Hezbollah and Israel exchange fire, public schools reopen, would-be migrants intercepted: Everything you need to know to start your Monday

Two children in South Lebanon were hospitalized yesterday after sustaining injuries caused by an exchange of fire between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces. Meanwhile, the death toll continues to rise in a Hamas-Israeli confrontation that erupted Saturday, with more than 1,100 people killed and thousands of others injured so far. Hamas officials told AFP on Sunday they had taken “over 100 prisoners” following their incursion into Israel after the confrontation began with an unprecedented barrage of rockets from the Gaza strip. A Hezbollah spokesperson and several residents of Khraybeh, southern Lebanon, confirmed having been targeted by Israeli fire yesterday afternoon. Earlier in the day, Israeli forces responded to Hezbollah’s attack on the Shebaa Farms with an artillery barrage of Kfar Shouba in southern Lebanon. Many Lebanese political leaders have expressed support for Hamas’ so-called “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack, while some have called for Lebanon to be shielded from being embroiled in the conflict. A Wall Street Journal article published yesterday cites senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah as saying Iranian security officials helped plan the Hamas attack and greenlit the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday. You can follow our live coverage of day three of the Hamas-Israel war here.

Lebanese public school students were set to return to classrooms this morning following a long summer break full of uncertainty about when, or even if, schools would reopen. An Education Ministry spokesperson confirmed to L’Orient Today last night that the country’s public schools would indeed reopen this morning. The last academic year was characterized by monthslong teachers’ strikes that left almost a million children “without an education,” according to Save the Children. With teachers’ salaries still being paid in Lebanon’s massively depreciated national currency, the Lebanese lira, educators have been demanding improved rates and additional benefits. The Education Ministry only recently announced that classes would resume today. Prior to the onset of the country’s financial crisis in 2019, the school year typically got underway in September. Meanwhile, no class resumption date has been announced for Syrian students who attend Lebanese schools via a morning-afternoon shift system.

The Lebanese Army intercepted 124 people, including eight women and 24 children, off the coast of Tripoli, where their boat had broken down during an attempted irregular sea migration, an army statement said Friday. Lebanese Red Cross teams in Tripoli intervened to rescue the would-be migrants, a health source told L’Orient Today’s correspondent in the North. The boat reportedly departed from the Akkar coast Thursday night. Irregular sea migration attempts from Lebanon are regularly thwarted. Such crossings are fraught with perils, including interception by Lebanese authorities, becoming stranded, kidnapping and deadly sinkings. Despite the dangers, and amid increasingly dire living conditions, attempts by would-be migrants to embark from the Lebanese coast have more than doubled in 2022.

After a failed jailbreak, inmates at a Zahle prison started a fire that killed three people and led to the hospitalization of 16 others, the Internal Security Forces (ISF) said in a statement Friday. A security official told AFP that “entire cells” went up in flames after inmates burned their personal belongings and mattresses. Amid increasingly dire carceral conditions, several jailbreaks and attempted escapes have been recorded over the past year. Amnesty International in June condemned a “sharp increase in custodial deaths” and “impunity for ill-treatment” of prisoners, calling for de-congestion of detention centers. A Human Rights Watch report published in August claimed that some 86 percent of Lebanon’s incarcerated people have yet to be tried, while the country’s two dozen prisons are at nearly double their capacity and struggling with poor food and inadequate medical supplies.

In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from over the weekend: “Israel - Gaza: Will Hezbollah join the war with Hamas?”

Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz