Lebanese President Says Hezbollah Disarmament Will Come through Dialogue Not ‘Force’ 

President Joseph Aoun in Baabda on Feb. 11, 2025. (AFP)
President Joseph Aoun in Baabda on Feb. 11, 2025. (AFP)
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Lebanese President Says Hezbollah Disarmament Will Come through Dialogue Not ‘Force’ 

President Joseph Aoun in Baabda on Feb. 11, 2025. (AFP)
President Joseph Aoun in Baabda on Feb. 11, 2025. (AFP)

Lebanon's president said Monday that the disarmament of the Hezbollah group will come through negotiations as part of a national defense strategy and not through “force.”

The Lebanese government has made a decision that “weapons will only be in the hands of the state,” but there are “discussions around how to implement this decision,” President Joseph Aoun said in an interview with Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera.

Those discussions are in the form of a “bilateral dialogue” between the presidency and Hezbollah, he said.

Lebanon has been under pressure by the United States to speed up the disarmament of Hezbollah but there are fears within Lebanon that forcing the issue could lead to civil conflict.

“Civil peace is a red line for me,” Aoun said.

Aoun said the Lebanese army — of which he was formerly commander — is “doing its duty” in confiscating weapons and dismantling unauthorized military facilities in southern Lebanon, as outlined in the ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in late November, and sometimes in areas farther north.



Gaza Civil Defense Says Six Killed in Israeli Strikes

A Palestinian man carries items he salvaged from a house targeted in an Israeli strike at the Nuseirat camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 24, 2025. (AFP)
A Palestinian man carries items he salvaged from a house targeted in an Israeli strike at the Nuseirat camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 24, 2025. (AFP)
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Gaza Civil Defense Says Six Killed in Israeli Strikes

A Palestinian man carries items he salvaged from a house targeted in an Israeli strike at the Nuseirat camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 24, 2025. (AFP)
A Palestinian man carries items he salvaged from a house targeted in an Israeli strike at the Nuseirat camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 24, 2025. (AFP)

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least six people on Saturday across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has ramped up its military offensive in recent days.

"Our teams have recovered at least six dead," civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

He said a couple were killed with their two young children in a pre-dawn strike on a house in the Amal quarter of the southern city of Khan Younis.

Another two people were killed in a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the territory, he said.

The Israeli military said it was unable to comment on individual strikes without their "precise geographical coordinates".

Israel resumed operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire.

Gaza's health ministry said Friday that at least 3,673 people had been killed in the territory since then, taking the war's overall toll to 53,822, mostly civilians.

Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Gunmen also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Palestinians were enduring "the cruelest phase" of the war in Gaza, where more than a dozen food trucks were looted following the partial easing of a lengthy Israeli blockade.

The World Food Program called on Israel "to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster", saying: "Hunger, desperation, and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming, is contributing to rising insecurity."

Aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip restarted on Monday for the first time since March 2, amid mounting condemnation of the Israeli blockade, which has resulted in severe shortages of food and medicines.