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Hezbollah Fighting Israeli Troops Near Lebanon's Ramiya Village; Third UN Peacekeeper Wounded

FILE - UN peacekeepers hold their flag, as they observe Israeli excavators attempt to destroy tunnels built by Hezbollah, near the southern Lebanese-Israeli border village of Mays al-Jabal, Lebanon, Dec. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
FILE - UN peacekeepers hold their flag, as they observe Israeli excavators attempt to destroy tunnels built by Hezbollah, near the southern Lebanese-Israeli border village of Mays al-Jabal, Lebanon, Dec. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
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Hezbollah Fighting Israeli Troops Near Lebanon's Ramiya Village; Third UN Peacekeeper Wounded

FILE - UN peacekeepers hold their flag, as they observe Israeli excavators attempt to destroy tunnels built by Hezbollah, near the southern Lebanese-Israeli border village of Mays al-Jabal, Lebanon, Dec. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
FILE - UN peacekeepers hold their flag, as they observe Israeli excavators attempt to destroy tunnels built by Hezbollah, near the southern Lebanese-Israeli border village of Mays al-Jabal, Lebanon, Dec. 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Hezbollah said on Sunday it was fighting Israeli forces trying to infiltrate Ramiya village in southern Lebanon, as a third UN peacekeeper was wounded in Israel's escalating conflict with the Iran-backed Lebanese group.
Israeli strikes have shook the peacekeepers' main base in southern Lebanon, prompting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Western countries to condemn the attacks. The UNIFIL force called it a "serious development" and said the security of UN personnel and property must be guaranteed, according to Reuters.
France summoned Israel's ambassador, and issued a statement with Italy and Spain calling such attacks "unjustifiable". US President Joe Biden said he was asking Israel not to hit the UNIFIL forces. Russia said it was "outraged" and demanded Israel refrain from "hostile actions" against peacekeepers.
Israeli military strikes on Gaza on Saturday killed at least 29 Palestinians, medics said, and forces kept pushing deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped.
Residents in Jabalia, in the north of the enclave and the largest of its historic refugee camps, said it was being pounded by Israeli forces from the air and ground.
The Israeli army said Hezbollah had fired nearly 320 projectiles from Lebanon into Israel on Saturday, without giving further details. It declared areas around some towns in north Israel closed to the public.
Evacuation orders were issued to residents of 23 southern Lebanese villages to move north of the Awali River, which flows from the western Bekaa Valley into the Mediterranean.
The military said evacuations were necessary for the safety of residents due to increased Hezbollah activities, claiming the group is using sites to conceal weapons and launch attacks on Israel. Hezbollah denies concealing weapons among civilians.
Israeli military also published new evacuation orders on Saturday for two neighborhoods on the north edge of Gaza City, saying it was a "dangerous combat zone". In a statement, Gaza's Hamas-run interior ministry urged residents not to relocate.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants erupted one year ago when the Iranian-backed group began launching rockets at northern Israel in support of Hamas, at the start of the Gaza war.
Israel has intensified its military operations in recent weeks, bombing southern Lebanon, Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, killing many of Hezbollah's top leaders, and sending ground troops across the border. Hezbollah for its part has fired rockets deeper into Israel.
Israel's expanded operation has displaced more than 1.2 million people, according to Lebanon's government, which says more than 2,100 people have been killed and 10,000 wounded in over a year of fighting. The toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but includes scores of women and children.
US CALLS FOR 'DIPLOMATIC PATHWAY'
The Middle East remains on high alert for further escalation, awaiting Israel's response to an Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1, which was in retaliation for Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the Iranian capital Tehran.
In a sign of a spreading conflict, a Syrian security source said the US-led coalition in Syria had targeted Iran-linked sites near northeastern Syria's Deir el-Zor airport on Friday night.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said on Saturday that a third peacekeeper was wounded in an Israeli strike when he was hit by gunfire on Friday, adding that the man was stable after undergoing surgery to remove the bullet.
The UNIFIL statement also said its position in the southern Lebanese town of Ramyah sustained significant damage due to explosions following nearby shelling, but did not specify who was responsible for either attack.
Two UN peacekeepers were wounded by an Israeli strike near their watchtower at the UNIFIL's main base in Naqoura in southern Lebanon on Friday. UNIFIL has more than 10,000 personnel, with Italy, France, Malaysia, Indonesia and India among the biggest contributors.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a call with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, expressed "deep concern" about reports that Israeli forces had fired on UN peacekeeping positions in Lebanon in recent days and urged Israel to ensure safety for them and the Lebanese military, the Pentagon said.
Austin also "reinforced the need to pivot from military operations in Lebanon to a diplomatic pathway as soon as feasible," according to the Pentagon statement.
Israel has rejected calls by the United States and other allies for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza.

