Day: July 6, 2024

Beirut, Lebanon — An Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon killed a Hezbollah member Saturday. The Israeli army said he was part of the militant group’s air defense unit, as tensions run high between the foes. 

Hezbollah has traded near daily fire with the Israeli army across Lebanon’s southern border since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, triggering the war in Gaza.  

“A local Hezbollah official” was killed in an “Israeli drone” strike on a vehicle near the eastern city of Baalbek, a source close to the group told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.  

Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported one person was killed when an “enemy drone” targeted a vehicle in the Shaat area, around 15 kilometers north of Baalbek.   

The area is northeast of Beirut, about 100 kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.  

The Israeli military said in a statement that the air force “operated in the area of Baalbek to strike and eliminate … a key operative in Hezbollah’s Aerial Defense Unit.”  

The Hezbollah operative “took part in the planning and carrying out of numerous terror attacks” against Israel and helped build up the group’s “arsenal of Iranian weapons,” the statement added.   

Hezbollah announced that a fighter from the area had been killed.   

Recent Israeli strikes in south Lebanon have killed two senior Hezbollah commanders — one of them this week — with the Shiite Muslim movement raining rockets on northern Israel in response.   

The cross-border exchanges of fire have largely been restricted to border areas, although Israel has repeatedly struck deep inside eastern Lebanon.  

Hezbollah on Saturday claimed several attacks on Israeli positions near the southern border, including one with “explosive drones” that it said came in response to “Israeli enemy attacks” on south Lebanon villages.  

Lebanon’s news agency reported several Israeli strikes on areas in south Lebanon later Saturday.   

Hezbollah says it is acting in support of Palestinians and Hamas with its attacks, which began on October 8.  

The escalating violence has raised fears of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which last went to war in 2006.   

The cross-border exchanges have killed at least 497 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.  

Israeli authorities say at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on their side of the border.  

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Japan’s foreign minister on Saturday announced a joint project with Cambodia to share knowledge and technology on land mine removal with countries around the world, including Ukraine. 

Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa made her comments during a visit to the Cambodian Mine Action Center, which was formed in the 1990s at the end of the Southeast Asian nation’s decades of civil war. It seeks to deal with an estimated 4 million to 6 million land mines and other unexploded munitions left strewn around the countryside.  

“Cambodia, which has steadily advanced mine removal within its own country, is now a leader in mine action around the world,” she noted, adding that Japan has consistently cooperated in Cambodia’s mine removal since the civil war. 

Cambodian deminers are among the world’s most experienced, and several thousand have been sent in the past decade under U.N. auspices to work in Africa and the Middle East. Cambodia in 2022 began training deminers from Ukraine, which also suffers from a high density of land mines and other unexploded munitions as the two-year Russian invasion drags on. 

“As a concrete cooperation under the Japan Cambodia Landmine Initiative, Japan will provide full-scale assistance to humanitarian mine action in Ukraine,” she said. “Next week, we will provide Ukraine with a large demining machine, and next month, here in Cambodia, we will train Ukrainian personnel on how to operate the machine.” 

The NGO Landmine Monitor in its 2022 report listed both Cambodia and Ukraine among nine countries with massive mine contamination, meaning they had more than 100 square kilometers of uncleared fields. 

Since the end of the fighting in Cambodia, nearly 20,000 people have been killed and about 45,000 have been injured by leftover war explosives, although the average annual death toll has dropped from several thousand to less than 100. 

Despite a very active demining program, many dangerous munitions remain in place, posing a hazard to villagers. 

Cambodia’s training of Ukrainian deminers, in Poland as well as Cambodia, came after former Prime Minister Hun Sen — in an unusual move for a nation that usually aligns itself with Russia and China — condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, saying “Cambodia is always against any country that invades another country.” 

Cambodia was one of nearly 100 U.N. member countries that co-sponsored a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion. 

Several other countries, including the United States and Germany, have already provided Ukraine with demining assistance. 

Kamikawa also held talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Hun Sen, his father who stepped down last year after ruling for 38 years. 

She and her Cambodian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sok Chenda Sophea, signed agreements for a concessional loan from Tokyo of up to $51.6 million for upgrading the highway between the capital, Phnom Penh, to the border with Thailand, and grant aid up to $2.4 million to support junior administrative officials to study in Japan, a Japanese Embassy statement said. 

Kamikawa next goes to the Philippines, where she and Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara will hold talks on Monday with their Philippine counterparts. They are set to discuss signing a mutual defense pact that would allow each country to deploy troops on the other’s territory. 

MAYREAU, St. Vincent and the Grenadines — Mayreau is one of the smallest inhabited islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It’s so small that it’s barely visible — a dot on the map of the Caribbean. Hurricane Beryl nearly erased it from the map.   

Beryl pummeled everything along its path, ripping up roofs of schools, crumbling homes and stripping trees of almost every leaf on the 0.46 square miles (1.2 square kilometers) of this island of about 360 people.   

“Everything was flying all over the place,” Mayreau resident James Alexander said as he recalled the storm. “I saw a tank full of water lifted up and swirl in the air.”   

Beryl made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Monday on the Caribbean island of Carriacou in Barbados and close to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, leaving a swath of destruction as it kept moving west and strengthening later into a Category 5. 

The storm is the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. On Friday, it moved over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after battering the resort of Tulum and reemerged in the Gulf of Mexico, prompting Texas officials to urge coastal residents to prepare as the storm headed their way. Beryl has caused at least 11 deaths as it passed through the Caribbean islands. 

Other islands in the Grenadines archipelago, like Canouan, also suffered extensive damage. But tiny Mayreau has been mostly ignored in its pleas for help. 

Most lost it all: 98% of the island’s structures were severely damaged, according to the latest report from the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Agency.  

When the storm hit, some of the people of Mayreau sought refuge in The Immaculate Conception Church. But the sturdy building built more than 100 years ago with local stone did not have a chance against the wrath of the Category 4 hurricane.   

People sheltered in the church barely made it out. Almost miraculously, they escaped unharmed but for a few minor injuries. With only one small clinic, which has also been damaged, and one nurse, that the injuries were minor was the only good news for the people of Mayreau.  

The storm ripped every roof off every home on the island. Many were left as piles of dust and rubble.  

“This church suffered an awful fate as a result of the passage of Hurricane Beryl and it’s an indication of what has happened throughout this island,” Luke Browne, St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ former minister of health, said as he stood in front of the rubble of The Immaculate Conception Church.  

Browne said he had been visiting Mayreau since he was a child and had seen the congregation “grow and thrive.” He pleaded for help rebuilding the island.  

Mayreau residents are now stranded without electricity or shelter — not even a roof — to protect them from the sun and rain.  

Islanders are badly in need of everything, from food and water to tents and baby formula for its 14 youngest inhabitants.  

Mayreau is far from the mainland, accessible only by a four-hour boat trip from St. Vincent.  

Although some aid is expected to trickle in from nearby islands, the need is enormous, and the aid is only guaranteed for the short term. There are no vehicles on Mayreau, so residents form human chains, passing vital bottles of water hand-to-hand to the improvised shelter.  

The small population depends on tourism and fishing, both of which were disrupted by the storm.  

“I’m just happy,” Alexander said, “to be alive.” 

Exercise Eagle Partner 24 to begin mid-July > U.S. Army Europe and Africa > Article View Press Release  U.S. Army Europe

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