Israeli airstrikes kill 44 people in Syria, war monitor says

UN investigating explosion that wounded three of its personnel, translator in Lebanon

The United Nations is investigating an explosion that wounded three of its personnel and a translator Saturday in southern Lebanon.

“This morning, three OGL (UNTSO) military observers and one Lebanese language assistant on a foot patrol along the Blue Line were injured when an explosion occurred near their location,” the statement from Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said.

“We are investigating the origin of the explosion,” Tenenti continued, after explaining the injured were evacuated for medical treatment.

The personnel were members of Observer Group Lebanon (OGL), which works with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).

UNTSO military observers in the Middle East “monitor ceasefires, supervise armistice agreements, prevent isolated incidents from escalating and assist other United Nations peacekeeping operations in the region,” according to the organization’s mandate.

Observers are “un-armed and are trained to observe and report violations of the agreements of ceasefire, disengagement, etc., relevant to their areas of operation.” UNTSO military observers also support UNIFIL, a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, according to a page on UNTSO’s website describing its operations.

“Safety and security of UN personnel must be guaranteed,” Tenenti said in the statement. “All actors have a responsibility under international humanitarian law to ensure protection to non-combatants, including peacekeepers, journalists, medical personnel, and civilians.”

The explosion comes just days after UNIFIL released a statement calling for a cease-fire amid escalating violence along the Blue Line, a U.N.-drawn boundary between Lebanon and Israel.

“UNIFIL is very concerned over the surge of violence occurring across the Blue Line right now. This escalation has caused a high number of of civilian deaths and the destruction of homes and livelihoods,” the Thursday statement read.

“It is imperative that this escalation cease immediately. We urge all sides to put down their weapons and begin the process toward a sustainable political and diplomatic solution,” UNIFIL’s previous statement continued.

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UN observers wounded by shelling in southern Lebanon

Three United Nations observers and a translator have been wounded by shelling in Rmeish, southern Lebanon, the UN peacekeeping mission said.

Lebanon’s state news agency reported that an Israeli drone strike was behind the explosion, but the Israeli military denied it was responsible.

The UN mission, Unifil, said those hurt were receiving treatment and that it was investigating the blast’s origin.

It comes after rising tensions along the unofficial Israel-Lebanon border.

In a statement, Unifil said a shell had exploded near the group who had been on a foot patrol along the UN-demarcated Blue Line that divides southern Lebanon from Israel.

It described the targeting of peacekeepers as “unacceptable”.

No details have been given about the nationality of the observers or their condition. The Lebanese translator is reported to be stable.

Lebanon’s state run National News Agency said Israeli “enemy drones” raided the area in southern Lebanon where the observers were wounded.

Israel’s military denied this, saying in a statement: “Contrary to the reports, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] did not strike a Unifil vehicle in the area of Rmeish this morning.”

In recent days, tensions have again picked up along the unofficial border between Israel and Lebanon, with casualties on both sides.

Israel and the armed group Hezbollah trade almost daily strikes across the border, which began with the start of the Israel-Gaza war following the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Muslim militant group with close ties to Iran and an ally of Hamas.

On Friday, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the IDF would increase its attacks against the group in Lebanon, “shifting from repelling to actively pursuing Hezbollah”.

“Wherever they are hiding we will reach them,” he said.

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U.N. military observers wounded while patrolling southern Lebanese border after shell explodes, officials say

Fears of widening conflict in the Middle East

The fears of a widening conflict in the Middle East

02:07

Four United Nations military observers were wounded Saturday while patrolling the southern Lebanese border after a shell exploded near them, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said.

The military observers are part of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, which supports the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL.

Local Lebanese media, citing security officials, said an Israeli drone strike targeted the observers in the southern village of Wadi Katmoun near the border town of Rmeich. Hezbollah-run television station Al-Manar said the drone strike wounded three officers from Australia, Chile, and Norway, as well as a Lebanese interpreter.

The Israeli military on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, said: “Contrary to the reports, the IDF did not strike a @UNIFIL —vehicle in the area of Rmeish this morning.”

UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said they are “investigating the origin of the explosion.”

“The targeting of peacekeepers is unacceptable,” Tenenti told The Associated Press. “We repeat our call for all actors to cease the current heavy exchanges of fire before more people are unnecessarily hurt.”

