عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Features

Lebanon’s South Takes a Breath as Families Return to Shattered Homes and Lives

This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)
This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Lebanon’s South Takes a Breath as Families Return to Shattered Homes and Lives

This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)
This picture shows the destruction in the southern Lebanese village of Froun on June 30, 2026. (AFP)

On a beachfront in the coastal city of Tyre, war has finally abated just enough for children to play in the waves and families to gather under parasols as life slowly returns to southern Lebanon. But away from the shore, people coming home after months of exile are having to adapt to harsh new realities: the threat of conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah flaring up again and the challenge of rebuilding from the destruction Israeli bombs have wreaked on their hometowns.

"People are coming back to Tyre to rebuild, to work — all the restaurants are open again," said local resident Ali Skaiky, wet from a swim in the sea and holding a rubber lilo.

"We still hear strikes and fighting at night, but it's far away. There's destruction beyond imagination, but we hope everything will stay calm."

Skaiky is among some 400,000 people who have returned to southern Lebanon in the weeks since a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The truce has not halted fighting, but it has lowered the ‌intensity.

Returnees are cleaning ‌debris from damaged homes, reopening businesses and trying to rebuild the routines the war ‌shattered. Yet ⁠for many, normality ⁠now means keeping a suitcase packed, following the news obsessively and never straying too far from home.

For Fadlallah Qassim, 42, returning home meant confronting the destruction the war had left behind, including a hit on his house.

"We returned to find the whole house caved in with rubble, and all the furniture ruined," he said. "I cleaned up, fixed it, and brought some basic things for the house, now my wife, children and I all live in one room."

In the nearby village of Srifa, where entire neighborhoods were damaged, Suzan Fakih, 55, said the hardest part of returning was realizing home no longer felt like home.

"The moment you arrive, it doesn't ⁠feel like your village anymore," she said. "Everything is black and grey. It hurts your soul. ‌You look around and think, 'This can't be the village I've lived in all ‌my life.'"

'YOU PACK YOUR BAGS AND RUN'

Srifa lies in the deep south of Lebanon, close to where Israeli troops occupy a strip ‌of territory and launch regular attacks on what the Israeli army says are Hezbollah targets. In areas nearby, Israel has ‌demolished almost entire villages.

Fakih said people remain haunted by the possibility they could be forced to flee again.

"I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't living with a bag packed, ready to leave. A few quiet years pass, then you pack your bags and run again," she said.

The ongoing hostilities and levels of destruction have left 600,000 more people internally displaced, according to Lebanon's social ‌affairs ministry. Many families whose homes were destroyed are still living in schools or in the rented homes they fled to during the conflict.

Lebanon has suffered the deadliest spillover ⁠of the regional war triggered ⁠by the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February.

The conflict spread to Lebanon on March 2, when Hezbollah fired on Israel in support of Tehran, triggering an Israeli air and ground campaign. More than 4,300 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country's health ministry.

RENTING BACKUP HOMES

Some 20 miles (32 km) farther north, Mohammad Sweid and other residents who recently returned to the Bekaa Valley town of Sohmor, said they live with the same uncertainty.

Sweid still pays rent for the house he and his family fled to during the war, keeping it as a backup home if they need to leave again.

"If something happens again, we may not find another place," the 31-year-old manual worker said.

In the Lebanese capital Beirut, whose Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Dahiyeh has been battered by Israel at intervals over the last two years for being home to Hezbollah's leadership, residents are also cautiously trying to rebuild their lives.

Moussa Ghamloush, 68, has been repairing his bomb-damaged home and reopening his restaurant, which was completely destroyed in a separate strike, but says his permanent home will always be Dahieh.

"We're not the kind of people who leave. Our roots are here. We stayed, and if there's a third war, we'll stay again."

Most Viewed

 
 
Features

Lockerbie Specter Returns in Netflix Drama: Who Was Bombmaker Marwan Khreesat?

Marwan Khreesat (Facebook)
Marwan Khreesat (Facebook)
TT
TT

Lockerbie Specter Returns in Netflix Drama: Who Was Bombmaker Marwan Khreesat?

