Lebanon’s displaced find community in empty hotel
The Hamra Star apartment hotel in Hamra, a bustling district in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, used to be a spot for secret romantic encounters, according to local journalists.
A nondescript building, it boasted a modest little sign and not much else to identify it. Then, about 10 years ago, someone was reportedly murdered there, prompting authorities to mark its door with a red X – indicating it has been closed down.
Ten years later, a crowd of people forcibly displaced due to relentless Israeli bombing banged the lock and chain off the sealed door and moved in, only to find the building littered with rubbish and infested with insects and rats.
Bonded by their ordeal, the displaced came together to clean the building and install basic provisions. “We all cooperated and fixed the place up ourselves,” said Mohammad Zahran, who now lives on the first floor with his wife and two daughters.
The Hamra Star Hotel in Hamra, Beirut
Israel issues forced displacement order for Lebanon’s Baalbek for the second day
Israel’s military has issued forced displacement orders for residents in Lebanon’s Baalbek city and surrounding areas for the second day in a row. Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee issued the warning to residents of Baalbek, Ain Bourday and Duris.
“You are in a combat zone where the IDF (Israeli army) intends to attack and target Hezbollah infrastructure, interests, installations and combat means, and does not intend to harm you. Staying in the red zone puts you and your family at risk,” he said on X.
On Wednesday, a series of Israeli air attacks pounded the city in the country’s east, as well as its outskirts, hours after Israel issued an evacuation call for the area for the first time in more than a month of war.
Israel strikes Syrian town near Lebanon border: State media
An “Israeli aggression” hit a number of residential buildings in the area of Qusayr in the southern countryside of Homs province, in central Syria, the country’s news agency (SANA) reports.
The attack caused “material damage” to the industrial zone of Qusayr and some of the city’s residential neighbourhoods, according to the state media.
Israel typically does not comment on specific reports of attacks in Syria, but it has been carrying out strikes for years against what it says are Iranian-linked targets in the Arab country.
Israeli military says Syria strikes targeted at Hezbollah
The Israeli military says the air strikes we reported earlier in the area of Qusayr in the southern countryside of Homs in central Syria hit munitions warehouses and military buildings used by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.
It said in a statement that they are part of its many air strikes on Syria in recent months and are aimed at “reducing the transfer of weapons from Iran through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon”.
The Israeli army, which has also hit the Jousieh border crossing used by civilians to flee Lebanon, again claimed that Hezbollah has been using villages near the border crossings to move weapons.
Israeli air strike on ambulance in southern Lebanon kills paramedic, injures two others
The Lebanese Health Ministry says an Israeli air strike on an ambulance in the town of Zefta, southern Lebanon, has killed a paramedic and injured two others.
In a media statement, the ministry reported that the incident brings the total number of paramedics killed since the start of the conflict to 173, with 277 injured and 243 emergency vehicles targeted.
