanon

‘Why Us?’: A Tide of Grief in Lebanon

Published by Sam

Many of those killed in the strike had fled other parts of southern Lebanon over the past week, following Israeli evacuation orders, and sought refuge in relatives’ homes in Sidon, according to the relatives and their neighbors. Narmin Jradi, 20, who had been planning her wedding, was on the ground floor when she died. Majid and Malek Hannach, were rambunctious siblings, 12 and 13. Mohammad Hannach, 18, from Nabatieh, had been worried about whether the war would disrupt his plans to study engineering at a university next year. Source link

Ground operation in Lebanon could be imminent, officials say

Ground operation in Lebanon could be imminent, officials say

Published by Sam

Fears are growing that “no one is safe” in Lebanon after Israel’s airstrike in central Beirut, according to the executive director of a humanitarian nongovernmental organization working to support families displaced by the bombing campaign. Humanitarian workers were “shocked” by the strike in Beirut’s Cola district, Jihan Kaisi, the Executive Director of the Union of Relief and Development Associations, or URDA, told NBC News. “This Cola area is crowded with families, with displaced families, who came to this area thinking it’s safe,” she said. “It’s a very crowded area.” And the strike targeting the area, just a couple of miles from downtown Beirut and the city’s Zaitunay Bay, she said, showed there was “no safe place guaranteed in Lebanon.” She added that a deadly strike in the Sidon or Saida area in southern Lebanon on Sunday, had also heightened fears in that part of the country. Thousands of families have been sheltering there under the belief that the heavily populated area would be safe and now they don’t know where else to go, she said. Some …