s state news agency says single rocket caused fatalities in Arsal, as salvos hit other areas along border Rocket fire has left at least seven people dead and 15 others wounded in the Lebanese border town of Arsal, the latest in a series of salvoes to hit towns bordering Syria. At least 10 rockets have struck Lebanese frontier areas, according to local security sources, in further spillover from Syria's...
s former prime minister, Saad Hariri, has ruled out returning to the country he left three years ago because he fears being assassinated like his father. Speaking in the Hague, where an international tribunal has started hearings into the killing of Rafik Hariri , the former leader killed by an explosion on the Beirut waterfront nine years ago, Hariri said the culture of impunity in Lebanon must end...
s special tribunal for Lebanon tries Salim Ayyash, Mustafa Badredine, Hussein Onessi and Assad Sabra in absentia for 2005 killing Almost nine years after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the trial of his alleged killers has started in The Hague. The defendants, all members of the powerful militia Hezbollah, are being tried in absentia – the first time this has happened...
s main government building, where people go to get official documents. The state-run National News Agency said the blast had killed three people. Hermel's mayor, Sobhi Saqr, told Hezbollah...
s convoy driving through Beirut moments before assassination A highly detailed scale model of the street scene in Beirut moments before the 2005 blast that killed former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, dominated the centre of the courtroom in The Hague on the opening day of the trial of his alleged killers. The model, which shows Hariri's convoy passing in front of the St George Hotel on Rue...
s former prime minister Rafik Hariri was a marked man from the moment he stepped down as leader in late 2004 – with assassins watching almost his every move until they killed him on 14 February 2005, the international tribunal into his death has heard. Nearly nine years after Hariri's death in a massive explosion in central Beirut, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, jointly funded by the state and the...
s streets in recent months, with the war in Syria having an increasingly destabilising effect on its neighbour. Having been close enough to hear one of the bombs for herself, Najdi began to ask herself as she drove around, "Is there a bomb next to me? Am I going to die now?" It opened her eyes, she says, "to how much we are facing death in Lebanon". When Najdi realised her friends shared...
the defining humanitarian crisis of our time' The Refugee Council's letter to David Cameron The crisis posed by millions of refugees from Syria's civil war flooding into neighbouring countries is becoming a humanitarian and political catastrophe that can only be eased if Europe opens its doors, the UN and European commission have warned. More than 2.1 million refugees have been registered by the UN...
s survival but failed to prevent Lebanese militiamen from killing Palestinians dies aged 85 "In [Ariel] Sharon, it was all about the point where reality met fantasy," Israeli political scientist Yaron Ezrahi told the Observer , just days after the stroke in January 2006 that put Israel's most controversial prime minister into a coma. "While he was in opposition, he was an ideologue who believed in...
s government must step up its efforts to arrest five men accused of the assassination of the country's former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri , says the prosecutor of the tribunal trying the politically sensational case. Norman Farrell, a Canadian lawyer, will next week present the opening evidence against five supporters of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Muslim Shia movement, indicted for the murder of Hariri...
A journalist who was wounded in the suicide bombing of a Beirut suburb has died, reports the Daily Star . Abbas Karnib, a reporter with Al-Manar, a Lebanese TV station linked to Hezbollah, was critically wounded in the bombing that killed four other people and wounded 75 in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood on 2 January. Karnib, 52, worked for the channel for more than 20 years and took on a variety of...
s most significant and powerful affiliate in Iraq and Syria was under attack on multiple fronts on Saturday, even as the group claimed responsibility for its latest outrage – bombing a Shia suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, two days ago. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – known by the acronym Isil – was facing an assault in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, led by police and tribal...
s list of 85 most-wanted individuals, and the US state department has designated the group he leads a foreign terrorist organisation. The group has claimed responsibility for attacks throughout the region, including the 2010 bombing of a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf and several rocket attacks from Lebanon into Israel. The latest attack claimed by the group was the double bombing on 19 November...
s health ministry said at least five people were killed and 20 wounded in the explosion, which left the mangled wreckage of cars in the street and blew out the windows of store fronts. Images broadcast on Hezbollah's al-Manar TV showed firefighters putting out the smouldering hulks of several cars that had been set ablaze. The footage showed at least one building that had part of its facade blown off,...
Aftermath of a car bomb attack in the Lebanese capital of Beirut which has killed at least five people and left at least 20 others wounded ...
s heartland since July. The blast came a week after another bomb killed a senior opposition figure and seven other civilians in the downtown area of the Lebanese capital. The explosions have marked a deterioration in security across the country widely believed to stem from the war in neighbouring Syria, which has kindled long-standing regional rivalries. Thursday's attack hit the Haret Hreik district...
Majid bin Muhammad al-Majid, leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, believed to be behind November attack in Beirut Lebanese authorities have reportedly captured a militant leader suspected of leading a group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, in November. Majid bin Muhammad al-Majid is believed to be the leader of the al-Qaida-inspired Abdullah Azzam Brigades,...
s role in Syria, the intensity of the fighting and the performance of the Syrian Army, which not long ago had been fighting a losing battle to retain control of the country. Those foregathered listened intently. All broadly supported the fight against the Syrian opposition, even if they differed on the virtues of Syria's leader, Bashar al-Assad. "They fight well. It is not fair to them to say that...
s neighbour could be slipping back towards full-blown sectarian conflict Lebanon said on Sunday night that it had received its biggest ever infusion of military aid, as Saudi Arabia offered to contribute $3bn to bolster the country's beleaguered army in the face of spiralling violence and fallout from the conflict in neighbouring Syria. The president, Michel Suleiman, said on national television that...
s main opposition bloc are pushing for Friday's assassination of one of its senior figures, Mohamad Chatah, to be investigated by the international tribunal that will soon open hearings into the death of Rafik Hariri eight years ago. Chatah, a former finance minister and senior diplomat, will be buried in central Beirut alongside Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, whose killing in 2005 sparked...