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Hezbollah Rockets Hit Israel’s North as Israel Strikes Beirut Suburbs
Smoke billows over Beirut’s southern suburbs after an Israeli strike, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon October 19, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Israeli strikes pummeled Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday as Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah fired salvos of rockets at northern Israel, with one drone directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home, his spokesman said.
Pledges from Israel and its enemies Hamas and Hezbollah to keep fighting in Gaza and Lebanon have dashed hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might hasten an end to more than a year of escalating war in the Middle East.
Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday.
Israel has been pounding Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, in what it says is an effort to stop Hamas fighters regrouping.
On Saturday afternoon, Israel carried out heavy strikes on several locations in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, leaving thick plumes of smoke wafting over the city horizon throughout the evening.
It issued evacuation orders for four separate neighborhoods within the suburbs, urging residents to get 500 meters (yards) away, but carried out strikes in other parts as well, Reuters witnesses said.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the southern suburbs – once a densely populated zone that also housed Hezbollah offices and underground installations – since Israel began regularly targeting the zone approximately three weeks ago.
An Israeli air attack there on Sept. 27 killed Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, and other strikes in the zone have killed other top figures within the Iran-backed group.
NEW AREA STRUCK
An Israeli strike on Saturday killed two people as they were traveling on Lebanon’s main highway near the Christian-majority town of Jounieh – the first such attack on the area. A spokesperson for Israel’s military said it was looking into it.
Witnesses described passengers running from a car after a blast, then seeing the charred remains of one passenger after a second blast.
Another strike killed at least four people in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, health authorities said. One of them was the mayor of a nearby town, making him the second mayor of a Lebanese town to be killed this week.
Separately, the Israeli military said it killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander of the Bint Jbeil area on Friday and that its troops had seized weapons including anti-tank missiles.
Hezbollah by Saturday evening had claimed at least 20 attacks on Israeli military targets that day, all of them with salvos of rockets. There was no immediate comment from it on any drone attacks or attacks targeting Netanyahu’s home.
In northern Israel, some of the rockets were intercepted but one hit a residential building, police said.
One person was killed and at least nine people were injured in different locations, the Israeli ambulance service said. Air raid sirens sent people running to shelters.
Netanyahu’s spokesman said the prime minister was not in the vicinity of his holiday home in Caesarea and there were no casualties.
Later, Israeli media published a video of Netanyahu walking in a park. “Nothing will deter us, we will keep going until victory,” he said in the video filmed by one of his aides.
STALLED TALKS
Iran-backed Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel since the war between Israel and Palestinian terror group Hamas began in Gaza last October.
Nearly three weeks ago, Israel launched a ground assault inside Lebanon in an attempt to stabilize the border region for its citizens who had fled the fighting.
More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them in the last month, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, while 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the Golan Heights, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 10,000 packages of food and medical supplies were airdropped into Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday in coordination with the United Arab Emirates, the Israeli military said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that oversees administration in the Palestinian Territories, has stepped up deliveries of aid into Gaza amid international pressure to ease a dire humanitarian crisis.
Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, have said Sinwar’s death offered a chance for a deal for a truce in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages.
Negotiations for such a deal have been stalled for weeks.
Biden said on Friday that there was a possibility of working towards a ceasefire in Lebanon but it would be harder in Gaza.
The post Hezbollah Rockets Hit Israel’s North as Israel Strikes Beirut Suburbs first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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