Lebanon

01 Feb 2022; MEMO: Lebanese President Michel Aoun yesterday called on his Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, to file a complaint against the "Israeli violations" to the United Nations Security Council.

Syria's official SANA news agency yesterday reported that Israeli fighter jets had fired "several missiles" through Lebanese airspace at Damascus, adding that the Syrian air defences were able to "bring down most of the projectiles."

BEIRUT, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group said on Sunday it saw no reason to delay May's parliamentary elections, days after politics was turned on its head by Saad al-Hariri's withdrawal from public life.

Hariri, Lebanon's leading Sunni Muslim politician and three times a former prime minister, declared on Monday he would boycott the vote, adding to the uncertainties facing a country grappling with a devastating financial crisis.

BEIRUT (AP) — With a spectacular jail break in Syria and a deadly attack on an army barracks in Iraq, the Islamic State group was back in the headlines the past week, a reminder of a war that formally ended three years ago but continues to be fought mostly away from view.

The attacks were some of the boldest since the extremist group lost its last sliver of territory in 2019 with the help of a U.S.-led international coalition, following a years-long war that left much of Iraq and Syria in ruins.

BEIRUT, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Saturday he saw no reason for a delay to parliamentary elections in May after three-times former prime minister Saad al-Hariri announced he was boycotting the vote and stepping away from politics.

Hariri has been Lebanon's leading Sunni Muslim politician since inheriting the mantle of his father, Rafik al-Hariri, after his assassination in 2005.

28 Jan 2022; MEMO: Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, said on Thursday that Iran had gained influence in Lebanon because Arab states had abandoned the country, stepping up criticism of the Iran-backed Hezbollah and suggesting Tehran wants to erase the Lebanese state, Reuters reports.

One of Lebanon's main politicians, Jumblatt was speaking days after leading Sunni Muslim politician, Saad Al-Hariri, withdrew from political life, citing Iranian influence as one of the reasons he saw no hope of positive change.

BEIRUT, Jan 28 (NNN-NNA) – The Japanese government contributed 1.8 million U.S. dollars, to scale up the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) humanitarian assistance and life-saving interventions, for 35,000 vulnerable children, youth and families in Lebanon, the UN agency said, yesterday.

The donation would enable the agency to distribute blankets, jackets, thermal sets, outwears and socks, to vulnerable youth and families, living in homes with limited or no access to heating, it said in a statement.

BEIRUT, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- Around half of Lebanon's population is at risk of food insecurity due to a lack of access to basic food needs amid the current economic crisis, Lebanese Agriculture Minister Abbas Hajj Hassan said on Friday.

The minister made the remarks during the 14th Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

Lebanon is facing food insecurity since a shortage of U.S. dollars and a depreciation of its local currency, as the country imports about 85 percent of its food, the minister said.

BEIRUT, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's crisis is increasingly forcing young people to drop out of school and engage in ill-paid, irregular and informal work to survive and help feed their families, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a report released on Friday.

Dubbed "Searching for Hope," the report states that more than four in 10 youths in Lebanon reduced spending on education to buy basic food, medicine and other essential items, and three in 10 stopped their education altogether.

BEIRUT, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon and Jordan on Wednesday signed an agreement that Jordan would supply Lebanon with electricity through Syria, the National News Agency reported.

"We will secure 250 megawatts of electricity from Jordan with support from our Syrian brothers. We count on this joint Arab action to expand cooperation between Arab countries," Lebanese Energy Minister Walid Fayad said during a signing ceremony held at the Ministry of Energy in the capital Beirut.

BEIRUT (AP) — U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces said they wrestled control of the last section of a prison seized by Islamic State militants and freed a number of child detainees they had used as human shields. That ended a deadly, weeklong assault by the extremists on one of the largest detention facilities in Syria.

The attack was the biggest by IS since the fall of the group’s “caliphate” in 2019 and came as the militants staged a number of deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq that stoked fears they may be staging a comeback.