Marwan Khreesat (Facebook)
Marwan Khreesat (Facebook)

In the shadow world of Palestinian factional operations and intelligence wars that defined the 1970s and 1980s, few names were as mysterious or controversial as Marwan Khreesat.

Linked to what became known as the “engineering of airborne death,” Khreesat was described in Western intelligence accounts as a skilled bombmaker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, led by Ahmed Jibril.

For decades, he remained an elusive figure, moving between world capitals. West Germany arrested him, then released him in circumstances that fueled speculation. Israel’s Mossad pursued him. He eventually died in Amman at about 70, taking many of his secrets with him.

To some, he was a fedayeen who used his electrical skills against the Israeli occupation. To Western investigators, he was linked to aviation attacks that shocked the world.

His death did not end the questions.

Khreesat’s fingerprints, at least in the investigative sense, continued to hover over the Lockerbie case. More recently, his name returned to international attention as a Netflix docudrama revisited the hidden battles, intelligence operations, and unresolved questions of that era.

The electronics expert inside the PFLP-GC

Khreesat’s story began with technical skill.

A talented electrician and technician, he became involved in armed activity early, driven by his nationalist background. As radical Palestinian factions expanded, he joined the PFLP-GC, which had split from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and focused on specialized cross-border military operations.

Ahmed Jibril, born in 1938 in a village in the Jaffa district, founded the faction in 1968 after breaking away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He quickly recognized Khreesat’s ability to work with electrical circuits and plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex.

Khreesat was not a front-line fighter.

He worked instead in secret, specially equipped laboratories, designing sophisticated explosive devices triggered by changes in air pressure or by digital timers.

That technical skill turned ordinary objects into devices capable of defeating airport security systems.

From El Al to Operation Autumn Leaves

Khreesat’s expertise did not suddenly emerge in the 1980s. It had been developed years earlier in the laboratories of the region’s shadow wars.

One early episode came in Rome in the summer of 1972.

The PFLP-GC used what the source describes as an emotional deception involving two British women, who were persuaded to carry a household record player presented as a farewell gift before boarding an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.

Hidden inside the record player was a charge of powerful plastic explosives fitted with a barometric trigger.

The device was designed to detonate automatically when the aircraft reached a high altitude over the Mediterranean, sending the wreckage — and potentially the evidence — into the sea.

The bomb exploded about 20 minutes after takeoff, tearing a large hole in the aircraft.

But airport security had insisted the record player be placed in the baggage hold rather than the passenger cabin. That reduced the blast’s impact and allowed the pilot to make a safe emergency landing in Rome.

The incident became an early warning to international intelligence services: an engineer was turning ordinary household electronics into sophisticated airborne bombs.

The most serious threat to Khreesat’s operations came 16 years later.

In the autumn of 1988, West German authorities penetrated a PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt led by Hafez Dalkamoni as part of what became known as Operation Autumn Leaves.

German police arrested Khreesat and seized explosives concealed inside modified Toshiba radios and cassette players.

The devices were designed to explode automatically once an aircraft reached a specific altitude, triggered by changes in atmospheric pressure.

Then came the mystery.

German authorities released Khreesat only days after his arrest.

The decision triggered years of speculation. Later Western intelligence reports and suspicions suggested he may have been acting as a “double agent,” passing sensitive information to Jordanian, US or other security services.

Lockerbie and the question that would not disappear

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.

The technical similarities drew immediate attention.

The bomb used in the attack had also been concealed in a Toshiba cassette player, echoing devices seized from Khreesat in Germany just two months earlier.

Although the international judicial process later convicted Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Khreesat’s name never fully disappeared from the investigation.

Decades later, it returned to public view through The Bombing of Pan Am 103, a major docudrama produced by the BBC and Netflix.

The series examined the criminal investigation and the joint pursuit by Scottish investigators and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It also revived the theory of an “Iranian-Palestinian connection.”

Khreesat appeared in that context through references to fragments linked to the bomb and comparisons with devices he had designed that were seized in Germany.

The old question returned with it:

Was Marwan Khreesat the man who actually built the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland?

The secret file left behind

Khreesat spent his final decades largely silent at his home in the suburbs of Amman, refusing repeated approaches from Western media.

