Hezbollah Deputy Chief Says Group Aims to Inflict Pain on Israel

People watch Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivering a televised address, as they sit in a cafe in Beirut, Lebanon October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
People watch Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivering a televised address, as they sit in a cafe in Beirut, Lebanon October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Hezbollah Deputy Chief Says Group Aims to Inflict Pain on Israel

People watch Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivering a televised address, as they sit in a cafe in Beirut, Lebanon October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
People watch Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivering a televised address, as they sit in a cafe in Beirut, Lebanon October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Hezbollah's deputy chief Naim Qassem said on Tuesday the Iran-backed group would inflict "pain" on Israel but he also called for a ceasefire as a conflict rages between them in south Lebanon.

Israel has been turning up the heat on Hezbollah since it began incursions into the region after killing Hezbollah leaders and commanders, including its veteran secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah last month in the biggest blow to the group in decades.

"The solution is a ceasefire, we are not speaking from a position of weakness, if the Israelis do not want that, we will continue," Qassem said in a recorded speech, Reuters reported.

"But after the ceasefire, according to an indirect agreement, the settlers would return to the north and other steps will be drawn up."

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which says its operation in Lebanon aims to secure the return of tens of thousands of residents forced to flee their homes in northern Israel because of Hezbollah attacks.

Qassem said Hezbollah reserved the right to attack anywhere in Israel because its enemy has done the same in Lebanon. He said more Israelis will be displaced and "hundreds of thousands, even more than two million, will be in danger at any time, at any hour, on any day".

"We will focus on targeting the Israeli military and its centers and barracks," he said.

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue to attack Hezbollah "without mercy, everywhere in Lebanon – including Beirut".

Israel has issued military evacuation orders affecting more than a quarter of Lebanon, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday, two weeks after the Israeli military began incursions into south Lebanon to battle Hezbollah.

The figures underscore the heavy price Lebanese are paying as Israel tries to defeat the Iran-backed militant group and destroy its infrastructure in their one-year-old conflict.

The UN refugee agency's Middle East director, Rema Jamous Imseis, said new Israeli evacuation orders to 20 villages in southern Lebanon meant that over a quarter of the country was now affected.

"People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they're fleeing with almost nothing," she told a briefing in Geneva.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,309 people over the last year, the Lebanese government said, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced.

The majority have been killed since late September when Israel expanded its military campaign.

Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed, according to Israel.

Israel expanded its bombing campaign in Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 22 people in an airstrike in the north on a house where displaced people were seeking refuge from Israeli strikes further south, health officials said.

"What we are hearing is that amongst the 22 people killed were 12 women and two children," UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said of Monday's strike on Christian-majority Aitou.

He called for an investigation into the strike which he said has raised concerns with respect to "the laws of war".

Rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the rubble in Aitou on Tuesday, local media reported. Israel has not commented on the Aitou strike, but says it takes all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

 

- CONCERN AT ATTACKS ON PEACEKEEPERS

 

The main focus of Israel's military operations in Lebanon has been in the Bekaa Valley in the east, the suburbs of Beirut and in the south, where UN peacekeepers say Israeli fire has hit their bases on numerous occasions and wounded peacekeepers.

Israel's military said about 20 projectiles crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory after sirens sounded in the Haifa Bay and Upper Galilee areas, and that some were intercepted.

The mass displacement in Lebanon during Israel's war has revived the specter of sectarian strife.

Lebanon's population consists of more than a dozen religious sects, with political representation divided along sectarian lines. Religious divisions fuelled the ferocity of a 1975-1990 civil war that killed some 150,000 people and drew in neighbouring states.

The US has stood by Israel in its conflicts despite concerns over civilian casualties. The Pentagon said components for an advanced anti-missile system began arriving in Israel on Monday and that it would be fully operational in the near future, according to a statement on Tuesday.

The Israel-Hezbollah conflict resumed a year ago when the militant group began firing rockets at Israel in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.

The Middle East, meanwhile, remains on alert for Israel to retaliate against Iran for an Oct. 1 barrage of missiles launched in response to Israel's assaults on Lebanon.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
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Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

There are "reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity" are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan's western Darfur region, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said.

Outlining her office's probe of the devastating conflict which has raged since 2023, Nazhat Shameem Khan told the UN Security Council that it was "difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur," AFP reported.

"On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity, have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur," she said.

The prosecutor's office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighboring Chad.

She detailed an "intolerable" humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that "famine is escalating" as aid is unable to reach "those in dire need."

"People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized," Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become "common practice."

"And yet we should not be under any illusion, things can still get worse."

The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.

In 2023, the ICC opened a fresh probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF's predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.

ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.

"I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population -- they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past," said Khan.

"But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court," she added.