Report: Hezbollah Establishes Outpost in Israeli Territory

Israeli soldiers stand guard during ongoing maintenance work along the Lebanese border, near Avivim town in northern Israel on June 13, 2023. (Photo by JALAA MAREY / AFP)
Israeli soldiers stand guard during ongoing maintenance work along the Lebanese border, near Avivim town in northern Israel on June 13, 2023. (Photo by JALAA MAREY / AFP)
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Report: Hezbollah Establishes Outpost in Israeli Territory

Israeli soldiers stand guard during ongoing maintenance work along the Lebanese border, near Avivim town in northern Israel on June 13, 2023. (Photo by JALAA MAREY / AFP)
Israeli soldiers stand guard during ongoing maintenance work along the Lebanese border, near Avivim town in northern Israel on June 13, 2023. (Photo by JALAA MAREY / AFP)

The US is reportedly pressing the Lebanese government and military to take steps to dismantle a Hezbollah outpost established on the Israel-Lebanon border, Israeli and US officials told Axios news website on Friday.

The officials, who were not named by Axios, told the news website that Hezbollah established the outpost several weeks ago in Israeli territory.

According to a senior Israeli official, Hezbollah operatives set up a tent on April 8 in an area that is north of the border fence between Israel and Lebanon, but 30 meters south of the internationally recognized Blue Line in an area considered by the UN to be Israeli territory.

Not until weeks later, was the Israeli military aware of the tent in Israeli territory when the party added a second tent, a water tank and a generator to the outpost, he noted.

Officials in the US State Department and the Department of Defense (the Pentagon) had assured the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the Lebanese government and army, of the need to evacuate the Hezbollah site, US and Israeli officials pointed out.

“Our goal is to move the outpost out of there. We prefer Hezbollah will do it themselves than to bomb it," Axios quoted a senior Israeli official as saying.

 



UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
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UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)

More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad on Dec. 8, including 800,000 people displaced inside the country and 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.

“Since the fall of the regime in Syria, we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.

“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.

Last January, the UN's high commissioner for refugees urged the international community to back Syria's reconstruction efforts to facilitate the return of millions of refugees.

“Lift the sanctions, open up space for reconstruction. If we don't do it now at the beginning of the transition, we waste a lot of time,” Grandi told a press conference in Ankara, after returning from a trip in Lebanon and Syria.

At a meeting in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Türkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”

The meeting's final statement also pledged support for Syria's new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”

Meanwhile, AFP reported on Tuesday that displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods in Homs, where rebels first took up arms to fight Assad's crackdown on protests in 2011, only to find them in ruins.

In Homs, the Syrian military had besieged and bombarded opposition areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin was killed in a bombing in 2012.

“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.

“We removed the rubble, laid a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.

“Despite the destruction, we're happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”

Duaa’s husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.