Supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah blocked main roads in Beirut with burning barricades on Wednesday, paralysing the city and deepening the pro-Iranian group’s conflict with the United States-backed government. They set ablaze old cars and tyres to block the main road to Beirut’s international airport, where air traffic was suspended because of a strike
Lebanon’s presidential election was postponed to March 25 from Tuesday, the Parliament speaker said on Monday, the 16th delay of a vote derailed by the worst political crisis since the 1975 to 1990 civil war. The new election date set by speaker Nabih Berri is just four days before an Arab summit in Damascus.
No image available
/ 14 February 2008
Three years after Rafik al-Hariri’s assassination, the crisis unleashed by his death opens ever deeper rifts in Lebanon and threatens the state and society the leader tried to rebuild after the civil war. The February 14 anniversary of al-Hariri’s death has become a symbol for divisions between the heirs to his legacy and their opponents.
No image available
/ 20 September 2007
Lebanon mourned on Thursday an anti-Syrian member of Parliament whose assassination plunged the country deeper into crisis and threatened to derail efforts to elect a new president. Banks, schools and government offices closed a day after a car bomb killed Christian Phalange Party parliamentarian Antoine Ghanem.
Palestinian leaders on Monday sought to end a bloody stand-off between the Lebanese army and Islamist militants holed up in a refugee camp. The government is giving the main Palestinian factions time to try to deal with the Fatah al-Islam group, which has been battling the army around the Nahr al-Bared camp.
Israel’s army thrust deeper into Lebanon on Saturday and its commander said he would keep fighting Hezbollah guerrillas, despite a United Nations Security Council demand for a ”full cessation of hostilities” in the month-old war. Air strikes killed up to 20 people in Lebanon, hours after the council adopted a resolution aimed at ending the conflict.
Israeli air strikes killed 14 villagers in south Lebanon on Tuesday as Beirut pleaded for a swift end to Israel’s war with Hezbollah guerrillas that has cost up to 1 000 Lebanese and 100 Israeli lives in four weeks. Diplomats at the United Nations in New York said a vote on a resolution to end the war might not take place before Thursday as fighting in south Lebanon raged on.
Waves of Israeli air strikes destroyed three highway bridges north of Beirut on Friday, forcing United Nations relief agencies to cancel several convoys of aid for the 900 000 people displaced by the conflict. The Israeli air force’s bombing of bridges in the Christian heartlands north of the capital cut off the main coastal highway to Syria.
The Israeli army on Friday prepared for a possible push deeper into southern Lebanon to drive out Hezbollah which threatened to launch rockets further into Israel if it hits central Beirut. While world powers worked on a United Nations resolution to end the 24-day-long conflict, Israeli jets targeted Hezbollah offices and the house of a senior guerrilla leader in southern Beirut.
Hezbollah pledged on Saturday to deny the United States and Israel any political gains from the war in Lebanon as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Jerusalem to discuss ways to end the 18-day-old conflict. Israel rejected as unnecessary a United Nations plea for a truce to aid civilians trapped by fighting.