In later years, however, he began publishing memoirs and documents online, attacking some Palestinian leaders and at times boasting about earlier operations against Israeli interests.

After his death, the story took another turn.

His daughter, Suha Khreesat, made claims to British media, again pushing his name into the headlines.

In a 2018 interview with Britain’s Daily Mirror, marking the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, she said her father had played no part in the deaths of the victims.

But she also said he had left behind a “large secret file, documents and recordings” kept by her mother, his wife.

She said the material proved that Ahmed Jibril — who later died in Damascus at about 83 — had carried out the Lockerbie operation under a major direct financial deal with the Iranian government.

Marwan Khreesat died, leaving behind a legacy as murky as the intelligence wars in which he operated.

He was a bombmaker whose technical skills challenged security services across two continents, a figure whose story fused electronics, covert operations, and regional power struggles.

And decades later, his name still shadows the Lockerbie file — preserved in intelligence documents, revived in investigations and retold on screens, revisiting one of the era’s most enduring mysteries.

Features

At a Gaza Zoo, War Takes Its Toll on the Animals

A female lion sleeps inside a cage at a zoo in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, August 12, 2026. (Reuters)
A female lion sleeps inside a cage at a zoo in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, August 12, 2026. (Reuters)
TT
TT

At a Gaza Zoo, War Takes Its Toll on the Animals

A female lion sleeps inside a cage at a zoo in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, August 12, 2026. (Reuters)
A female lion sleeps inside a cage at a zoo in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, August 12, 2026. (Reuters)

As children walked into the zoo near Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, they found a lion barely looking back at them through the bars of its cage and chimpanzees sitting listlessly in their enclosure.

Many of the animals were malnourished, weakened by shortages of food, medicine and vaccines. But they were still alive, largely thanks to the efforts of zoo owner Mahmoud Gomaa.

He originally ran the attraction in the southern city of Rafah, but said he had to flee when Israeli troops attacked and occupied part of the area in 2024.

As the conflict raged, he moved the surviving animals from town to town before finding a place in Nuseirat ‌in central Gaza earlier ‌this year.

There, he reopened the zoo, hoping to give traumatized youngsters ‌something ⁠to enjoy after ⁠nearly three years of destruction.

ZOOKEEPER RETURNED TO FIND ANIMAL BONES

"In the beginning of the war people were looking for a way to survive ... and I was looking for a way to save the animals more than saving myself," Gomaa told Reuters.

There were a number of zoos in Gaza before the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted, displaying exotic and wild animals including lions and eagles, municipal records show.

Anyone trying to keep one open now faces enormous challenges, ⁠vets and animal experts said, not least in getting food in ‌a territory struggling to feed its human population.

"Owners ‌are currently feeding them frozen meat," veterinarian Nidal Fadel said. "This is a catastrophe and a wrong nutritional plan ‌because in nature they eat fresh prey."

Palestinian children play outside a zoo damaged during the war, in Gaza City, August 15, 2026. (Reuters)

The animals themselves are bearing the brunt ‌of the war — sometimes directly.

When Gomaa fled Rafah, he said he had to leave behind three lions, several crocodiles and some African ostriches.

A few months later, Gomaa returned and only found the bones of the crocodiles and the ostriches. Those three lions, which he had locked in their cages, had ‌disappeared.

There is also the trauma caused by the sound and sight of the conflict raging around them.

"Lions can detect sounds and ⁠disturbances that humans may not ⁠notice," said Amir Khalil, a veterinarian who has led several trips to Gaza by the animal welfare organization Four Paws and rescued other zoos' animals.

"Bombing and constant conflict create enormous stress and fear for them," he added.

In Nuseirat, the surviving lion barely looked up at the visitors. But the children had better luck with some of the other animals, letting parrots ride on their shoulders and petting smaller monkeys.

It was a rare chance to relax in an enclave still facing regular airstrikes, despite a fragile ceasefire. Israel's military, which says its attacks are aimed at militant targets, did not immediately respond to questions about the conflict's impact on civilian facilities like zoos and their animals.

