Region

BEIRUT — Hizbollah said it targeted an Israeli command base on Tuesday in retaliation for the killings of one of its commanders and the Hamas deputy leader.

Hizbollah and its arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Hamas-Israel war broke out on October 7.

The Shiite Muslim movement said on Tuesday it had targeted the "enemy's northern command centre in the city of Safed with several drones".

It said the attack was part of its response to the killings of Hamas deputy leader Saleh Al Aruri on January 2 and of Heizbollah field commander Wissam Tawil on Monday.

The Israeli forces confirmed that a "hostile aircraft" had come down at one of its bases in the north and said that "no injuries or damage were reported".

On Saturday, Hizbollah said it had fired more than 60 rockets at an Israeli military base, also in response to Aruri's killing in Beirut which was widely blamed on Israel.

Hizbollah number two Naim Qassem in a speech on Tuesday warned that Israel's wave of targeted killings "cannot lead to a phase of retreat but rather to a push forward for the resistance".

He described Tawil as a member of Hizbollah's elite Al Radwan Brigade who had fought on several fronts.

On Tuesday morning, an Israeli strike targeted a car in the south Lebanon village of Ghandouria, the National News Agency (NNA) said.

The strike left "three Hizbollah fighters dead" a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because of security concerns.

Tawil, a top Hizbollah commander, was set to be buried in his south Lebanon village later on Tuesday.

He was the highest-ranking Hizbollah member to be killed since October 7.

Hizbollah, a Hamas ally, said Tawil was involved in the abduction of Israeli soldiers which triggered the group’s last war with Israel in 2006 as well as “specific operations... in Syria”.

He had also “directed numerous operations” against Israeli forces since the Gaza war began, Hizbollah said.

The three months of cross-border violence have killed more than 180 people in Lebanon, including over 135 Hizbollah fighters, but also more than 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.

In northern Israel, nine soldiers and at least four civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

CHARLESTON, United States — US President Joe Biden reached out to Black voters on Monday in an emotional campaign speech at the site of a racist massacre in 2015, but hecklers calling for a Gaza ceasefire highlighted another problem area for the Democrat.

Biden said the "poison" of white supremacy had "no place in America" in his address at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine Black parishioners were murdered by a racially-motivated killer.

The 81-year-old then linked efforts by Republican former president Donald Trump to overturn the last election in 2020 to the wider US history of racism, calling it the "old ghost in new garments".

"They're trying to erase history and your future, banning books, denying your right to vote and have it counted," Biden told the congregation from the pulpit of the historic church.

Biden later met with survivors of the shooting, the White House said, continuing a long connection with the church which started when he visited as vice president under Barack Obama after the killings.

Self-proclaimed white supremacist Dylann Roof, who was 21 at the time, said he carried out the shooting to start a race war. He was sentenced to death in 2017.

The speech was the second of two events kicking off Biden’s 2024 campaign in which he has targeted Trump, whom he is expected to face in a closely-contested rematch in November

However minutes into Biden’s speech he was interrupted by a demonstrator, saying that if the president cared about lives lost then, he should call for an end to the war between Hamas-Israel.

A small group of protestors then began shouting “ceasefire now”, before they were drowned out by churchgoers chanting “four more years” in support of Biden’s bid for a second term.

Biden said of the protesters that he could “understand their passion”, before adding: “I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza.”

Both the speech and the interruption reflected the diverse electoral groups that Biden must reach out to in what promises to be a difficult battle for reelection.

Polls show Biden’s support slipping among Black and ethnic minority voters, who helped drive his 2020 election win against Trump.

Biden also faces opposition from some Democrats over his staunch support of Israel’s offensive against Hamas following the October 7 attacks by the Palestinian fighter group.

And Biden will need support from both constituencies as he is either trailing or neck-and-neck with Trump in a series of recent polls, while his approval ratings are the lowest for any modern president at this stage in their term.

Biden’s fired-up speech on Monday touched on emotional ground as he sought to connect to voters, ranging from his support to civil rights, to his Catholic faith, and the church’s support after his eldest son Beau died of brain cancer at age 46 in the month before the massacre.

The choice of South Carolina was also symbolic because it was his victory there in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary that helped revive his flagging candidacy.

Biden’s campaign said his remarks in Charleston underscored the “enormous stakes of this election”.

“We’re all proud to welcome president Biden to the church to remind the nation of what happened and that it is on all of us to fight back against this extremism,” Biden Campaign Co-Chair and Congressman Jim Clyburn said.

He said the church had “witnessed the horrors of hate-fuelled political violence” and “shown us the path forward after moments of division and despair”.

Biden has set his sights squarely on Trump as the election year begins, portraying himself as a unifier and defender of democracy, and his opponent as a threat to American institutions.

TRIPOLI — Libya's state-owned energy firm said on on Sunday it had declared a state of "force majeure" at Al Sharara oilfield after production at the major facility was suspended due to protests.

The National Oil Corporation (NOC) said in a statement it had taken legal action for the south-western oilfield, which provides a quarter of the country's daily oil output, "due to the closure of the site by protesters".

Declaring "force majeure" allows parties to free themselves from contractual obligations when factors such as fighting or natural disasters make meeting them impossible.

The NOC did not elaborate on the protesters' demands but said "negotiations are ongoing to resume production as soon as possible".

