Latest from Ya Libnan
Ya Libnan
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Israel strikes Lebanon in one of biggest attacks since November ceasefire
One person died and 21 others were injured, Lebanon's Health Ministry said. Israel said it was targeting an underground Hezbollah site. By Rachel Chason , Suzan Haidamous , Mohamad El Chamaa and Lior Soroka BEIRUT — Israel pounded southern Lebanon with a series of airstrikes Friday in what analysts and officials on the ground said were some of the most significant strikes since Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire in November. Video showed massive plumes of gray smoke rising above a hilltop, and Lebanon's official National News Agency reported an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in Nabatieh. The Washington Post was unable to immediately verify who or what struck the residential building in Nabatieh; neither the Israel Defense Forces nor Lebanon's government responded to requests for comment. Lebanon's Health Ministry said one person was killed and 21 were injured during the strikes. The National News Agency reported there were more than 20 hits in under 15 minutes. The Israel Defense Forces said Israeli air force fighter jets targeted a 'significant underground project' used by Hezbollah in the Beaufort Ridge in southern Lebanon. The site was 'completely taken out of use' following the strikes, the IDF said. Beaufort Ridge is about five miles from Nabatieh. In a separate Arabic-language statement , spokesman Avichay Adraee said the IDF did not target a civilian building. Instead, he said, a rocket, stored by Hezbollah inside the building, 'was launched and hit the civilian building' as a result of Israel's strike. Adraee accused Hezbollah of endangering civilians by not giving up its arsenal to the Lebanese government, saying he expected the Lebanese military to confiscateHezbollah's weapons. Lebanon's government, which has pledged to implement the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, condemned the attacks, with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam saying they represented 'a blatant violation of national sovereignty … and pose a threat to the stability we are keen to preserve.' Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Israel 'continues to flout regional and international resolutions' and called on the international community to intervene. The Trump administration argues a ceasefire between Israel and Iran could help secure peace on Israel's other fronts , including Gaza, as well as lead to normalization agreements with some of Israel's Arab neighbors. But in southern Lebanon, even since the two sides agreed to a ceasefire seven months ago, Israeli strikes have remained a near-daily occurrence, analysts say. In its Friday statement, Israel said Hezbollah had been making 'rehabilitation attempts' in southern Lebanon; the November ceasefire deal required Lebanese forces to ensure that all Hezbollah infrastructure is removed from the area. Between Nov. 27 — the day after the deal was announced — and June 9, 172 Lebanese deaths and 409 injuries have been reported as a result of Israeli attacks, said Hussein Chaabane, a Beirut-based investigative journalist with Legal Agenda who has been tracking the strikes. Chaabane's toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Despite a mid-February deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw, the IDF has remained in five strategic positions in southern Lebanon close to the border. And entire areas in the south have become 'unofficial buffer zones,' where residents who dare to travel face sniper fire and drone strikes by the IDF, Chaabane said. He said the strikes on Friday were significant — and caused fear in the surrounding community — because of the size of the explosions. 'What is happening is more than just the ceasefire being violated,' Chaabane said. 'It is the transformation of the south of Lebanon. … It has become a de facto security strip.' The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Chaabane's report. Hassan Wazni, the director of Nabih Berri Governmental Hospital, said the strikes were so strong that they shook the ground, reminding him of the period of heavy strikes last year David Wood, a Lebanon analyst with the International Crisis Group, said that while some people in other parts of the country feel the war has ended, 'that has never been the case in southern Lebanon.' 'There is a feeling that the ceasefire doesn't protect them, that Israel is doing whatever it pleases in a military sense, and that the United States — which is the chair of the monitoring committee — is allowing them to do so,' he said. He referred to a committee including representatives from Lebanon, Israel, France, the United States and the United Nations that is charged with monitoring violations of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire. Wood added that the longer the strikes continue and civilians are killed, the more frustration in southern Lebanon could grow, including with the new government for failing to protect its residents. 'The longer this goes on and the state can't protect them,' he warned, 'the more likely people are to turn to Hezbollah and groups like it that could emerge.' WASHINGTON POST
Ya Libnan
21 hours ago
- Business
- Ya Libnan
China confirms details of U.S. trade deal
