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SvennoJ 2 days ago
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Lebanon’s Baalbek region sees most ‘intense’ night of air strikes

At the hospital I was at just less than an hour ago, they said that last night and this morning was the most intense night of air strikes that they have experienced.

I’ve received so many videos from people in the area showing those strikes taking place and fires raging throughout the night.

At Al-Murtada Hospital, which has had to close its doors, the windows have been blown in. The ceilings have come down. Patients were injured. They have been moved to different hospitals.

While we were filming at the hospital, filming the damage, there were two more strikes that we heard and then saw take place in the distance. We saw the smoke rising. So the strikes haven’t stopped.

It has been an intense night of Israeli air strikes. Even as I speak, there have been strikes taking place in this area, and many people here have been displaced. But those who remain have said that last night was terrifying.


Israeli raid in Tyre killed 2: Report

An air raid on a house in the town of Jennata in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district killed two people and injured another, the official National News Agency reported.


Hezbollah leader says Israel wants to ‘control all Muslims’

Naim Qassem says the Lebanese group considers Israel “an aggressor” that represents a real threat to the region.

It wants to “expand its occupation and Palestine is not enough for Israel”, he said in a televised speech. Israel also wants to control all the “territory of the Arab states and all the Muslims”, the deputy Hezbollah leader charged.

He said Israel carries out “a policy of massacres and it is depending on a policy of all sins that can be committed on Earth”.

According to Qassem, Israel wants three things:

  • It wants to terrify people “through brutal crimes”.
  • It seeks the full support of the US government.
  • And it depends on time – “what cannot be taken today can be taken tomorrow.”

Qassem says Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel cannot be separated from the fight for Palestine.

“We consider our resistance to be legitimate. Those who are fighting for their land are the Palestinians. We will support them,” Qassem said. “If we did not face Israel, it would achieve its goals of expansionism.”

He accused the US of aiding Israeli in “its brutal crimes” in the region. “America, the biggest devil, wants a new Middle East. Netanyahu wants the same thing. That means the US and Israel are doing this genocide purposely.”

Naim Qassem says the best possible outcome to the conflict is for Israel to stop attacking Lebanon and Gaza. “I’m telling the Israelis, the solution is to stop firing. The solution is a ceasefire … After a ceasefire, the [Israeli] settlers can return to the north,” said Qassem.

He said more than two million Israelis in the north will be under constant threat if Israel keeps the war going in Lebanon and Gaza. “The resistance will never be defeated because they’re the ones that own the land. They will fight and die in dignity. Victory will come with patience.”


Biden’s gov’t gives ‘guarantee’ for de-escalation of Israeli attacks: PM Mikati

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that the Biden administration has given “some kind of a guarantee” that Israel will de-escalate in Beirut and its suburbs.

“We want a ceasefire, the implementation of Resolution 1701 and the election of a president for the republic,” Mikati also said. That 2006 UN Security Council resolution called for an end to hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

“The Taif Agreement must be implemented, the state’s sovereignty must be extended over its lands and there is no weapon other than the weapon of legitimacy,” the Lebanese leader added, referring to the agreement negotiated in 1989 in Taif, Saudi Arabia, designed to end the 15-year-long Lebanese Civil War.