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In First, Lebanese Resistance Brigades Join Military Operations against Israel in the South

Family and the wife of Israeli reservist Master Sgt. Valeri Chefonov gather around his grave during his funeral at the military cemetery in Netanya, Israel, on Friday, July 12, 2024. Chefonov, 33, was killed, in northern Israel on Thursday in an explosive drone attack from Lebanon. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Family and the wife of Israeli reservist Master Sgt. Valeri Chefonov gather around his grave during his funeral at the military cemetery in Netanya, Israel, on Friday, July 12, 2024. Chefonov, 33, was killed, in northern Israel on Thursday in an explosive drone attack from Lebanon. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
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In First, Lebanese Resistance Brigades Join Military Operations against Israel in the South

Family and the wife of Israeli reservist Master Sgt. Valeri Chefonov gather around his grave during his funeral at the military cemetery in Netanya, Israel, on Friday, July 12, 2024. Chefonov, 33, was killed, in northern Israel on Thursday in an explosive drone attack from Lebanon. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Family and the wife of Israeli reservist Master Sgt. Valeri Chefonov gather around his grave during his funeral at the military cemetery in Netanya, Israel, on Friday, July 12, 2024. Chefonov, 33, was killed, in northern Israel on Thursday in an explosive drone attack from Lebanon. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

The Lebanese Resistance Brigades, a Lebanese paramilitary group affiliated with Hezbollah, claimed responsibility on Saturday for a military operation against Israel in southern Lebanon.
The announcement is the first for the group, founded by Hezbollah in 1997, since the Israeli war on Gaza. The group includes volunteer fighters from different sects in Lebanon.
According to a statement issued by the Brigades on Friday, it began its engagement in the war by shelling with rockets the Israeli 'Rweisat al-Qarn' site in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms, scoring a “direct hit”, it said.
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading near daily exchanges of fire since the Israel-Hamas war broke out last year.
Hezbollah says it is striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-allied group that ignited the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. The group’s leadership says it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in Gaza, and that while it does not want war, it is ready for one.
Diplomatic talks to end the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah have failed so far.
Hezbollah and the Lebanese government rejected Israel’s demands to evacuate the border area in Lebanon from Hezbollah fighters.
The parliamentary bloc of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah, made that clear by welcoming any international efforts aiming at quelling Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The bloc affirmed “rejection of discussions regarding the establishment of buffer zones on Lebanon’s sovereign territory, whether in southern Lebanon or in its north."
Meanwhile cross-border fire continues in south Lebanon. A Lebanese army vehicle of type 'Humvee' came under Israeli machine gun fire from the village of Ghajar near Wazzani.
Reports said the vehicle was directly hit with four bullets. However, the personnel miraculously escaped unharmed from this attack.

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Arab World

UN Races to Feed One Million Gazans after Truce

People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)
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UN Races to Feed One Million Gazans after Truce

People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)

The UN's World Food Program said Sunday it was moving full throttle to get food to as many Gazans as possible after border crossings reopened as part of a long-awaited ceasefire deal.

"We're trying to reach a million people within the shortest possible time," the WFP's Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told AFP, as the Rome-based UN agency's trucks began rolling into the strip.

"We're moving in with wheat flour, ready to eat meals, and we will be working all fronts trying to restock the bakeries," Skau said, adding the agency would attempt to provide nutritional supplements to the most malnourished.

An initial 42-day truce between Israel and Hamas is meant to enable a surge of sorely needed humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory after 15 months of war.

"The agreement is for 600 trucks a day... All the crossings will be open," Skau said.

The first WFP trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south and through the Zikim crossing in the north, the agency said in a statement, as it began trying to pull "the war-ravaged territory back from starvation".

"We have 150 trucks lined up for every day for the next at least 20 days," Skau said, adding that the WFP was "hopeful that the border crossings will be open and efficient".

There needs to be "an environment inside (Gaza) that is secure enough for our teams to move around," so that food "does not just get over the border but also gets into the hands of the people".

"It seems so far that things have been working relatively well.... We need to now sustain that over several days over weeks," he said.

Before the ceasefire came into effect, WFP was operating just five out of the 20 bakeries it partners with due to dwindling supplies of fuel and flour, as well as insecurity in northern Gaza.

"We're hoping that we will be up and running on all those bakeries as soon as possible," Skau said, stressing that it was "one of our top priorities" to get bread to "tens of thousands of people each day".

"It also has a psychological effect to be able to put warm bread into the hands of the people".

WFP also wants to "get the private sector and commercial goods in there as soon as possible," he said.

That would mean the UN agency could replace ready meals with vouchers and cash for people to buy their own food "to bring back some dignity" and allow them "frankly to start rebuilding their lives".

WFP said in a statement that it has enough food pre-positioned along the borders -- and on its way to Gaza -- to feed over a million people for three months.

Vast areas of Gaza have been devastated by Israel's retaliatory assault on the territory after the October 7 Hamas attack last year sparked the war.

The attack, the deadliest in Israel's history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 46,913 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.