There's much discussion of putting a multinational, NATO-led force in southern Lebanon as part of a ceasefire agreement in the Israel–Lebanon conflict, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a story in the Washington Post, has said that she does “not think that it is anticipated that U.S. ground forces . . . are expected for that force.” However, a well-connected former CIA officer has told me that the Bush Administration is in fact considering exactly such a dep... (more)
Lebanese intelligence services have arrested a spy network working for Israel since long years ago, Lebanese A-Safir daily newspaper reported Saturday.
" The confession of suspects could lead to the exposure of a number of unactive spy cells working for Israel on Lebanese soil," the paper added in an article.
The paper quoted a well-informed source as saying that activities of this spy network exceeded what Mahmoud Rafa network which already uncovered has done. ... (more)
TIBNIN, Lebanon, July 25 - The Israeli shells thundered into the charred hillside above the Tibnin General Hospital. There were two, then another, then two more, the uneven cadence of an attack on Tuesday. The walls shuddered and acrid smoke drifted through the building. Huddled inside were at least 1,350 Lebanese in hallways, rooms, stairwells, a lobby and a basement lit by a few candles, hiding with little water, less food and almost no hope of salvation from a war that provoked their flight a... (more)
BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is proposing an ambitious plan with up to two international military forces that would help the Lebanese government stabilize the situation in southern Lebanon, Lebanese political sources said.
The plan initially would involve putting an international force of up to 10,000 Turkish and Egyptian troops under a NATO or U.N. commander into southern Lebanon following a cease-fire.
TYRE, Lebanon, July 23 - The day ended in Tyre as it began, with a desperate cry of grief.
"Where's my father? Where's my father?" asked Mahmoud Srour, an 8-year-old whose face was burned beyond recognition after an Israeli missile struck the family's car Sunday. His mother, Nouhad, lurched toward his hospital bed, her eyes welling with tears.
"Is he coming?" he asked her.
"Don't worry about your father," she said, her words broken by sobs. ... (more)
TYRE, Lebanon — In the burning haze of the missile strike, Qasim Chaalan thought he had died. But piece by piece, he noticed that he was still there, inside the ambulance. He could still feel his body. He opened his eyes, and discovered he could see.
He and the other medics were lucky: They had survived the blow of an Israeli missile. Dazed and slow, one of the men fumbled for the radio and began, "We have an accident…. " He didn't finish the sentence. A second missil... (more)
Israeli shells killed five people and wounded several others in the Gaza Strip on Monday, including two members of the same family who were riding a donkey cart when they were hit, Palestinian witnesses said. The dead included a 60-year-old woman and her 12-year-old grandson, medics said. The three other Palestinians who were killed Monday were standing outside an apartment building in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Beit Lahiya.
Two were civilians and the third was an off-duty ... (more)
BEIRUT - About 55 percent of all casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years of age or less, hospital records show.
"This is worse than during the Lebanese civil war," Bilal Masri, assistant director of the hospital, one of Beirut's largest, told IPS Monday.
Not only are most of the patients children, but many of the injured have been brought in serious condition, he said. "Now we have a 30 percent fatality rate here in Beirut. T... (more)
The old Lebanese port city of Sidon is bursting at the seams with refugees from the Israeli onslaught against Hizbollah in the south.
Schools, public buildings and private apartments are filled to capacity. Next will be the mosques, a miracle of sectarian goodwill as the local Sunni mufti has agreed to open the places of prayer to the overwhelmingly Shia refugees.
Mayor Abdul Rahman Bizri has set up a command centre at city hall to deal with the human tide that thre... (more)
Monday evening, a 5-year old child was killed and three members of her family were injured in Beit Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. In a separate incident, a child and his grandmother were killed; three residents were injured in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip reported that Israeli tanks stationed on the northern borders of Beit Lahia fired at least two shells at residential towers in Al Nada neighborhood, in the northern par... (more)
Responding to information from WorldNetDaily, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has taken steps to ensure the Senate will not act on a bill that would further a plan to create a European Union-style alliance in North America.
