Air attacks go deep into northeastern Lebanon
SAFRI, Lebanon — A pair of Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday in northeastern Lebanon killed at least two people and wounded 20, marking a continued escalation between Israel and Hezbollah over the war Israel is waging against Hamas militants in Gaza.
One of the airstrikes destroyed a warehouse that reportedly was used to store food.
The Israeli military said the airstrikes hit two Hezbollah sites and were in response to rocket attacks over northern Israel earlier in the day. Hezbollah said they struck several Israeli military positions, including two bases in northern Israel with a barrage of 100 Katyusha rockets on Tuesday.
The exchanges also followed Israeli strikes near the Lebanese city of Baalbek late on Monday night.
Initially, an official from the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group told The Associated Press that one person was killed in the airstrikes in the town of Safri. A Lebanese security official later said at least two people were killed and 20 were wounded, nine of whom remain at a local hospital.
The official said it was unclear if the two killed were Hezbollah members or civilians. Both the security official and the Hezbollah figure spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Last month, at least two Hezbollah members were killed in airstrikes near Baalbek and another warehouse was destroyed. It had also stocked food that’s is part of Hezbollah’s Sajjad Project, which sells food to people in the group’s stronghold at prices lower than on the market.
Earlier Tuesday, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah met with a top Hamas official, Khalil Hayeh, who was involved in negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza. Last week, Qatar and Egyptian-mediated efforts to broker a truce in Gaza before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan broke down.
Since the Gaza war erupted after Hamasled militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage, there have been near-daily exchanges along the Lebanon-Israel border and international mediators have scrambled to prevent an all-out war in tiny Lebanon.
In Israel’s subsequent offensive into Gaza, at least 31,000 Palestinians have been killed and most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run coastal enclave. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
In the strikes near Baalbek late Monday, one person was killed and six were wounded.
The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said Israeli jets bombed two Hezbollah compounds in northeastern Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah launching attacks on the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said said the strikes near Baalbek targeted Hezbollah’s drone locations. The Iran-backed militant group had claimed on Monday attacking Israeli military units in northern Israel with explosive drones.
President Joe Biden’s senior advisor Amos Hochstein had urged for a lasting cease-fire along the tense border when he visited Lebanon and Israel earlier this month.
Hezbollah has said that a cease-fire in Gaza would be the only way to restore calm along the Lebanon-Israel border, though Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said last month that anyone who thinks a temporary cease-fire for Gaza will also apply to the northern front was “mistaken.”
Separately, Lebanon’s caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib appeared to underscore the link between peace in Gaza and the volatile Lebanon-Israel border and urged in comments Tuesday for a “full implementation” of the U.N. Security Council resolution that brought an end to a brutal monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
“Full peace with Israel would come after they have peace with the Palestinians,” said Bou Habib.
Since the war in Gaza started, more than 220 Hezbollah fighters and nearly 40 Lebanese civilians have been killed on Lebanon’s side while in Israel, nine soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The shortened version of the international broadcast of the 96th Oscars faced harsh criticism in Ukraine for omitting the segment announcing the documentary feature award, which went to Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol.
The documentary, a collaboration between The Associated Press and PBS’ “Frontline,” is a harrowing first-person account set in the Ukrainian port city during the early days of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne, the exclusive broadcaster of the Oscars in the country, published a statement of indignation on Monday.
“Our team was shocked and deeply disappointed when we did not see the category for Best Feature Documentary in the international version, where 20 Days in
Mariupol was justly awarded,” said Lukian Halkin, executive producer of the Suspilne Kultura TV channel.
According to Disney, the official international licensing agent for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, decisions were made weeks in advance of Sunday’s telecast on which portions and categories to omit for the condensed version of the show.
International licensees receive two versions of the broadcast: the live version and a 90-minute version, produced by the film academy. The truncated version – which does include a recap of the cut winners, including “20 Days in Mariupol” – is often preferred by international broadcasters, Disney says. Suspilne said that instead of the shortened version, it is broadcasting Ukrainian viewers the unedited cut.
“Mstyslav Chernov’s powerful speech emphasized the unity between Ukraine and the world, which makes it all the more disappointing to see this episode full of truth and power excluded from the version distributed to the Oscar’s global licensees,” Halkin said.
The film academy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision to cut the documentary category.
Raney Aronson-Rath, from left, Mstyslav Chernov, and Michelle Mizner pose in the press room with the award for best documentary feature film for “20 Days in Mariupol.”
The edited version also sparked criticism on various social media platforms in Ukraine, where the documentary’s Academy Award was hailed as a bittersweet but welcome victory.
“The fact that Ukraine received its first Oscar, and that the world will see again the horrors that the Russian army committed in Mariupol, is certainly a victory of truth over falsehood,” Oleksii Kurka, a Kyiv office worker, told the AP.
The AP team of Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko arrived an hour before Russia began bombing the port city. Two weeks later, they were the last journalists working for an international outlet still in the city, sending crucial dispatches to the outside world showing civilian casualties of all ages, the digging of mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital and the sheer extent of the devastation.
The Oscar – and the nomination – was a first for both Chernov, an AP video journalist, and the 178-year-old news organization. The documentary was a joint production of the AP and PBS’ Frontline.
It was the first win for Frontline after two previous nominations.
Statuettes were awarded to Chernov, producer and editor Michelle Mizner and producer Raney Aronson-Rath. Maloletka, Stepanenko and Derl McCrudden.