Palestinians stand amidst the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 25, 2024, amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Credit: AFP)
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Catch up on yesterday’s LIVE coverage of Day 111 of the Israel-Hamas war here.
Israeli attacks continued to ravage southern Lebanon, striking homes and shops and falling near schools, businesses and a funeral. Israeli bombardments hit a house in Bazourieh, Sour, causing shattered glass to injure a woman in a nearby house. The Amal Wahab Public School in Rihan, Jezzine evacuated its students after four missiles struck nearby. Images taken by Kfar Kila residents showed devastation in their area, while inhabitants told our correspondent Israeli attacks heavily damaged shops and targeted the vicinity of a gas station. Hezbollah said its attacks hit the infrastructure of two Iron Domes, an Israeli air defense system. One Israeli attack fell near the site of a funeral in Tayr Harfa, Sour. Israeli shelling has repeatedly hit the vicinity of funerals for Hezbollah fighters killed in the cross-border clashes. Over the past three months, financial aid has been provided to 16,500 displaced families, in addition to the distribution of some 17,000 food boxes and 14,000 medical interventions, according to an announcement following a meeting of the emergency coordination committee for displaced persons in southern Lebanon.
A child died while hospitalized in Cyprus yesterday after she was rescued the day before along with nearly sixty other people from a makeshift migrant vessel that departed from Akkar, North Lebanon, Cedar Centre for Legal Studies lawyer Mohammad Sablouh told L’Orient Today. The girl was among three children and one adult found unconscious and then hospitalized with three other people aboard who were suffering from bone fractures, the Cyprus Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) said Wednesday after conducting the rescue operation. Sablouh added that the unconscious adult is still in a coma. Cypriot migrant rights NGO KISA told L’Orient Today that they notified authorities of the migrant boat’s presence on Jan. 20, one day before the migrant distress hotline Alarm Phone said they lost contact with the vessel. The JRCC says it was informed of the boat’s presence on Wednesday by a commercial ship. Informal sea crossings are fraught with perils, including interception by authorities, becoming stranded, kidnapping and deadly sinkings. Despite the dangers, irregular sea migration attempts from Lebanon continue amid increasingly dire living conditions.
Parliament is scheduled to vote on the adoption of the 2024 budget this afternoon on the third consecutive day of sessions discussing the text. The constitutional deadline for adopting the budget is on Jan. 31, after which the government can issue a decree to enact the measures slated in its original draft — excluding the Parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee’s modifications. On Wednesday, committee chief Ibrahim Kanaan presented a report on the draft budget and the modifications made to it, which included its reduction from 133 to 96 articles.
The Ghobeiri municipality said it will sue private security firm Metropolitan after pictures spread on social media showing a man tied to a pole with a sign reading “I am a thief” affixed to his chest. “We don't even know if he was a thief, we don't know what he did,” Ghobeiri municipality chief Mouin Khalil told L’Orient Today, noting that the matter should have been delegated to official security sources. A source at the ISF told L'Orient Today that when they went to the area they did not find the man and had not identified him.
The Lebanese state filed a complaint demanding that Lebanese television channel LBCI stop broadcasting the sitcom Marhaba Dawle. The complaint accuses the program of violating “moral and ethical boundaries.” LBCI responded that it aims to use humor as a corrective tool “to fix the flaws in the state,” emphasizing the role “freedoms that should not be tampered with.” The program, and other works from its writer-cum-director Mohamad Dayekh, have drawn controversy. Marhaba Dawle, according to LBCI’s description, stages “security personnel in an imagined police station” to depict the “ambiguous relationship between the citizen and the state.” Stand-up comedians Nour Hajjar and Shaden Fakih have previously been summoned, detained and questioned for jokes regarding security personnel. Last August, Amnesty International launched a campaign calling for the abolition of “all laws that criminalize insult and defamation,” noting an “increase in freedom of expression-related investigations and prosecutions.”
One man shot another dead in Hay al-Sellom after a dispute reportedly linked to generator subscriptions, a security source told L’Orient Today. In a video purportedly showing the incident, a verbal spat between the two men devolves into gunfire when one man fires toward the sky and then the ground and walks away before being shot dead by the other. Last year, three separate disputes linked to private generators in Beirut and Tripoli left at least one person dead and injured several others. Privately-owned generators, that often operate on a subscription basis, are ubiquitous across Lebanon to mend gaps in state electricity provider Electricité du Liban’s coverage. Disputes have repeatedly escalated to deadly shootouts amid a rampant presence of unregulated firearms across Lebanon.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is set to rule today on whether it sanctions an emergency intervention in Gaza. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) urged “immediate action” to prevent the imminent total breakdown of the health sector in Gaza. The Gazan Health Ministry accused Israel of killing at least 20 people and injuring 150 others while they were queuing for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini deplored Israel’s attack on one of the organization’s reception centers in Khan Younis, whose presence, he claimed, had been communicated to Israel. The Qatari Foreign Ministry accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of careerism over his repeated statements refusing a cease-fire and calling for the destruction of Hamas, which the Gulf state said were “undermining” international mediation to end the war in Gaza. Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Israel and Hamas neared an agreement for a second release of hostages with the only outstanding issue remaining being the terms of a cease-fire.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “Khan Younis: Civilians surrounded, town under siege”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz