The sleepy mountain town of Qabaait in northern Lebanon is at the centre of the world's worst refugee crisis in decades. As Syrian refugees cross the border to escape conflict, they place a heavy load on the town's stretched resources. In September 2013, 18 Qabaait residents left their town to seek a better life in Australia, but all perished when their boat sank off the Indonesian coast. Photographer...
The sleepy mountain town of Qabaait in northern Lebanon is at the centre of the world's worst refugee crisis in decades. As Syrian refugees cross the border to escape conflict, they place a heavy load on the town's stretched resources. In September 2013, 18 Qabaait residents left their town to seek a better life in Australia, but all perished when their boat sank off the Indonesian coast. Photographer...
Fall of Yabroud, a key rebel supply line into Lebanon, would be latest success for President Assad as conflict enters fourth year Syria claims its military has seized a key town on the Lebanese border that was the target of a months-long offensive. Activists said fighting was continuing but the government was in control of much of Yabroud. Yabroud was an key supply line for rebels into neighbouring...
Molly Crabapple: For the anniversary of a civil war no side can win, painting a history, with the Western left failing at every stroke Molly Crabapple ...
Faisal Almhairat, in legal dispute with Saudi princes, claims notice was part of business vendetta An Interpol red notice, seeking the arrest in London of a Jordanian businessman at the centre of a high profile legal dispute involving two senior Saudi princes, has finally been withdrawn after more than two years. Faisal Almhairat claims that the notice authorising his extradition was issued in pursuit...
Nuns say they were not forced to remove crosses during captivity which ended in prisoner exchange brokered by Qatar and Lebanon Thirteen Greek Orthodox nuns and their three maids, held in captivity for more than three months by a Syrian rebel group affiliated to al-Qaida, have arrived back in Damascus. They were freed as part of a deal in which 153 female prisoners of the Assad regime were also released....
s affiliate in Syria. The Observatory and a rebel source in the area said the release of the nuns had been agreed as part of a swap in which the government would free scores of women prisoners. "The deal is for the release of 138 women from Assad's prisons," the rebel source said, referring to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. In December, the nuns appeared in a video obtained by al-Jazeera television,...
Attack on Hezbollah border position would be first inside Lebanese territory since start of the conflict in Syria Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate after accusing Israel of launching an air strike at one of its positions near the border with Syria this week. The attack on Monday, which Israel has not acknowledged, would be the first inside Lebanese territory since the start of the Syrian conflict three...
s ex-president and Muslim Brotherhood figurehead could face capital punishment if found guilty of espionage An Egyptian prosecutor on Sunday accused the ousted Islamist president of passing state secrets to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the first such explicit detail in an ongoing espionage trial. If convicted, Mohamed Morsi could face capital punishment. He already stands accused of a string of other...
A documentary about a Palestinian refugee camp contrives to find humour amid the despair and disillusionment This very personal documentary is an intimate portrait of Ain el-Helweh, a Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon. Although born in Dubai and raised mainly in Denmark, Mahdi Fleifel has spent much of his life in Ain el-Helweh; the film records his childhood stays and subsequent visits there,...
why did we hit them?'. Yet we feel that we have no more energy to run after them, and so we hit them again and can't control ourselves," one woman told the researchers. "I feel like I need a psychiatrist. I've been beating my child abnormally, and when he sleeps I regret it and cry, yet the next day I get tense and beat him again," said another. "My husband works day and night and earns 5,000 Lebanese...
s southern suburbs, where residents fear that neither state security nor a Hezbollah cordon can spare them from a rising insurgency. Eight people, including two suicide attackers, were killed early on Wednesday on the edge of a Shia neighbourhood and enclave for Hezbollah and its main backer Iran. The bombers appeared to target an Iranian cultural centre to the west of the suburb, known as Dahiyeh....
People gather at the smoking wreckage at the site of a double bomb attack in a southern suburb of Beirut ...
s capital appeared to have been caused by a car bomb and a motorcycle laden with explosives. Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a group linked to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the attack on its Twitter account. The area is a Hezbollah stronghold. Bombers targeted Iran...
s term ends in May and to press ahead with parliamentary elections that were postponed last year. A caretaker government has run the country since former prime minister Najib Mikati resigned in March 2013. "A government in the national interest was formed in a spirit of inclusivity," said Salam. "I extend my hand to all the leaders and I am relying on their wisdom to reach these goals and I call on...
t a good use of Greening's ringfenced £11bn a year budget, what is it there for? Justine Greening is the luckiest of cabinet ministers. Not for her the spending cuts visited upon Theresa May at the Home Office or Vince Cable at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. International development is a ringfenced priority for the government and its budget has bucked the austerity trend and risen...
We must encourage education and tolerance if we are to bring about peace in the Middle East and the rest of the world The last weeks have seen a ghastly roll call of terror attacks in the obvious places: Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Pakistan. Also suffering are places where we have only in recent years seen such violence: Nigeria, and in many parts of central...
s militant Hezbollah group. It was the second bombing in the neighbourhood of Haret Hreik this month amid a series of attacks that have shaken Lebanon in a spillover of Syria's civil war into its smaller neighbour. The violence has targeted both Lebanon's Sunnis and Shias and has further stoked sectarian tensions that are already running high as each Lebanese community lines up with its brethren in...
CCTV footage shows the moment a suicide car bomb explodes in Beirut on Tuesday ...
Critics of Iran don't see its detente with the US as an opportunity to ease Shia-Sunni tensions ...