This came as clashes between the Israeli military and Hezbollah militants escalated in recent weeks. Both sides have been exchanging fire since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza broke out, propelling concerns that the near-daily clashes along the border could escalate into a full-scale war as tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence.

UNIFIL was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion. The U.N. expanded its mission following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, allowing peacekeepers to deploy along the Israeli border to help the Lebanese military extend its authority into the country’s south for the first time in decades.

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Three U.N. observers and a translator wounded in south Lebanon, peacekeeping mission says

BEIRUT — A blast injured several United Nations technical observers outside a southern Lebanese border town on Saturday, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the area said — an incident two security sources told Reuters was the result of an Israeli strike.

The Israeli military’s spokesman, Avichay Adraee, denied that Israeli forces hit a vehicle belonging to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL, near the town of Rmeish.

When asked to clarify whether its forces had hit any non-U.N. vehicles, the IDF told NBC News, “We did not strike in the area.”

In a statement, UNIFIL said that three military observers from the U.N. technical observer mission, UNTSO, and one Lebanese language assistant on a foot patrol along the Blue Line were injured “when an explosion occurred near their location.”

“They have now been evacuated for medical treatment,” the statement added. UNIFIL said it was now investigating the origin of the explosion, and has so far not attributed the strike to Israel.

UNTSO, which monitors the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel is unarmed. UNIFIL is an armed peacekeeping mission.

“All actors have a responsibility under international humanitarian law to ensure protection to non-combatants, including peacekeepers, journalists, medical personnel, and civilians,” UNIFIL said. “We repeat our call for all actors to cease the current heavy exchanges of fire before more people are unnecessarily hurt.”

Israel has been trading fire with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon for nearly six months, in parallel with its war with Hamas in Gaza.

Hostilities between Israel and Lebanon have been escalating in recent days. Wednesday became the deadliest day in more than five months of fighting along the border, after a series of Israeli airstrikes killed 16 people in Lebanon, and a barrage of Hezbollah rockets killed one Israeli man.

Israel’s shelling of Lebanon has killed nearly 270 Hezbollah fighters, but has also killed around 50 civilians — including children, medics and journalists — and hit both UNIFIL and the Lebanese army.

In November, UNIFIL said one of its patrols was hit by Israeli gunfire in southern Lebanon, without leaving casualties.

UNIFIL last month said that the Israeli military violated international law by firing on a group of clearly identifiable journalists, killing a Reuters journalist. Israel denies targeting the reporters.

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Israeli airstrikes kill 44 people in Syria, war monitor says

Israeli airstrikes kill 44 people in Syria, war monitor says – CBS News

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A U.K. war monitor says Israeli airstrikes killed 44 people near the Syrian city of Aleppo early Friday. Human rights groups have called it the deadliest attack in Syria in years. CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd joins with analysis.

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Israel accused of killing dozens of Syria troops and Hezbollah fighters with major airstrikes near Aleppo

Beirut — The Syrian army said Friday that Israeli airstrikes near the northern city of Aleppo had killed or wounded “a number of” people and caused damage. A war monitoring group said the strikes killed 44 people, most of them Syrian troops.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor group, said Israeli strikes hit missile depots belonging to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group in Aleppo’s southern suburb of Jibreen, near the Aleppo International Airport, and the nearby town of Safira, home to a sprawling military facility.

The observatory said 36 Syrian troops, seven Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian member of an Iran-backed group died and dozens of people were wounded, calling it the deadliest such attack in years.

There was no immediate statement from Israeli officials on the strikes specifically, but Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was quoted by the Times of Israel’s defense correspondent as saying hours after that the military would be expanding its ongoing campaign against the powerful Iran-allied group, and that Israel was “turning from defending to pursuing Hezbollah.”

“We will reach wherever the organization operates, in Beirut, Damascus and in more distant places,” Gallant said, according to Times reporter Emanuel Fabian.

Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in its northern neighbor, has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges them.

On Thursday, Syrian state media reported airstrikes near the capital, Damascus, saying they wounded two civilians.

Hezbollah has had an armed presence in Syria since it joined the country’s civil conflict more than a decade ago, fighting alongside government forces.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once its commercial center, has come under such attacks in the past that led to the closure of its international airport. Friday’s strike did not affect the airport.

The strikes have escalated over the past five months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border.

