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/ 22 November 2006
Lebanon was on a knife-edge on Wednesday, with the assassination of another leading anti-Syrian politician adding to fears the country may be again torn apart by civil strife. Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, scion of one of the country’s most prominent Christian families, was gunned down on Tuesday in an attack that drew condemnation from world leaders.
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/ 21 November 2006
Lebanese Christian Cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel, an outspoken critic of Syria, was assassinated near Beirut on Tuesday, plunging Lebanon deeper into a crisis that threatens to destabilise the country. At least three gunmen rammed their car into Gemayel’s vehicle, then leapt out and riddled it with bullets, witnesses said.
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/ 13 November 2006
Lebanon’s political crisis deepened on Monday as the last pro-Syrian minister quit the Cabinet shortly before it met to discuss the framework of a special court to try killers of a former prime minister. The anti-Syrian majority coalition has accused Hezbollah of carrying out a Syrian-Iranian plan to overthrow the Western-backed government.
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/ 1 November 2006
Saddam Hussein does not fear execution and will either face the death penalty for crimes against humanity or return as president of Iraq, one of his lawyers said in Beirut on Wednesday. ”President Saddam Hussein does not fear execution,” Lebanese lawyer Bushra Khalil said, four days before an Iraqi court is due to issue a verdict on whether Saddam is guilty or innocent.
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/ 30 September 2006
Lebanon said on Saturday that it had been informed by United Nations peacekeepers that Israel was finally poised to complete its promised pull-out from the south. A government spokesperson said the commander of the UN force in Lebanon had told Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora that Israel would pull out the last of its troops on Sunday.
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/ 25 September 2006
Archaeologists excavating a necropolis uncovered by construction workers in Beirut only two weeks before war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel had to stop work this summer when Israeli bombs started falling on the country. The first bombs to strike the centre of the capital during the 34-day war hit only about 100m away.
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/ 19 September 2006
Israel dropped at least 350Â 000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hezbollah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians. ”The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,” said David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon.
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/ 8 September 2006
Israel lifted its eight-week sea blockade of Lebanon on Friday after an interim maritime task force, led by an Italian admiral, deployed off the Lebanese coast, the commander of the United Nations peacekeepers said.
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/ 7 September 2006
Israel began on Thursday to lift a blockade of Lebanon imposed when it went to war with Hezbollah guerrillas eight weeks ago, and a Lebanese airliner landed at Beirut’s patched-up airport to mark the moment. The Middle East Airlines flight from Paris circled over Beirut to celebrate the demise of the air embargo after intense diplomacy led by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
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/ 6 September 2006
Israel said on Wednesday it would lift an eight-week-old air and sea blockade of Lebanon on Thursday, handing over control to international forces. It said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been told by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan that ”international forces are ready to take over control posts”.
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/ 6 September 2006
Israel said on Wednesday it could gradually dismantle its blockade of Lebanon as Lebanese and United Nations forces control entry points to stop Hezbollah rearming, and the UN commander in the south said a breakthrough could be close.
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/ 5 September 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday he hoped for word on the lifting of an Israeli blockade on Lebanon within two days as the shape of a carefully orchestrated deal involving France, Italy and Germany emerged. In Egypt Annan said he hoped the next 48 hours would bring ”positive” news on the lifting of the Israeli embargo.
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/ 5 September 2006
Lebanese troops moved on Tuesday into a town wrecked by Israel’s war with Hezbollah, as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said he hoped for word on the lifting of an Israeli blockade on Lebanon within two days. Troops in armoured carriers, trucks and jeeps rolled into the shattered Shi’ite Muslim town of Bint Jbeil that was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting.
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/ 5 September 2006
The line snaked past the Canadian embassy in Beirut on a sweltering afternoon. Sandra fanned herself with the visa application she prayed was her ticket out of Lebanon. ”I can’t live here any more,” said the 35-year-old university researcher, who gave only her first name. ”This war was the final straw.”