"The closure has resulted in the suspension of crude oil supplies from the field to Zawiya terminal," the oil company said.

Libya sits on Africa's largest oil reserves but production has been frequently disrupted during over a decade of chaos since a NATO-backed uprising led to the ouster and killing of president Muammar Qadhafi in 2011.

Oil revenues are vital to the economy, and the NOC is one of the few institutions in the troubled country to have stayed in one piece.

The Al Sharara field, in the desert 900 kilometres south of Tripoli, is operated by a joint venture between the NOC and four European companies.

The interruptions in crude production have been caused by social and political protests amid clashes between rival factions.

The blockages have resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, according to the Central Bank of Libya.

GAZA STRIP — Israel bombed Gaza on Saturday as the United Nations warned the Palestinian territory has become "uninhabitable" after three months of fighting that threatens to engulf the wider region.

AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes early Saturday on Gaza's southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.

Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict, with the UN warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis as famine looms and disease spreads.

Abu Mohammed, 60, who fled to Rafah from the central Bureij refugee camp, told AFP Gaza's future was "dark and gloomy and very difficult".

With much of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday that "Gaza has simply become uninhabitable".

The UN's children's agency warned that clashes, malnutrition and a lack of health services had created "a deadly cycle that threatens over 1.1 million children" in Gaza.

Israeli forces were continuing "to fight in all parts of the Gaza Strip, in the north, centre and south", military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Friday.

Hagari said Israeli forces were maintaining a “very high state of readiness” near the border with Lebanon following the killing of a top Hamas commander in a strike in Beirut.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike but a US defence official told AFP that Israel carried it out.

Fighting rages 

AFP correspondents reported on Friday that Israeli strikes had hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah as well as parts of central Gaza.

The Israeli forces said its forces had “struck over 100 targets” across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites and weapons depots.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said it had recorded 162 deaths over the same period.

And a number of Palestinian fighters were killed in clashes in Khan Yunis, a city that has become a major battleground, the army said.

AFPTV footage on Friday showed entire families, seeking safety from the violence, arriving in Rafah in overloaded cars and on foot, pushing handcarts stacked with possessions.

“We fled Jabalia camp to Maan [in Khan Yunis] and now we are fleeing from Maan to Rafah,” said one woman who declined to give her name. “[We have] no water, no electricity and no food.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported renewed shelling and drone fire in the area around Al Amal hospital in Khan Yunis after seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, were killed while sheltering in the compound.

“We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe due to the spread of epidemics, with the hospital overcrowded with displaced people,” said a spokesman for Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza.

Diplomatic push 

Top Western diplomats were in the region on a fresh push to raise the flow of aid into the besieged territory and calm rising tensions.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Turkey on Saturday where he was due to discuss the Gaza war with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Blinken will also visit several Arab states before heading to Israel and the occupied West Bank next week.

During his visit, Blinken plans to discuss with Israeli leaders “immediate measures to increase substantially humanitarian assistance to Gaza”, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell travelled to Lebanon on Friday for talks on “all aspects of the situation in and around Gaza”, including escalating tensions with Israel.

Germany’s top diplomat Annalena Baerbock was also due to travel to the region, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

She plans to discuss “the dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza” and tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border, spokesman Sebastian Fischer said.

The war in Gaza and almost daily exchanges of cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah group since October 7 have raised fears of a wider conflagration.

Those fears grew this week following the killing of Hamas deputy leader Saleh Al Aruri this week in Hizbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Friday that the group would swiftly respond “on the battlefield” to Aruri’s death.

Israel’s military said on Friday its fighter jets had conducted fresh strikes against Hizbollah targets just across the border.

SANAA — Thousands rallied in support of Gaza in the rebel-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa on Friday, chanting anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans,

The Houthis have launched more than 20 attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea in recent weeks, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the face of Israel's war on Hamas.

Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, the Iran-backed rebels have organised weekly protests in Sanaa but Friday's demonstration was the "largest" so far, spokesman Mohammad Abdel Salam said.

"Millions of people" took part, he said on social media platform X.

A photographer who collaborates with AFP witnessed a flypast over the crowds by rebel helicopters and warplanes.

Aerial footage released by the Houthis' Ansarullah Media Centre showed a sea of protesters flooding the capital's Al Sabeen Square, carrying Palestinian and Hizbollah flags.

The demonstrators also held up pictures of Houthi fighters killed last Sunday in a US strike on rebel vessels in the Red Sea.

The US military said it had sunk three Houthi boats following attacks on a container vessel run by shipping giant Maersk. The rebels said 10 of their fighters were killed.

“We challenge you, America, to approach our coasts,” Houthi supporter Abdulkarim Al Marwani told AFP as he took part in the protest.

“We will make the sea, as we made the land, a graveyard for America and Israel. We will make the sea a sinking zone and an incinerator for America and Israel,” he added.

The attacks on shipping by the Houthis, who control much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, have caused major disruption to a waterway that carries about 12 per cent of global trade.

Twelve nations led by the United States jointly warned the Houthis on Wednesday of unspecified consequences unless they immediately halt their attacks.

But Sanaa protester Hazaa Sarhan warned: “Even if you unite the forces of the entire world and the forces of all the European countries, they will never intimidate us.”