"Today there is no avenue for children to play," said visitor Karam Al-Mazin, 42.

"There is nothing except rubble, stones and tents, so children today are bored and are in a difficult situation."

Features

The 60-day Deadline for an Iran Peace Deal is Expiring. Here's Where Things Stand

A woman holds an Iranian flag as part of a pro-government campaign in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman holds an Iranian flag as part of a pro-government campaign in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
TT
TT

The 60-day Deadline for an Iran Peace Deal is Expiring. Here's Where Things Stand

A woman holds an Iranian flag as part of a pro-government campaign in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman holds an Iranian flag as part of a pro-government campaign in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The deal that US President Donald Trump signed at Versailles in June set an ambitious 60-day deadline for ending the war with Iran and reaching an accord on its nuclear program.

The deadline was Monday, and the two sides are further apart than they were then, The Associated Press said.

Talks, such as they are, have focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting a US blockade on Iran, both of which were supposed to have happened under the interim deal. There has been no sign of any compromise on the strait, or that detailed nuclear talks have even begun.

The US, meanwhile, has no good options for getting out of the war it started alongside Israel.

Acceding to Iran's latest demands would mean giving it control over a critical international waterway that carried a fifth of the world's traded oil and gas before the war — and would be tantamount to admitting defeat. Escalating the deeply unpopular war would further draw down US supplies of advanced missile interceptors, jolt the world economy, and drive up gas prices ahead of US congressional elections.

So both sides have dug in, hoping the other will blink first. So far, neither has.

The interim deal collapsed weeks later

The June deal, known as the Memorandum of Understanding, called for a halt to all military operations and set a 60-day deadline for an agreement to permanently end the war and resolve the longstanding dispute over Iran's nuclear activities.

It called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened but gave Iran a vaguely defined role in facilitating traffic, leaving open the possibility it could charge fees after the 60-day deadline. Iran has seized on that clause to claim control over the waterway.

A week after the deal was signed, Iran began firing on vessels using a route along the coast of Oman, on the other side of the strait, that is overseen by the US military and intended to bypass Tehran's control.

The US responded by striking Iran, which retaliated by attacking Arab countries hosting American forces, like Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. The US canceled waivers issued as part of the deal that had allowed Iran to sell its oil internationally and Trump restored a blockade of Iran's ports.

Each side accused the other of violating the June agreement, of which almost nothing remains.

The fighting eventually died down. A related truce in Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah has mostly held, even as Israeli troops occupy large areas in the country's south. Lebanon's "territorial integrity and sovereignty" were to have been ensured under the June deal.

Iranian officials say they stopped negotiating with the US in June, while acknowledging that messages have been relayed by intermediaries. Trump says the talks have continued, occasionally claiming progress after pulling back from threatening major strikes.

Pakistan, which played a key role in brokering the June agreement, noted last week that the deadline was Monday while expressing hope it would be extended.

“We are not closing the chapter,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi said. “Pakistan is making all-out efforts to bring the two parties to the negotiating table.”

Iran's leaders think they can force Trump to give up the strait

Earlier this month, Iran issued a list of demands for reopening the strait, including the lifting of the American blockade, the withdrawal of US forces from around Iran and the payment of reparations for damage inflicted in the war started by the US and Israel on Feb. 28.

Even then, Iran has said it would control the strait — and potentially charge fees — through an agreement it is negotiating with Oman, and that the strait will not go back to being an open, toll-free waterway as it was before the war.

Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have meanwhile begun attacking oil tankers in the Red Sea, threatening another crucial trade route that had been used to relieve some of the pressure from the strait being closed.

Trump has rejected Iran's demands — saying it's Tehran that should pay war reparations and claiming the US controls the strait. He appears to be banking on economic pressure — in the form of the blockade and longstanding sanctions — to bring Iran's rulers to their knees.

Iran's economy has been battered by the war and isolation, and inflation has soared. The crisis could stoke renewed anti-government protests, like those that were brutally crushed in January.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which rose immediately after the interim deal, is back to a small fraction of what it was before the war. Rising prices of fuel and other goods are expected to climb further the longer this continues with effects far beyond the Middle East.

The clock is still ticking for both sides.