The Israeli Defense Forces has released a video it says shows Hezbollah fighters clearing munitions from the home of party member Abdel Nasser Issa in southern Lebanon, where a mysterious explosion took place Monday evening.
The grainy surveillance video, which was purportedly shot by an unmanned Israeli aircraft, shows dozens of figures loading trucks at the site of the blast before the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers arrived on the scene. Click here to view the video on the IDF's website.
The incident is under investigation, with contradictory news reports saying that the site was a Hezbollah weapons cache or that the explosion was caused by old Israeli ordnance. No one was killed in the blast, but Lebanese authorities confirmed that one person was wounded, reportedly Issa.
Israel filed an official complaint with the United Nations after the explosion, which it said proves Hezbollah is continuing to store weapons in southern Lebanon in violation of U.N. Resolution 1701. Hezbollah, which describes itself as a resistance movement, has never denied its weapons and often boasts of its military capacity.
Hezbollah denied initial reports that five people had died, including a party official and his son. Local media claimed that no one was killed but that Issa was undergoing treatment at a nearby hospital for serious injuries.
The Israeli army issued a statement claiming the explosion "proves again the presence of weapons forbidden in southern Lebanon" under U.N. Resolution 1701, and Israeli resident Shimon Peres accused Hezbollah of turning Lebanon into a "powder keg." But as of this afternoon, Hezbollah's news channel, Al Manar, was favoring an AFP report suggesting the explosion may have taken place while Issa was attempting to defuse unexploded Israeli ordnance he found next to a nearby river.
A spokeswoman for the U.N. peacekeeping force confirmed that the Israeli Army requested an investigation into the explosion, which comes just a few months after another mysterious blast in an abandoned house near the Israeli border which was widely believed to have been caused by a Hezbollah weapons cache. Hezbollah has maintained that the building contained unexploded Israeli shells from the 2006 July war.
-- Meris Lutz in Beirut
Photo: the first-floor garage where the explosion took place was scorched when a still-unexplained explosion went off Monday night. Credit: Naharnet.com
Several hundred people rallied in downtown Beirut on Monday in a show of solidarity with the displaced residents of Nahr el Bared, the Palestinian refugee camp that was destroyed in spring 2007 when fighting broke out between Fatah Al-Islam militants and the Lebanese Army.
The demonstration was staged days before a key court ruling that could put a halt to reconstruction, leaving some 30,000 people in temporary UN housing or squeezed into the outskirts of the camp indefinitely.
Monday's rally saw young activists from Beirut chant and clap alongside displaced camp residents of all ages, many of whom wore caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the name of one of the 37 different community organizations that organized the protest under the umbrella of the Nahr el Bared Advocacy Committee.
Abu Dhabi's supreme court sentenced former Syrian intelligence officer Mohammad Zuhair Siddiq to six months in jail and deportation for entering the United Arab Emirates on a fake Czech passport that Siddiq claims was given to him by French intelligence.
Siddiq, once a star witness in the international tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is suspected of giving false information in an attempt to implicate Syria in the explosion that killed Hariri and 22 others in 2005. Since then, investigators for the tribunal have dismissed Siddiq's testimony, and warrants for his arrest have been issued by the Lebanese and Syrian governments.
Siddiq's lawyer, Fahd Al-Sabhan, indicated to local reporters that he will fight the deportation sentence if it means his client will be handed over to Syrian authorities, which would be tantamount to extradition.
The leader of Lebanon's Druze community says the country should buy weapons from Iran, among others, to use to defend itself against the Israeli "enemy," Iran's English-language Press TV is reporting on its website.
That's OK, says Walid Jumblatt. If the United States fails to provide Lebanon with such weapons, it could turn to the Islamic Republic, which already is believed to supply weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political organization and militia.
It's turning into the biggest financial scandal to hit Lebanon in years, perpetrated by a businessman being dubbed the nation's Bernie Madoff.
Now, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is weighing in on the topic amid allegations that Salah Ezzedine (pictured, at right) was a financier of the Shiite militant group and political organization.
In a speech last night, Nasrallah said the party had nothing to do with Ezzedine, now in jail after allegedly losing $1.5 billion of investors' money in what some are calling a Ponzi scheme.
Ezzedine was a financier and owner of a publishing house close to Hezbollah. But Nasrallah denied allegations that Hezbollah leaders had invested huge unexplained sums with Ezzedine, who reportedly offered returns of between 25% and 55% to investors, luring families.as well as charities to pour cash into his company.
"I tell you that these are false allegations," he said. "These Hezbollah leaders own nothing of the funds that people claim they own."
Lebanon's online lesbian magazine Bekhsoos is back after a nearly one-year hiatus for almost one year.
The publication, whose Arabic name loosely translates as "Concerning," was launched as a quarterly magazine in early 2008 by members of the Lebanese lesbian group Meem and was billed as the Arab world's first publication for lesbian and bisexual women.
Back then, Bekhsoos published a mixture of news about sexual identity in the Arab world.
Now it plans to feature more investigative reports with the objective of filling "the gap of lesbian- and transgender-produced writing in the Arab world."
Until recently Salah Ezzedine was a pillar of Lebanon's Shiite community.
A successful and outwardly pious businessman, Ezzedine handled investments for thousands of people, from poor villagers in southern Lebanon to expatriate millionaires in West Africa, and even officials from the militant party Hezbollah.
But that all came crashing down last week when Ezzedine declared bankruptcy, prompting an investigation that revealed the shocking extent of his alleged fraud.
Local media reports now estimate that Ezzedine lost up to $1.5 billion of his clients' money. He's now being dubbed Lebanon's Bernie Madoff.
Most summers, if Lebanon isn’t paralyzed by war, civil strife or political crisis, security forces make a show of razing hashish fields in the fertile Bekaa Valley, an exercise in futility that leaves enough crops for the drug to remain the country’s top export.
The raids are announced ahead of time, and those growers who haven’t been able to pay off the police have plenty of time to harvest a lucrative yield.
This year, peaceful elections and a record tourist season have perhaps emboldened the government to take a stronger stand against the drug trade. Police chief Ashraf Rifi boasted on Tuesday that security forces had destroyed about a third of the hashish plantations and will continue the campaign “until the remaining quantities have been eradicated."