HIGHLIGHTS The U.S. and China have confirmed details of a trade framework that seeks to allow rare earth exports and easing of tech restrictions, according to a statement released by China's Ministry of Commerce Friday afternoon. China will review and approve export applications for items subject to export control rules, while the U.S. will cancel a range of existing restrictive measures imposed against Beijing, a spokesperson for the ministry said in the statement, without elaborating. The statement comes after U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday at an event in the White House that 'we just signed with China yesterday.' A White House official later clarified that the administration and China had agreed to 'an additional understanding of a framework to implement the Geneva agreement.' Earlier this month, trade negotiation teams from both sides, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, reached an agreement on implementing the Geneva consensus after two days of high-level talks in London. The London agreement has stabilized what had become a fraught relationship, with both sides accusing each other of violating the Geneva trade agreement. Alfredo Montufar-Helu, senior advisor for the China Center at think tank The Conference Board, said that while the development is encouraging, 'it's important to temper expectations.' He added that there was a lack of clarity on which rare earth export curbs will be relaxed, barring magnets. Montufar-Helu said that rare earths were vital for national security on both sides, thus trade in these goods will likely remain constrained. Following the initial trade meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in mid-May, Washington and Beijing had struck a preliminary agreement to suspend a majority of tariffs on each other's goods for 90 days and to roll back certain restraints. The Geneva deal later faltered over China's slow-walking on relaxing curbs on rare earths exports and the U.S. tightening restrictions on tech and Chinese student visas. (CNBC)
Ya Libnan
a day ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria, may never make it back
By Maggie Michael Alawite Syrians, who fled the violence in western Syria, walk in the water of the Nahr El Kabir River, after the reported mass killings of Alawite minority members, in Akkar, Lebanon March 11, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo 'Don't wait for her,' the WhatsApp caller told the family of Abeer Suleiman on May 21, hours after she vanished from the streets of the Syrian town of Safita. 'She's not coming back.' Suleiman's kidnapper and another man who identified himself as an intermediary said in subsequent calls and messages that the 29-year-old woman would be killed or trafficked into slavery unless her relatives paid them a ransom of $15,000. 'I am not in Syria,' Suleiman herself told her family in a call on May 29 from the same phone number used by her captor, which had an Iraqi country code. 'All the accents around me are strange.' Reuters reviewed the call, which the family recorded, along with about a dozen calls and messages sent by the abductor and intermediary, who had a Syrian phone number. Suleiman is among at least 33 women and girls from Syria's Alawite sect – aged between 16 and 39 – who have been abducted or gone missing this year in the turmoil following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, according to the families of all them. The overthrow of the widely feared president in December after 14 years of civil war unleashed a furious backlash against the Muslim minority community to which he belongs, with armed factions affiliated to the current government turning on Alawite civilians in their coastal heartlands in March, killing hundreds of people . Since March, social media has seen a steady stream of messages and video clips posted by families of missing Alawite women appealing for information about them, with new cases cropping up almost daily, according to a Reuters review which found no online accounts of women from other sects vanishing. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria told Reuters it is investigating the disappearances and alleged abductions of Alawite women following a spike in reports this year. The commission, set up in 2011 to probe rights violations after the civil war broke out, will report to the U.N. Human Rights Council once the investigations are concluded, a spokesperson said. Suleiman's family borrowed from friends and neighbours to scrape together her $15,000 ransom, which they transferred to three money-transfer accounts in the Turkish city of Izmir on May 27 and 28 in 30 transfers ranging from $300 to $700, a close relative told Reuters, sharing the transaction receipts. Once all money was delivered as instructed, the abductor and intermediary ceased all contact, with their phones turned off, the relative said. Suleiman's family still have no idea what's become of her. Detailed interviews with the families of 16 of the missing women and girls found that seven of them are believed to have been kidnapped, with their relatives receiving demands for ransoms ranging from $1,500 to $100,000. Three of the abductees – including Suleiman – sent their families text or voice messages saying they'd been taken out of the country. There has been no word on the fate of the other nine. Eight of the 16 missing Alawites are under