World Food Program Gives Lebanon $5.4 Bn for Citizens, Syrians

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) arrives to attend the closing ceremony of the 31st Arab League summit in Algeria's capital Algiers on November 2, 2022. (AFP)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) arrives to attend the closing ceremony of the 31st Arab League summit in Algeria's capital Algiers on November 2, 2022. (AFP)
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World Food Program Gives Lebanon $5.4 Bn for Citizens, Syrians

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) arrives to attend the closing ceremony of the 31st Arab League summit in Algeria's capital Algiers on November 2, 2022. (AFP)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) arrives to attend the closing ceremony of the 31st Arab League summit in Algeria's capital Algiers on November 2, 2022. (AFP)

Crisis-hit Lebanon has secured $5.4 billion in aid over three years from the UN's World Food Program (WFP), Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced Monday.

The country has been mired since 2019 in a financial crisis dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in recent history.

"The WFP executive board has decided in its latest meeting in Rome to allocate $5.4 billion to Lebanon over the next three years," Mikati told a press conference in Beirut alongside the agency's representative in Lebanon, Abdallah Alwardat.

According to the premier, the aid money will be "shared equally" by Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees.

Around two million Syrian refugees are in Lebanon. Nearly 830,000 of them are registered with the United Nations, AFP reported.

WFP schemes have supported Syrian refugees in Lebanon since 2012, when large numbers of them began fleeing the war that started a year earlier in their home country.

The WFP "will continue to provide emergency assistance in kind and in cash," Alwardat said.

The new aid package would support "a million Syrian refugees and a million Lebanese" between 2023 and 2025, he added.

Lebanon's financial meltdown has caused poverty rates to reach more than 80 percent of the Lebanese population, as food prices have risen by 2,000 percent, according to the United Nations.

Most Syrian refugees live in poverty, and their living conditions have worsened due to Lebanon's economic woes.

The United Nations said in late 2020 that 89 percent of them live in extreme poverty, compared with 59 percent in 2019.



Israeli Strikes Hit Dozens of Targets in Gaza as Ceasefire Efforts Stall

A man looks through the rubble to inspect a destroyed building that was hit by Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 18, 2025. (AFP)
A man looks through the rubble to inspect a destroyed building that was hit by Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 18, 2025. (AFP)
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Israeli Strikes Hit Dozens of Targets in Gaza as Ceasefire Efforts Stall

A man looks through the rubble to inspect a destroyed building that was hit by Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 18, 2025. (AFP)
A man looks through the rubble to inspect a destroyed building that was hit by Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 18, 2025. (AFP)

Israeli airstrikes hit around 40 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, the military said on Friday, hours after Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire offer that it said fell short of its demand to agree a full end to the war.

Last month, the Israeli military broke off a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting in Gaza and has since pushed in from the north and south, seizing almost a third of the enclave as it seeks to pressure Hamas into agreeing to release hostages and disarm.

The military said troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, as well as in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.

Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the January ceasefire deal, which broke down when Israel resumed airstrikes and sent ground troops back into Gaza, but there has been little sign that the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.

Late on Thursday, Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas' Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.

But he dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing "impossible conditions".

Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya's comments but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. The ceasefire offer it made through Egyptian mediators includes talks on a final settlement to the war but no firm agreement.

Defense Minister Israel Katz also said this week that troops would remain in the buffer zone around the border that now extends deep into Gaza and cuts the enclave in two, even after any settlement.