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/ 4 September 2006
The commander of United Nations peacekeepers said a joint meeting with Lebanese and Israeli officers on Monday had brought closer a full Israeli troop withdrawal from south Lebanon, in line with a UN resolution. Major General Alain Pelligrini met representatives of the Lebanese and Israeli armies at his headquarters in the southern Lebanese port of Naquora.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan will see the destruction in southern Lebanon at first hand on Tuesday when he visits the area during a Middle East tour designed to cement a truce between Israel and Hezbollah. On the first stop of his tour, Annan issued a warning in Beirut on Monday that all sides must fully implement UN Security Council resolution 1701 or face a possible new war.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan told Lebanese ministers on Monday he wanted the two Israeli soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah sparked a 34-day war with Israel to be handed to the Red Cross, a government source said.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan will discuss the deployment and role of a planned 15Â 000-strong peacekeeping force for southern Lebanon when he visits Beirut on Monday. Other issues are likely to include the lifting of an Israeli air and sea blockade of Lebanon, policing of the Lebanese-Syrian border to stop arms smuggling and a possible prisoner swap.
France will greatly increase the size of the contingent it is promising for a peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, possibly making it easier to recruit other nations, officials and diplomats said on Thursday. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema said he expected French President Jacques Chirac to announce a ”substantial increase” in the contribution.
The front door of the seaside Hotel Monroe is padlocked but a uniformed soldier greets visitors who enter through the back. "Do you want to rent a room?" he asks from behind his desk. Forget it. The high-rise hotel has been closed "since the aggression" by Israel last month and there is no sign of when it will reopen, says the soldier who was not authorised to speak and did not give his name.
Three Lebanese soldiers were killed on Wednesday while clearing unexploded Israeli shells in southern Lebanon, underscoring the dangers of a region awaiting the deployment of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers. The three men were the first Lebanese troops to die since the army began moving south last Thursday.
Italy has offered to lead a United Nations force for Lebanon, but a week after a truce calmed Israel’s war with Hezbollah guerrillas, few other countries with proven military capacity have made substantial commitments. European Union countries are meeting on Wednesday to discuss concerns about clear rules of engagement for the force.
United States President George Bush called on Monday for the urgent deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force to southern Lebanon to shore up a week-old truce between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. He said there will be another UN resolution on the rules for such a force. ”First things first will be to get the rules of engagement clear,” he told a news conference in Washington.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the situation in Lebanon as ”very fragile” on Monday as a truce between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas entered its second week. Merkel said it was vital to get United Nations peacekeeping troops to the area quickly to prevent a rekindling of the conflict, in which nearly 1Â 200 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis died.
Israeli aircraft and commandos raided a Hezbollah bastion in eastern Lebanon on Saturday in the first big attack since a truce halted Israel’s 34-day war with the guerrillas, Lebanese military and Hezbollah sources said. Three Hezbollah guerrillas were killed in a firefight with the Israeli commandos, Lebanese security sources said.
Hezbollah handed out bundles of cash on Friday to people whose homes were wrecked by Israeli bombing, consolidating the Iranian-backed group’s support among Lebanon’s Shi’ites and embarrassing the Beirut government. ”This is a very, very reasonable amount. It is not small,” said Ayman Jaber (27).
Lebanese army troops prepared to move on Friday to the edge of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, the main flashpoint for fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas before the war that a United Nations truce has halted. Trying to consolidate the five-day-old truce, the UN said it has received substantial offers of more troops for Lebanon.
Armed only with shovels and plastic buckets, a few dozen volunteers struggled on Thursday to scrape oil-stained sand off a Beirut beach as environmental groups began the monumental task of cleaning up tonnes of oil spilt across Lebanon’s coast. ”This is the biggest environmental disaster in the Mediterranean basin, we can say that very easily,” said environmental group Green Line.
Lebanon’s government on Wednesday ordered 15Â 000 troops to move south to take full control, with United Nations peacekeepers, when Israeli troops withdraw after a 34-day war with Hezbollah guerrillas. Officials said Lebanese troops would deploy south of the Litani River, about 20km from the Israeli border, on Thursday.
Israeli forces began leaving parts of south Lebanon on Tuesday as a United Nations truce largely held for a second day and the Lebanese army prepared to move south. Thousands of refugees who had fled the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah headed home to battered villages in the south.
A fragile United Nations-ordered truce took hold in Lebanon on Monday after a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, prompting thousands of refugees to rush back to blitzed villages in the south. Heavy fighting, along with Israeli air strikes and Hezbollah rocket fire, ceased after the 7am South African time deadline.
Heavy fighting in southern Lebanon stopped abruptly on Monday after a United Nations-brokered truce came into effect, but reports that Israeli troops killed a Hezbollah guerrilla underlined the fragility of the truce. Army Radio and the Haaretz newspaper’s website said the Hezbollah fighter was shot dead after he opened fire on Israeli troops in south-west Lebanon.