the age of 18, their families said. Reuters reviewed about 20 text messages, calls and videos from the abductees and their alleged captors, as well as receipts of some ransom transfers, though it was unable to verify all parts of the families' accounts or determine who might have targeted the women or their motives. All 33 women disappeared in the governorates of Tartous, Latakia and Hama, which have large Alawite populations. Nearly half have since returned home, though all of the women and their families declined to comment about the circumstances, with most citing security fears. Most of the families interviewed by Reuters said they felt police didn't take their cases seriously when they reported their loved ones missing or abducted, and that authorities failed to investigate thoroughly. The Syrian government didn't respond to a request for comment for this article. Ahmed Mohammed Khair, a media officer for the governor of Tartous, dismissed any suggestion that Alawites were being targeted and said most cases of missing women were down to family disputes or personal reasons rather than abductions, without presenting evidence to support this. 'Women are either forced into marrying someone they won't want to marry so they run away or sometimes they want to draw attention by disappearing,' he added and warned that 'unverified allegations' could create panic and discord and destabilize security. A media officer for Latakia governorate echoed Khair's comments, saying that in many cases, women elope with their lovers and families fabricate abduction stories to avoid the social stigma. The media officer of Hama governorate declined to comment. A member of a fact-finding committee set up by new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to investigate the mass killings of Alawites in coastal areas in March, declined to comment on the cases of missing women. Al-Sharaa denounced the sectarian bloodshed as a threat to his mission to unite the ravaged nation and has promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated to the government if necessary. GRABBED ON HER WAY TO SCHOOL Syrian rights advocate Yamen Hussein, who has been tracking the disappearances of women this year, said most had taken place in the wake of the March violence. As far as he knew, only Alawites had been targeted and the perpetrators' identities and motives remain unknown, he said. He described a widespread feeling of fear among Alawites, who adhere to an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam and account for about a tenth of Syria's predominantly Sunni population. Some women and girls in Tartous, Latakia and Hama are staying away from school or college because they fear being targeted, Hussein said. 'For sure, we have a real issue here where Alawite women are being targeted with abductions,' he added. 'Targeting women of the defeated party is a humiliation tactic that was used in the past by the Assad regime.' Thousands of Alawites have been forced from their homes in Damascus, while many have been dismissed from their jobs and faced harassment at checkpoints from Sunni fighters affiliated to the government. The interviews with families of missing women showed that most of them vanished in broad daylight, while running errands or travelling on public transport. Zeinab Ghadir is among the youngest. The 17-year-old was abducted on her way to school in the Latakia town of al-Hanadi on February 27, according to a family member who said her suspected kidnapper contacted them by text message to warn them not to post images of the girl online. 'I don't want to see a single picture or, I swear to God, I will send you her blood,' the man said in a text message sent from the girl's phone on the same day she disappeared. The teenage girl made a brief phone call home, saying she didn't know where she had been taken and that she had stomach pain, before the line cut out, her relative said. The family has no idea what has happened to her. Khozama Nayef was snatched on March 18 in rural Hama by a group of five men who drugged her to knock her out for a few hours while they spirited her away, a close relative told Reuters, citing the mother-of-five's own testimony when she was returned. The 35-year-old spent 15 days in captivity while her abductors negotiated with the family who eventually paid $1,500 dollars to secure her release, according to the family member who said when she returned home she had a mental breakdown. Days after Nayef was taken, 29-year-old Doaa Abbas was seized on her doorstep by a group of attackers who dragged her into a car waiting outside and sped off, according to a family member who witnessed the abduction in the Hama town of Salhab. The relative, who didn't see how many men took Abbas or whether they were armed, said he tried to follow on his motorbike but lost sight of the car. Three Alawites reported missing by their families on social media this year, who are not included in the 33 cases identified by Reuters, have since resurfaced and publicly denied they were abducted. One of them, a 16-year-old girl from Latakia, released a video online saying she ran away of her own accord to marry a Sunni man. Her family contradicted her story though, telling Reuters that she had been abducted and forced to marry the man, and that security authorities had ordered her to say she had gone willingly to protect her