Netanyahu agrees to reschedule Washington delegation to discuss Rafah

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Hezbollah is an ally of Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who sparked the current war with their bloody Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Both groups are considered part of the network of armed proxy forces backed by Iran across the Middle East.

In neighboring Lebanon, an Israeli drone strike hit a car near the southern port city of Tyre and killed a Hezbollah member, Lebanese state media reported. Israel’s military said the targeted man was Ali Naim, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile program. The group confirmed he was killed, without stating what his job was within the organization.

The drone strike that killed Naim came a day after Hezbollah fired rockets with heavy warheads at towns in northern Israel, saying it used the weapons against civilian targets for the first time in retaliation for Israeli airstrikes the night before that killed nine people, including what the group said were several paramedics.

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, concerns have grown that near-daily clashes along the border between Israel and Lebanon could escalate into a full-scale war, which could draw in other countries including Iran.

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Israel and Hezbollah trade strikes over Lebanon border

Hezbollah has fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel, killing one person, in response to deadly Israeli strikes on a Lebanese village.

Lebanese sources said seven people were killed in the Israeli attack overnight on Habbariyeh, making it one of the deadliest in recent violence.

Israel said militants were killed, including one involved in attacks on Israel.

The Lebanese group targeted said those killed were “rescuers”.

The strikes come as Israel and Hezbollah trade almost daily strikes across the border, which began with the start of the Israel-Gaza war following the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Muslim militant group with close ties to Iran and an ally of Hamas.

Israeli firefighters at site of rocket attack in Kiryat Shmona — One of the rockets targeting Kiryat Shmona hit an industrial site

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona and a military base there on Wednesday morning.

Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service said a factory worker was pulled from wreckage after one of the strikes hit an industrial park triggering a fire.

He had severe wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene, it added.

Hezbollah said the rocket attacks were “in response to the massacre in Habbariyeh”.

Lebanese officials said the strikes on the village had hit an emergency and relief centre for Jamaa Islamiya, a Sunni Muslim group with links to Hamas.

The Lebanese Ambulance Association, quoted by the Associated Press, called the strike a “flagrant violation of humanitarian work”.

The Israel Defense Forces described the target as a “military compound”.

They said: “A significant terrorist operative belonging to the Jamaa Islamiya organisation who advanced attacks against Israeli territory was eliminated along with additional terrorists who were with him.”

According to UN figures from before the latest attacks, 316 people have been killed in Lebanon since the conflict began, at least 54 of them civilians.

Up to 20 have lost their lives on the Israeli side, around half of them civilians.

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Saudi Arabia, Bahrain urge citizens to leave Lebanon after Palestinian refugee camp clashes

BEIRUT (AP) — Bahrain called on its citizens Saturday to leave Lebanon “for their own safety” hours after Saudi Arabia did the same without giving a reason.

The decision by the two Gulf nations came after days of fighting in the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon between members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group and militants of Islamic groups.

The four days of fighting in Ein el-Hilweh camp near the southern port city of Sidon has left 13 people dead and dozens wounded.

Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry said Bahrainis should abide by the government’s previous decisions to avoid travel to Lebanon.

The Saudi embassy in Beirut posted a statement late Friday night on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling on its citizens to avoid going to areas where there are “armed conflicts” and also to leave Lebanon quickly.

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Lebanon warns Palestinian president that troops may intervene if clashes continue in refugee camp

SIDON, Lebanon (AP) — The caretaker Lebanese prime minister called the Palestinian president on Thursday to demand an end to the volatile situation in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, warning that the army may have to intervene to stop the dayslong fighting that has left dozens dead and wounded.

The deadly clashes between Palestinian factions in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon have been going on since Sunday, though a tentative calm returned to the camp and surrounding area on Thursday, after a night of renewed clashes.

In his telephone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the fighting a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty.” Mikati also said it was unacceptable for the warring Palestinian groups to “terrorize the Lebanese, especially the people of the south who have embraced the Palestinians for many years,” according to a statement released by his office.

The latest fighting in Ein el-Hilweh, which is home to about 50,000 people, has pitted Abbas’ Fatah party against Islamist groups Jund al Sham and Shabab al Muslim. Fatah has accused the Islamists of gunning down a Fatah military general, Abu Ashraf al Armoushi, in the camp on Sunday.

The fighting has so far killed more than a dozen people, wounded many more and displaced thousands.

