Lebanon’s Hezbollah has expressed openness to a ceasefire proposal drafted by the US to end the devastating war with Israel, officials and diplomatic sources said late Sunday. While there has been no explicit agreement on the draft Washington delivered to Beirut last week, the group has provided “positive indications” that it is prepared for a deal, according…
Syrian state-run media said Israel struck the upscale Mazzeh district of Damascus on Friday, the second such attack in as many days to hit the neighborhood home to embassies, security headquarters and United Nations offices. “Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus,” the official SANA news agency said, after reporting a deadly Israeli strike on…
Iran will back any decision taken by Lebanon in talks to secure a ceasefire with Israel, a senior Iranian official said on Friday, signaling Tehran wants to see an end to a conflict that has dealt heavy blows to its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. Ali Larijani, an advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, spoke during a visit…
Israel is closer to reaching an arrangement over fighting with Hezbollah than it has been since the start of the war, but it must retain freedom to act inside Lebanon should any deal be violated, said an Israeli security cabinet minister. “I think we are at a point that we are closer to an arrangement…
Israeli officials are in talks with US President-elect Donald Trump and Jared Kushner to negotiate an immediate ceasefire deal in Lebanon with the help of Western and Russian cooperation, and create an early foreign policy win for Trump, according to a report citing three current and former Israeli officials briefed on the meeting. The Washington…
Iran-backed Lebanese group still has ability to conduct attacks abroad, official adds A top US intelligence official said Tuesday that Hezbollah’s capabilities had been significantly degraded, but their ground forces along the border with Israel remain largely intact. The official also said that the Lebanese group, armed and funded largely by Iran, still had the ability to…
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that at least 43,603 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants. The toll includes 51 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which also said 102,929 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he has spoken with US President-elect Donald Trump three times in the past few days aimed at tightening the strong alliance between Israel and the United States. “These were good and very important conversations,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “We see eye to eye on the Iranian…
Arab and Muslim leaders have begun arriving in Saudi Arabia for a summit scheduled for Monday that will focus on Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Saudi state media said. The Saudi foreign ministry announced the summit in late October during the first meeting of an “international alliance” pushing for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Attendees will…
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday warned that the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is battling Tehran-backed groups, could spill over beyond the Middle East. “The world should know that in case of the expansion of war, its harmful effects will not be limited only to the West Asia region; insecurity and…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Lebanese border on Sunday, his office said, as the Israeli military continued to pound Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. “Netanyahu visited the Lebanon border today,” his office said in a statement, his second such visit to the frontier in less than a month. Netanyahu’s visit came as more…
The Israeli military said on Sunday it had captured a Syrian spy for Iran in recent months, thwarting a planned attack by what it described as Iranian terror networks. The military named the “Iranian terror network operative” as Ali Soleiman al-Assi, a Syrian citizen living in the area of the southern village of Saida. “His…
Lebanon’s prime minister accused Israel of rejecting a ceasefire after the Israeli military bombed the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut for the first time this week on Friday. At least 10 strikes hit the southern suburbs before dawn after the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings, with AFPTV footage showing explosions and clouds of smoke. “The…
Prospects of a ceasefire between Israel and its foes Hamas and Hezbollah ran aground on Friday as Israeli airstrikes killed at least 68 people in the Gaza Strip, according to medics in the Palestinian enclave, and battered Beirut’s southern suburbs. The Israeli military said it killed senior Hamas official Izz al-Din Kassab in an airstrike…
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group said on Saturday it had launched rockets at an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv in the early hours of Saturday. At 2:30 a.m. (00:30 GMT) militants “fired a salvo of rockets at the Glilot base of the 8200 military intelligence unit in the suburbs of Tel Aviv,” the pro-Iran group…