Cornyn made the decision after WND pointed out Friday the legislation – the North American Investment Fund Act – would constitute an attempt to pass a key piece of American University Professor Robert Pastor's plan to create a "North American Union." ... (more)
CHICAGO Israeli bombing raids on television transmission stations this weekend "represent an appalling threat to press freedom," the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said Sunday.
Aidan White said Israel had "once again put media in the front line of the conflict" with the Saturday air raids that hit relay stations used not only by a television channel run by Hezbollah, Al-Manar, but also by the nation's biggest private network, the Lebanese Br... (more)
BRUSSELS — The Israeli military is using chemical weapons during its bombing of Lebanon, a Belgian-Lebanese professor claimed during a press conference in Brussels on Thursday.
The press conference was organised by the secretary of the Tripoli archbishop, Monsignor Jean Abboud. The Belgian professor of Lebanese origin, Bachir Cham, is the head of a hospital in Lebanon.
"The bodies don't look like they normally do. After an explosion there were no traces of blo... (more)
WITH an expression of utmost calm on her blood-masked face, the woman allowed herself to be gently lowered from the minibus into the waiting arms of two Lebanese Red Cross volunteers.
The rescue workers had extracted her through a jagged hole in the roof of the crumpled bus, created by a missile fired minutes earlier by an Israeli helicopter that had blasted the vehicle off the road. Left behind in the vehicle, slumped over each other and soaked in blood, were the bodies of three ... (more)
Nuhader Monsoor cries over her wounded baby, Maria.
TYRE, Lebanon (CNN) -- The last time I sat down to write something, it was about the cost of war. As I looked ahead to the coming days, the last words I wrote were: Who will die?
Today, I found out.
Standing in front of this 8-year-old boy lying in a hospital bed, the "conflict in the Middle East" and the "cost of war" seem endless and suffocating. His pain cannot possibly be imagined as he sh... (more)
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.
A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further... (more)
Israel brushed aside mounting calls yesterday for a ceasefire in Lebanon. Its army made clear that it planned to keep up its assault for at least a week and had not ruled out a ground invasion.
Buoyed by support from Washington for rooting out Hizbollah rockets from southern Lebanon, the army treated parts of the border area as a free-fire zone. It hit at least two cars with rockets as they sought the relative safety of the city of Tyre.
SIDON, LEBANON -- As he mentally girds for war, the signs that things are grim in south Lebanon are all around Nasser Bahjat.
The 40-year-old butcher and Hezbollah reservist was standing next to a building that used to be the head office of an Islamic charity until it was transformed by an air strike yesterday morning into a smoking heap of concrete and metal. The nearby road north was packed with refugees -- sometimes crammed a dozen or more into a single car -- fleeing the slow ... (more)
After a week of protests all around the world against the IDF's operations in Lebanon it was nice to hear different voices on Sunday.
Thousands of Jews and Israel supporters were not scared off by the hot weather – 32 degrees – and dedicate two hours of their day off to hold a demonstration in Los Angeles to support Israel and her war against Hizbullah.
The demonstration, an initiative of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, saw over ten thousand Jews ... (more)
A massive refugee flight from southern Lebanon was under way yesterday as tens of thousands of mainly Shia civilians took to the roads after almost a fortnight of relentless Israeli attacks.
From dawn yesterday, hundreds, then thousands, of cars and rusty trucks choked the narrow mountain roads leading towards Beirut from the bombed and impassable coastal road. Whole extended families were on board. Many had been forced to abandon all they owned.
ISRAEL'S massing of ground forces and Washington's decision to rush precision-guided bombs to the Israeli Air Force signal a new phase in the war.
In a further escalation, Syria said yesterday it would enter the conflict if Israeli ground troops approached its border.
"If Israel invades Lebanon over ground and comes near to us, Syria will not sit tight. She will join the conflict," the Syrian Information Minister, Mohsen Bilal, told the Spanish newspaper ABC. Mr Bil... (more)