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In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
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In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP

School lessons ended in Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.
"I am playing football"; "She is eating an apple"; "The boys are flying a kite" are written in English.
Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria's years of civil war.
And as the kids chase through clouds of concrete dust, a torture victim -- freed from jail this month when opposition factions toppled Bashar al-Assad's government -- hobbles through the rubble.
"Since I left the prison until now, I sleep one or two hours max," 30-year-old Mahmud Khaled Ajaj told AFP.
Since 1957, Yarmuk has been a 2.1-square-kilometer (519-acre) "refugee camp" for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the modern Israeli state.
Shattered city
Like similar camps across the Middle East, over the decades it has become a dense urban community of multi-storey concrete housing blocks and businesses.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria's conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees.
Rebellion, air strikes and a siege by government forces had devastated the area and left by September this year only 8,160 people still clinging to life in the ruins.
With Assad's fall, more may return to reopen the damaged schools and mosques, but many like Ajaj will have terrible tales to tell of Assad's persecution.
The former Free Syrian Army opposition fighter spent seven years in government custody, most of it at the notorious Saydnaya prison, and was only released when Assad's rule ended on December 8.
Ajaj's face is still paler than those of his neighbors, who are tanned from sitting outside ruined homes, and he walks awkwardly with a back brace after years of beatings.
At one point, a prison doctor injected him in the spine and partly paralyzed him -- he thinks on purpose -- but what really haunts him was the hunger in his packed cell.
"My neighbors and relatives know that I had little food, so they bring me food and fruit. I don't sleep if the food is not next to me. The bread, especially the bread," he said.
"Yesterday, we had bread leftovers," he said, relishing being outside after his windowless group cell, and ignoring calls from his family to come to see a concerned aunt.
"My parents usually keep them for the birds to feed them. I told them: 'Give part of them to the birds and keep the rest for me. Even if they are dry or old I want them for me'."
As Ajaj spoke to AFP, two passing Palestinian women paused to see if he had any news of missing relatives since Syria's ousted leader fled to Russia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances under Assad's rule.
Ajaj's ordeal was extreme, but the entire Yarmuk community has suffered on the frontline of Assad's war for survival, with Palestinians roped into fighting on both sides.
Bullets lodged
The graveyard is cratered by air strikes. Families struggle to find the tombs of their dead amid the devastation. The scars left by mortar strikes dot empty basketball courts.
Here and there, bulldozers are trying to shift rubble and the homeless try to scavenge re-usable debris. Some find work, but others struggle with trauma.
Haitham Hassan al-Nada, a lively and wild-eyed 28-year-old, invited an AFP reporter to run his hand over lumps he says are bullets still lodged in his skull and hands.
His father, a local trader, supports him and his wife and two children after Assad's forces shot him and left him for dead as a deserter from the government side.
Nada told AFP he fled service because, as a Palestinian, he did not think he should have to serve in Syrian forces. He was caught and shot multiple times, he said.
"They called my mother after they 'killed' me, so she went to the airport road, towards Najha. They told her 'This is the dog's body, the deserter'," he said.
"They didn't wash my body, and when she was kissing me to say goodbye before they buried me, suddenly and by God's power, it's unbelievable, I took a deep breath."
After Nada was released from hospital, he returned to Yarmuk and found a scene of devastation.