kidnappers. Reuters was unable to verify either account. A Syrian government spokesperson and Latakian authorities didn't respond to queries about it. The two other Alawites who resurfaced, a 23-year-old woman and a girl of 12, told Arabic TV channels that they had travelled of their own volition to the cities of Aleppo and Damascus, respectively, though the former said she ended up being beaten up by a man in an apartment before escaping. DARK MEMORIES OF ISLAMIC STATE Syria's Alawites dominated the country's political and military elite for decades under the Assad dynasty. Bashar al-Assad's sudden exit in December saw the ascendancy of a new government led by HTS, a Sunni group that emerged from an organization once affiliated to al Qaeda. The new government is striving to integrate dozens of former rebel factions, including some foreign fighters, into its security forces to fill a vacuum left after the collapse of Assad's defence apparatus. Several of the families of missing women said they and many others in their community dreaded a nightmare scenario where Alawites suffered similar fates to those inflicted on the Yazidi religious minority by Islamic State about a decade ago. IS, a jihadist Sunni group, forced thousands of Yazidi women into sexual slavery during a reign of terror that saw its commanders claim a caliphate encompassing large parts of Iraq and Syria, according to the U.N. A host of dire scenarios are torturing the minds of the family of Nagham Shadi, an Alawite woman who vanished this month, her father told Reuters. The 23-year-old left their house in the village of al Bayadiyah in Hama on June 2 to buy milk and never came back, Shadi Aisha said, describing an agonising wait for any word about the fate of his daughter. Aisha said his family had been forced from their previous home in a nearby village on March 7 during the anti-Alawite violence. 'What do we do? We leave it to God.' (Reuters)
Ya Libnan
a day ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Electoral amendments: Berri is obstructing the draft law of expatriate voting rights in Lebanon
On May 9, 2025, MPs of the Lebanese Forces Party, Change and Opposition blocs, and the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) submitted an urgent draft law to amend the electoral law. The proposal sought to abolish the six seats reserved for expatriates, instead allowing them to vote in their place of registration, meaning each voter would cast a ballot for the seats allocated to their district. On June 23, a month and a half later, the Parliament's bureau convened to prepare the agenda for a legislative session scheduled for June 30. LBCI learned from parliamentary sources that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri refused to include the aforementioned draft law on the session's agenda during the meeting, despite persuasion attempts by MPs Hadi Aboul Hosn and Alain Aoun. Berri insisted on referring it to the sub-committee studying electoral law amendments, justifying his decision by stating, 'Just as I referred the draft law submitted by MP Samy Gemayel, which did not have urgency status, to the sub-committee, I am referring this proposal as well.' Berri's decision sparked outrage among the proponents of the proposal, as they were already aware that the Amal-Hezbollah duo completely rejects the principle of expatriate voting, and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) also opposes abolishing the six seats reserved for expatriates. Given this precise alignment, a crucial question arises: If Speaker Berri maintains his stance and the draft law remains stalled in committees, will MPs from the Lebanese Forces, the Change bloc, the Socialist Party, Armenians, and their allies resort to obstructing Parliament and preventing its sessions from convening by breaking the quorum? For the Lebanese Forces, this option is on the table. However, for others, specifically the PSP MPs, disrupting the Parliament's quorum is not an option, as MP Bilal Abdallah told LBCI. He stated that historically, even in the most challenging circumstances, they have never disrupted the Parliament or any other constitutional institution. Similarly, Armenian MPs who signed the draft law also reject disrupting Parliament. Practically, the 68 MPs who support the draft law to abolish the six seats will not remain 68, or even 65, if the option of disrupting Parliament is tabled. Therefore, if they are faced with a choice between two options —either proceeding with the six seats as MP Gebran Bassil desires or completely abolishing expatriate voting as preferred by the duo —the answer is no answer until this moment. LBC
Ya Libnan
2 days ago
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Iran says nuclear sites ‘badly damaged' by US and Israeli strikes
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows the Isfahan nuclear technology center in Iran after US strikes, Sunday, June 22, 2025. © Maxar Technologies via AP Iran's nuclear facilities were 'badly damaged' by US and Israeli strikes, foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei told Al Jazeera English on Wednesday. The statement contradicted reports from the US media which on Tuesday had cited a classified US intelligence report that found the strikes had set Iran's nuclear programme back by only a matter of months. Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded
