Desperate Deja Vu for Foreign War Doctors in Lebanon

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza in 2014 - AFP
Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza in 2014 - AFP
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Desperate Deja Vu for Foreign War Doctors in Lebanon

Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza in 2014 - AFP
Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza in 2014 - AFP

In a south Lebanon hospital, Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert peered out of the window after bombardment near the Israeli border, four decades after he first worked in the country.

"It's a horrible experience," he said in a video call from the southern town of Nabatiyeh.

"It's been 42 years and nothing has changed," said Gilbert, who first saw war treating patients during the 1982 Israeli invasion and siege of Beirut.

The anaesthetist and emergency medicine specialist said he had seen just a few cases since arriving on Tuesday.

"Most of the cases have been south of us and they have not been able to evacuate them because the attacks have been so vicious," AFP quoted Gilbert saying.

Israel has increased its airstrikes against in Lebanon since September 23, pounding the south of the country and later staging what it called "limited operations" across the border.

On Thursday the Israeli army warned residents to leave Nabatiyeh.

The escalation has killed more than 1,100 people and wounded at least another 3,600, and pushed upwards of a million people to flee their homes, according to government figures.

Official media have reported some Israeli strikes killing entire families, and AFP has spoken to two people who lost 17 relatives and 10 family members respectively.

- Gaza on 'repeat' -

Israel's military "can do whatever they want to healthcare, to ambulances, to churches, to mosques, to universities, as they've been doing in Gaza," said Gilbert, who has repeatedly volunteered in the Palestinian territory during past conflicts.

"And now we see the same repeat itself in Lebanon in 2024."

A hospital in the town of Bint Jbeil closer to the border on Saturday said it was hit by heavy overnight Israeli strikes, wounding nine medical and nursing staff, most seriously.

At least four hospitals said they had suspended work amid ongoing Israeli bombardment on Friday.

On Thursday, Lebanon's health minister said more than 40 paramedics and firefighters had been killed by Israeli fire in three days.

UN official Imran Riza on X on Saturday spoke of "an alarming increase in attacks against healthcare in Lebanon".

Britain said reports that Israeli strikes had hit "health facilities and support personnel" in Lebanon were "deeply disturbing".

Israel has claimed Hezbollah uses ambulances for "terrorist purposes".

- 'Kids with blast injuries' -

In the capital Beirut, British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah said he also saw parallels with the conflict in Gaza.

Abu-Sittah has tirelessly campaigned for "justice" since spending weeks in the besieged Palestinian territory treating the wounded at the start of the war.

Now in Lebanon, the plastic and reconstructive surgeon described seeing "kids, families whose houses have been targeted" with blast injuries in the past few weeks.

There were "kids with blast injuries to the face, to the torso, amputated limbs," he said outside the American University of Beirut's Medical Center.

Abu-Sittah estimated that more than a quarter of the wounded he had seen in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon were minors.

"I have a girl upstairs who is 13, who had a blast injury to the face, needed reconstruction of her jaw, will need several surgeries," he said.

"Children who are injured in war need between eight and 12 surgeries by the time they're adult age."

According to the UN children's agency UNICEF, 690 children in Lebanon have been wounded in recent weeks.

It said doctors had reported most suffered from "concussions and traumatic brain injuries from the impact of blasts, shrapnel wounds and limb injuries".

"It's just so reminiscent of what was happening in Gaza," said Abu-Sittah.

"The heartbreaking thing is that this could all have been stopped if they stopped the war in Gaza," he added.



Shot for Throwing Stones: Israeli Forces Killing West Bank Teens Weekly

Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)
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Shot for Throwing Stones: Israeli Forces Killing West Bank Teens Weekly

Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)

Youssef Shtayyeh came home from school on an April afternoon, dropped his bag in the hallway and headed straight back out to join his friends.

Minutes later, he was dead -- shot by an Israeli soldier, just 100 meters (yards) from his home.

He was 15. His is not an isolated case.

Since Israel launched a major military operation against armed Palestinian groups in the northern West Bank in January 2025, one Palestinian minor has been killed every week on average across the territory, up from one every three weeks in 2021, according to UNICEF.

Seventy teenagers, mostly aged 15 to 16, have been killed to date, 65 of them by Israeli forces, according to a UNICEF report dated May 12.

Then came Youssef Kaabnah, 16, killed on May 13.

Then Fahd Oweis, 15, two days later.

The Israeli military said both had "hurled stones" at soldiers.

It is almost certainly what Shtayyeh had been doing too, on April 23, in Nablus -- the largest city in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

Youssef and his friends were on a side street above a main road when a couple passing in a car spotted them throwing stones -- and the military convoy below.

One jeep stopped. Then the others.

"A soldier got out, then two more. They started shooting at the kids," the passing driver told AFP, declining to be named for safety reasons.

- 'Designed to kill' -

A neighbor filmed what followed.

Two shots. Then screams. Youssef grabbed the car door.

"He said, 'Please don't leave me, I'm scared. Take me to my father, take me home,'" the driver recalled.

Youssef's father Sameh Shtayyeh, a 48-year-old building contractor, told AFP he had no idea what had caused the soldiers to open fire on his son as he "wasn't there".

In a panic, the driver told the boy to get in the car and sped to the hospital.

By the time they reached the facility, the boy was silent. Youssef's heart had stopped.

"A gunshot wound -- entry in the back, exit through the chest," surgeon Bahaa Fattouh, who treated him, told AFP.

Doctors resuscitated him and rushed him to the operating theater. His heart stopped again.

This time, it did not revive.

"Earlier, we used to treat minor injuries -- legs, arms, rubber bullets," said Fattouh.

But since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, "we only see lethal wounds -- chest, head."

Wounds, Fattouh said, that were "designed to kill".

"Most patients die on the operating table."

- 'Standard procedure' -

AFP contacted the Israeli military on the day of the incident, and again after returning from Nablus last week.

The response was identical, word for word: "A terrorist threw stones at soldiers. The soldiers applied the standard arrest procedure, which ended with fire being directed at the suspect."

Israeli daily Haaretz recently quoted the military's commander for the West Bank, Major General Avi Bluth, saying troops had killed 42 Palestinians for throwing stones in 2025.

He described stone-throwing as "terrorism".

Standing at the spot where his son fell, Sameh Shtayyeh stares down at the road below.

"Whether he threw stones or not -- what does it matter? Where is the danger to an army patrol?" he asks bitterly.

In protests "in Israel, in France, people throw stones and bins" and face nothing worse than arrest, he said.

He buried Youssef in the family village of Tell, five kilometers (three miles) from Nablus.

Weeks later, women were still holding a vigil at the flower-covered grave, topped with a portrait of the teenager showing him on a football pitch with a ball at his feet.

His father had promised to take him to Saudi Arabia to watch Cristiano Ronaldo play.

Now, each time Sameh comes home, Youssef is not there to greet him.

His eldest son returns from school -- but Youssef is not there. He glances at the back seat of his car. Youssef is not there.


Russia's Growing Energy Ties with China since the Ukraine War

Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
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Russia's Growing Energy Ties with China since the Ukraine War

Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights

China has increased purchases of Russian oil and gas since ‌the start of the conflict with Ukraine in 2022, with Moscow and Beijing declaring a "no limits" partnership just days before the war began. The energy relationship between the two countries is expected to be an important topic when presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on Wednesday.

Here are some facts about the energy ties between the two countries:

GAS

Russia's energy giant Gazprom supplies natural gas to China through a 3,000-km (1,865 mile) pipeline called Power of Siberia under a 30-year, $400 billion deal launched at the end of 2019.

In 2025, exports jumped by around a quarter to 38.8 billion cubic meters (bcm), exceeding the pipeline's planned annual capacity of 38 bcm.

During Putin's visit to China in September, the countries agreed to increase annual volumes on the route by an additional 6 bcm, to 44 bcm, a year. In February 2022, China also agreed to buy up to 10 bcm of gas annually ‌by 2027 via ‌a pipeline from Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East. The countries later ‌agreed ⁠to raise the ⁠volumes to 12 bcm.

Russia's gas exports to China are still a small fraction of the record 177 bcm it delivered to Europe in 2018-19 annually.

Russia's share in European Union gas imports has shrunk during the Ukraine war, particularly in pipeline flows. Russia remained the EU's second-largest liquefied natural gas supplier last year with a 16% share but the gap with the EU's main LNG partner, the United States, widened considerably. Russia and China are still in talks about a new Power of Siberia 2 pipeline capable of delivering 50 bcm of gas per year ⁠from Russia to China via Mongolia.

Gazprom began a feasibility study for the ‌pipeline in 2020, but the project has gained urgency as Russia ‌turns to China to replace Europe as its major gas customer. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said in September that the ‌countries signed a "legally binding memorandum" on the pipeline, but a firm contract is still elusive.

Russia's liquefied natural ‌gas exports to China rose last year by 18.2% to 9.79 million metric tons, according to China's customs data, cited by TASS news agency.

Russia was, after Australia and Qatar, the third-largest supplier of LNG to China, which is the world's largest buyer of seaborne gas.

OIL China is Moscow's top client for oil shipments via the sea and pipelines. Exports have been ‌high amid Western sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. China's imports from Russia were at 2.01 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2025 (or 100.72 ⁠million metric tons in ⁠total), a decline of 7.1%, according to China's General Administration of Customs. That represented 20% of China's total imported oil by volume.

Yury Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide, said Russian oil exports to China grew by 35% in the first quarter of 2026 to 31 million tons.

China, which is the world's top oil importer, primarily buys Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) crude exported via the Skovorodino-Mohe spur of the 4,070-km (2,540-mile) ESPO pipeline, which connects Russian oil fields to refineries in China and from the Russian Far East port of Kozmino. Russia's oil pipeline operator Transneft has said it was expanding the ESPO pipeline to increase exports via Kozmino, seeking to complete the expansion work in 2029. China also imports oil from the Pacific island of Sakhalin, taking Sakhalin Blend and Sokol oil grades. The availability of ESPO Blend oil has remained high since July 2025, when exports had been expanded to 1 million barrels per day. Transneft has kept exports via Kozmino at around this level.

Russia has also agreed to raise its oil exports to China via Kazakhstan through the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline by 2.5 million tons per year to 12.5 million tons.


Mohammed Awda Emerges as New Qassam Brigades Chief after Killing of Al-Haddad

Palestinian Hamas fighters stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinian Hamas fighters stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2025. (Reuters)
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Mohammed Awda Emerges as New Qassam Brigades Chief after Killing of Al-Haddad

Palestinian Hamas fighters stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinian Hamas fighters stand guard on the day of the handover of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 22, 2025. (Reuters)

Multiple Hamas sources in the Gaza Strip revealed that the movement’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, is now led by Mohammed Awda, succeeding Ezzedine al-Haddad, who was killed by Israel last Friday after decades of pursuit.

Three Hamas sources in Gaza told Asharq Al-Awsat that Awda had effectively been selected to command the Qassam.

He was close to al-Haddad and remained in regular contact with him, particularly over plans to “rebuild the organizational structure” after the killings of former Qassam commanders Mohammed Deif and Mohammed Sinwar, they added.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Israel has eliminated a series of Qassam commanders and key figures involved in planning and directing Hamas’s attack on Israeli communities near Gaza during nearly two years of war in the enclave.

One source said Awda, who headed military intelligence within the Qassam at the time of the Oct. 7 attack, had been offered leadership of the armed wing after the killing of Mohammed Sinwar in May 2025, but declined, leading the role to pass to al-Haddad.

The two other sources said they could not independently verify that account.

Awda appears to face no serious rival for the position as he remains one of the core members of the movement’s military council. The only other surviving member of the original council is home front commander Imad Aqel, whom Hamas sources said did not play a direct role in planning or supervising the Oct. 7 operation, unlike “other commanders who were not informed of the full details or even the zero hour.”

Military intelligence role

Awda previously oversaw military intelligence operations in Gaza, including gathering information on Israeli military positions around the enclave.

Sources said he also supervised the exploitation of surveillance equipment uncovered after an Israeli undercover unit infiltrated Gaza and remained there for an extended period before being exposed in November 2018. Hamas officials at the time described the information recovered from the devices as an “intelligence treasure.”

The military intelligence branch under Awda concentrated heavily on identifying vulnerabilities in the Israeli army’s Gaza Division.

According to the sources, Awda later assumed responsibility for the northern sector after al-Haddad became commander of the Qassam Brigades. In that role, he coordinated with newly appointed commanders in Gaza City and northern Gaza while continuing to oversee intelligence operations.

Early Hamas ties

Sources said Awda’s relationship with Hamas dates back to the first Palestinian intifada, which erupted in 1987. He also spent time in the “Majd” security apparatus established by slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to pursue Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel.

Believed to be in his late forties or early fifties, Awda ranked among the early members of the Qassam Brigades during the second intifada, which began in late 2000.

He is originally from the Khulafaa al-Rashideen area of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

For years, the area functioned as a military hub for the Qassam Brigades. Mohammed Deif and several senior commanders were based there, and it became an early meeting point between Deif and a generation of future Qassam leaders, including Awda.

Although Awda’s career has been closely associated with intelligence and security operations, he also advanced through field command positions.

He served for several years as commander of the central Jabalia battalion, worked in military manufacturing and later headed the “northern brigade” between 2017 and 2019.

During his tenure as northern brigade commander, Awda hosted Mohammed Sinwar, then responsible for overseeing the Brigades’ military and strategic operations.

Hamas sources credit Awda with playing a major role in transforming the military intelligence branch into one of the most influential divisions in the Qassam.

“Awda has always preferred intelligence work and avoided direct field operations,” one Hamas source said. “He also avoids relying on personal guards or drivers, preferring to move alone because of his strict security precautions.”

Awda has reportedly survived several assassination attempts, both before and during the Gaza war. After the ceasefire of Oct. 10, 2025, his father’s home in Jabalia refugee camp was bombed, killing his eldest son, Amr.