Category: 2. Middle East

Israeli warplanes carried out air strikes late Thursday on the Lebanese capital Beirut’s southern suburbs, a report said, Anadolu reports.

Israeli aircraft targeted a building near Al-Qaem Mosque after issuing a warning, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA).

Israeli warplanes launched seven additional air strikes, two of which were intense, with plumes of smoke rising, the agency added, though the targeted location was not…

Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem marked the Eid al-Adha on Friday amid continuing Israeli bombardment, military raids, and heavy restrictions.

Jerusalem

Tens of thousands of Palestinians offered Eid al-Adha prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem on Friday morning, despite tight Israeli restrictions and a somber atmosphere driven by the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.

According to local estimates, around 80,000…

France on Friday dampened expectations Paris could rapidly recognise a Palestinian state, with the French foreign minister saying while it was “determined” to make such a move, recognition had to be more than “symbolic”.

France is due later this month to co-host with Saudi Arabia a UN conference in New York on a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

There had been expectations that France could recognise a Palestinian state during that conference, with…

The grandmother of two children with French nationality killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza has filed a legal complaint in Paris, accusing Israel of “genocide” and “murder”, her lawyer said Friday.

Jacqueline Rivault filed her complaint with the “crimes against humanity” section of the Court of Paris, lawyer Arie Alimi said.

Rivault hopes the fact her daughter’s children, aged six and nine, were French citizens means the country’s judiciary will decide it has jurisdiction to designate a…

French anti-terror prosecutors have opened probes into “complicity in genocide” and “incitement to genocide” after French-Israelis allegedly blocked aid intended for war-torn Gaza last year, they said on Friday.

The two investigations, opened after legal complaints, were also to look into possible “complicity in crimes against humanity” between January and May 2024, the anti-terror prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said.

They are the first known probes in France to be looking into alleged violations…

Israel warned Friday that it will keep striking Lebanon until militant group Hezbollah has been disarmed, hours after it hit south Beirut in what Lebanese leaders called a major violation of a November ceasefire.

An Israeli military evacuation call issued ahead of Thursday’s strikes sent huge numbers of residents of the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, long a bastion of Iran-backed Hezbollah, fleeing for their lives.

The attack on what the Israeli military said was Hezbollah’s…

From wanted jihadist to statesman embraced by world leaders, Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has undergone a stunning transformation in just six months since ousting longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad.

Born in 1982, Sharaa abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, trimmed his thick beard and swapped fatigues for a suit and tie since his Islamist coalition of forces seized Damascus on December 8.

He was proclaimed interim president the following month, and later tasked with…

Israeli farmers whose dream of producing tequila was cut short by Hamas’s October 7 attack have returned to work along the Gaza border, ploughing fields and sowing seeds to bring their land back to life.

With artillery fire and explosions booming in the distance, businessman Aviel Leitner and farmer Eran Braverman inspected their field of blue agave, hoping they would one day soon produce the country’s first-ever batch of tequila.

Planted prior to the war sparked by the unprecedented October…