In Sidon, outside the camp’s borders, around 100 camp residents who had fled the clashes were sheltering in a nearby mosque on Thursday. Sheikh Ahmad Nader said around 2,000 people had sheltered at the mosque since the beginning of the clashes.

“We are tired of all of this,” said Mohamed Sabakh, an Ein el-Hilweh resident staying in the mosque with his family. “We have children.”

Even outside the camp, Sabakh said, they feel trapped by the fighting. “Look around you, all the stores are closed. People are locked down in their houses. There is nowhere to get bread even, all the roads are closed.”

Dorothee Klaus, director of the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, in Lebanon said in a statement Thursday that 600 people displaced from the camp are staying in two of the agency’s schools, in Sidon and in Mieh Mieh, another nearby camp.

“We have not been able to enter the camp and deliver much-needed assistance,” she said, noting that some 360 of UNRWA’s staff live in the camp, where some were trapped and one was injured in the clashes.

Dr. Riad Abu al-Einein, head of Al Hamshari Hospital near the camp, told The Associated Press that the hospital had received the body of a person who was killed in clashes on Wednesday night, bringing the total number killed to 13.

If the situation continues, he said, “it will affect not only the families in the camp but all of the people in Sidon, especially as there were several rocket-propelled grenades and gunshots hit residential areas in the city.”

Maher Shabaita, head of Fatah in the Sidon region, confirmed that one of the group’s members was killed in Wednesday night’s clashes.

He said Fatah fighters had defended themselves after the Islamist groups attacked one of Fatah’s centers in the camp, breaking a cease-fire agreement reached Monday, in what he described as part of a “project to destroy the camp and transform the camp into a camp of militants, possibly a camp of terrorists.”

Palestinian factions in the camp have formed an investigative committee to determine who was responsible for Armoushi’s killing and hand them over to the Lebanese judiciary for trial, he said.

Lebanese soldiers generally do not enter the Palestinian camps, which are controlled by a network of Palestinian factions, and have stayed out of the latest conflict in Ein el-Hilweh. In 2007, the Lebanese army battled Islamist extremists in another Palestinian camp, Nahr al-Bared, in north Lebanon, razing most of the camp in the process.

Elias Farhat, a retired Lebanese army general who is now a researcher in military affairs, said it was unlikely that the army would intervene in Ein el-Hilweh because — unlike in Nahr al-Bared — the combatants have not directly targeted the army.

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Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

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Lebanon hands over to Italy a notorious drug dealer arrested near Beirut

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon handed over to Italy on Thursday morning a notorious Italian drug dealer arrested last month north of the capital of Beirut, judicial officials said.

Bartolo Bruzzaniti was flown to Italy on a private jet that took off from Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The anti-Mafia prosecutors based in Reggio Calabria, a city in the region of Calabria in southern Italy, have called Bruzzaniti a major organized crime figure. He was also described as a prominent player in the Bruzzaniti-Morabito-Palamara clan, which is based near the Calabrian town of Africo and is known for criminal activities abroad.

Bruzzaniti was arrested while dining in July at a restaurant in the coastal town of Jounieh, north of Beirut, in a joint action by Lebanon’s General Security Directorate and Italy’s financial police as part of an Interpol action and a crackdown on the prominent Italian organized crime syndicate known as ’Ndrangheta that has activities outside Italy.

According to an official Lebanese document, seen by the Associated Press, the Italian Embassy in Beirut had formally agreed to take “the wanted man” who had agreed to go to Italy to stand trial there.

Lebanese judicial officials did not give further details. Lebanese media have reported that Bruzzaniti came to Lebanon from the African nation of Ivory Coast several months ago and had lived in different apartments around the country until his arrest.

Italian prosecutors also contend that Bruzzaniti helped finance long-time fugitive Rocco Morabito, described as a global cocaine dealer. Morabito was extradited to Italy in July 2022 from Brazil, a year after his arrest in the Latin American country.

In October 2022, Bruzzaniti eluded capture on an Italian warrant as part of a crackdown in which some three dozen suspects were sought in an investigation of suspected international drug trafficking.

Lebanon, which does not extradite its citizens and has no extradition treaties with other countries, made the news when it refused to hand over fugitive and auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn, the former head of Nissan and Renault. Ghosn, a Lebanese citizen, was arrested in Japan in 2018 on charges of breach of trust but fled to Lebanon in 2019 in a daring escape out of the country aboard a private jet.

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