Lebanese Defense Minister Michel Menassa said on Monday that Israel has conducted 3,491 airstrikes against targets in Lebanon since the U.S.-brokered “ceasefire” began on April 17.
Iran shattered the fragile ceasefire that had largely held since April 8 by launching multiple ballistic missile barrages at Israel on Sunday, threatening to derail negotiations that President Donald Trump said were only days away from producing a broader agreement between Washington and Tehran.
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he brokered a new ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists of Lebanon, but both sides continued to launch attacks on Tuesday, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are still issuing evacuation orders for Lebanese communities where strikes against Hezbollah are imminent.
President Donald Trump said Monday he believes the United States could reach an agreement with Iran “over the next week” after personally intervening to halt a rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon that Tehran warned could derail the negotiations altogether.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday there will be “no calm in Beirut” unless the Iran-backed terrorists of Hezbollah stop attacking Israel with rockets and drones.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that “we are intensifying our operations in Lebanon” to create a larger “security buffer zone” between northern Israel and the Iran-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.
Israel established a secret elite intelligence task force in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre to track down and kill or capture every terrorist involved in the attack, a report says.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday the ceasefire agreement his government mediated between the United States and Iran would also cover Lebanon, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly stated that operations against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon would continue.
An official from a Lebanese Christian party was reportedly killed amid an Israeli airstrike east of Beirut on Sunday, adding to the growing tension between Hezbollah supporters and opponents after the Iran-backed terrorist group forced Lebanon into war against Israel.
The Lebanese Army on Tuesday withdrew from four border villages, two of them Christian-majority towns whose residents have refused to follow instructions from Israel to evacuate the area while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) battle the Iran-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.
The Lebanese government pushed for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah this week, citing the vast number of civilians displaced from southern Lebanon by the fighting.
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres arrived in Beirut for a “solidarity” visit to Lebanon on Friday, cutting short a stay in Turkey where he joined fasting Muslims for Ramadan while calling for the world to “eradicate the scourge of Islamophobia from every country and community.”
Iran pursued its strategy of economic warfare on Thursday, attacking two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and repeating its threats to cut off oil shipments through the vital trade route.
Hezbollah declared a military campaign against Israel on Wednesday night in what Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described as a “joint and integrated operation,” launching more than 100 rockets, drones, and missiles at over 50 Israeli targets as Jerusalem retaliated with heavy strikes in Beirut and warned the confrontation is now “headed toward a serious escalation.”
The Israeli military said on Sunday that it targeted commanders from the Quds Force, the elite foreign espionage unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with airstrikes on Beirut.
Pope Leo XIV departed Lebanon on Tuesday after an emotional day that began with a visit to the site of the 2020 Beirut port explosion and Mass attended by over 150,000 people — and concluded with an event in which the Catholic leader heard the testimonies of the nation’s youth, encouraging them to retain hope.
Upwards of 150,000 people came together at Beirut’s waterfront Tuesday morning for mass with Pope Leo XIV.
Police in Bulgaria have arrested Russian national Igor Grechushkin 5 years after a ship he owned was linked to the Port of Beirut explosion.
Monday marked the fifth anniversary of the Beirut Blast, the incredibly powerful explosion that devastated the Port of Beirut and killed over 220 people on August 4, 2020.
Lebanon’s newly-installed President Joseph Aoun on Monday named the sitting head of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Nawaf Salam, as prime minister on Monday.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari published a short video Wednesday explaining that the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh, where it has focused its airstrikes on the city, is not like the rest of the city.
Iranian officials insisted on Monday that Esmail Qaani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, is in “good health.” Qaani has not been heard from since Israel’s airstrikes on Hezbollah in Beirut last week.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was welcomed in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday for a meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, where they reportedly discussed the dangers of regional escalation.
Israeli warplanes targeted more than 300 Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon on Monday and Israel warned civilians to evacuate the area as more intense strikes are on the way.
The Lebanon National News Agency reported that rooftop solar arrays in Beirut exploded at the same as Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies.
The day after thousands of Hezbollah terror suspects were injured, and reportedly a dozen people killed, by their pagers almost simultaneously exploding, Lebanese and Iranian media reported a second wave of radio device detonations.
Staffers at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Lebanon on Sunday blew the whistle on Hezbollah for putting their lives in danger by stockpiling smuggled Iranian weapons at the civilian facility.
The State Department says the man accused of opening fire on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was wearing ISIS insignia.
A drag show in Lebanon’s capital of Beirut was shut down by “an angry crowd of conservative Christians screaming homophobic chants.”
A Lebanese-Canadian academic who is the lone suspect in a 1980 bombing outside a Paris synagogue will go on trial Monday.
Hundreds of protesters, including large numbers of retired soldiers and police, marched in downtown Beirut on Wednesday to protest Lebanon’s deteriorating economy. When the protesters attempted to breach a fence and storm the government headquarters building, security forces used tear gas to disperse them, and some of the demonstrators responded by throwing rocks.
A crowd of several dozen angry protesters went on a rampage in Beirut on Thursday, blocking roads and vandalizing bank offices to protest the collapsing Lebanese economy and rules which prevent depositors from withdrawing their money.
Reports this weekend indicated that Lebanese citizens are increasingly turning to sit-in blockades, and outright armed robbery, to pry their savings out of frozen bank accounts as the national economy continues its trajectory toward total collapse.
89-year-old Michel Aoun, president of Lebanon since 2016, vacated his office on Sunday with no successor standing by. Aoun’s departure leaves a country in even more turmoil, as one of his final acts was accepting the resignation of interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government.
Another significant section of the devastated Beirut Port silos collapsed on Tuesday morning in a cloud of dust.
Beirut – A customer armed with a rifle and threatening to set himself ablaze held bank workers hostage Thursday in Lebanon’s capital, demanding to withdraw his trapped savings to pay hospital fees, security sources and a family member said.
A section of Beirut’s grain silos collapsed on Thursday, the same day that Lebanon marked the second anniversary of a deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut that devastated the city and damaged the very same grain silos, the National, a U.A.E.-based newspaper, reported.
Sections of Beirut’s grain silos collapsed on Sunday after weakening during a weeks-long fire caused by recent high temperatures that fermented the silos’ grain stores, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, noting that the silos were infamous for shielding much of western Beirut from an August 2020 port explosion and sustaining partial damage from the blast themselves.
Lebanese Trade Minister Amin Salam warned on Sunday that Lebanon faces a major food crisis, especially a severe shortage of wheat.
A man wanted by Swedish police in connection with a gang-linked murder in Stockholm in September 2020 has been located and arrested in Lebanon.
