Lebanon: TikTok Gang Bust Exposes Criminal Exploitation of Social Media

An Internal Security Forces patrol in Beirut (ISF Media).
An Internal Security Forces patrol in Beirut (ISF Media).
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Lebanon: TikTok Gang Bust Exposes Criminal Exploitation of Social Media

An Internal Security Forces patrol in Beirut (ISF Media).
An Internal Security Forces patrol in Beirut (ISF Media).

Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces arrested a gang of TikTokers who lure children and molest them, a criminal act shedding light on networks exploiting social media platforms to implicate people in various sorts of crimes.
At least six suspects have been arrested, the ISF said in a statement on Wednesday, including a famous TikToker and three minors also famous on TikTok as part of a gang carrying out sexual assaults against children.
They were of Lebanese, Syrian, and Turkish nationalities.
The scandal uncovered certain criminal networks that were exploiting social media, using it as a tool to falsely incriminate Lebanese individuals in unlawful acts.
A judicial source told Asharq Al-Awsat that preliminary investigations have shown that the matter has been ongoing for months, and that certain factors have helped it be uncovered.
The source assured that the file gains special attention because the victims are children who were “drugged, assaulted and filmed naked to intimidate and blackmail them, and forced to comply with the gang’s demands”.
He affirmed that the judiciary will impose the harshest measures and penalties against this gang and all those colluding with its leaders, “some of whom are known professionally and socially”.
“The ISF’s Intelligence Unit and the office of combating financial crimes, as well as the General Security apparatus, are working to track down dangerous gangs that plan to implicate people in crimes,” a security source told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“In the last three years, the agencies have gotten hold of a substantial number of networks exploiting social media to lure people and implicate them in drug, prostitution, and theft networks. Mossad networks and its agents have also succeeded in recruiting many Lebanese youth through these means”, he added on condition of anonymity.
The source noted that criminals have exploited Lebanon’s economic and financial crisis taking advantage of the victims who need money.
“The economic crisis has also affected the capabilities of the security services, and has limited their role in the field of proactive security,” he said.
He noted that the state has failed to provide modern and sophisticated technologies capable of monitoring these networks, and also prevented the training of investigative agencies to keep pace, track and prosecute the development of network activities.



Israel Flattens Rafah Ruins; Gazans Fear Plan to Herd Them There 

Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
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Israel Flattens Rafah Ruins; Gazans Fear Plan to Herd Them There 

Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah amid ongoing Israeli military operations arrive in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)

Israel's army is flattening the remaining ruins of the city of Rafah on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, residents say, in what they fear is a part of a plan to herd the population into confinement in a giant camp on the barren ground.

No food or medical supplies have reached the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip in nearly two months, since Israel imposed what has since become its longest ever total blockade of the territory, following the collapse of a six-week ceasefire.

Israel relaunched its ground campaign in mid-March and has since seized swathes of land and ordered residents out of what it says are "buffer zones" around Gaza's edges, including all of Rafah which comprises around 20 percent of the Strip.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Saturday that the military was setting up a new "humanitarian zone" in Rafah, to which civilians would be moved after security checks to keep out Hamas fighters. Aid would be distributed by private companies.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the report and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Residents said massive explosions could now be heard unceasingly from the dead zone where Rafah had once stood as a city of 300,000 people.

"Explosions never stop, day and night, whenever the ground shakes, we know they are destroying more homes in Rafah. Rafah is gone," Tamer, a Gaza City man displaced in Deir Al-Balah, further north, told Reuters by text message.

He said he was getting phone calls from friends as far away as across the border in Egypt whose children were being kept awake by the explosions.

Abu Mohammed, another displaced man in Gaza, told Reuters by text: "We are terrified that they could force us into Rafah, which is going to be like a cage of a concentration camp, completely sealed off from the world."

Israel, which imposed its total blockade on Gaza on March 2, says enough supplies reached the territory in the previous six weeks of the truce that it does not believe the population is at risk. It says it says it cannot allow in food or medicine because Hamas fighters would exploit it.

United Nations agencies say Gazans are on the precipice of mass hunger and disease, with conditions now at their worst since the war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli communities.

Gaza health officials said on Monday at least 23 people had been killed in the latest Israeli strikes across the Strip.

At least 10, some of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia in the north and six were killed in an airstrike on a cafe in the south. Footage circulating on social media showed some victims critically injured as they sat around a table at the cafe.

EATING WEEDS AND TURTLES

Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to extend the ceasefire, during which Hamas released 38 hostages and Israel released hundreds of prisoners and detainees.

Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in Gaza, fewer than half of them believed to be alive. Hamas says it would free them only under a deal that ended the war; Israel says it will agree only to temporary pauses in fighting unless Hamas is completely disarmed, which the fighters reject.

In Doha, Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday that efforts to reach a new ceasefire in Gaza had made some progress.

On Friday, the World Food Program said it had run out of food stocks in Gaza after the longest closure the Gaza Strip had ever faced.

Some residents toured the streets looking for weeds that grow naturally on the ground, others picked up dry leaves from trees. Desperate enough, fishermen turned to catching turtles, skinning them and selling their meat.

"I went to the doctor the other day, and he said I had some stones in my kidney and I needed surgery that would cost me around $300. I told him I would rather not use painkiller and use the money to buy food for my children," one Gaza City woman told Reuters, asking not to be identified for fear of retribution.

"There is no meat, no cooking gas, no flour, and no life, this is Gaza in simple but painful terms."

The Gaza war started after Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza in the October, 2023 attacks, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's offensive on the enclave killed more than 51,400, according to Palestinian health officials.