kills

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reports three people have been killed in an Israeli attack on a car in Nabatieh.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have continued despite a ceasefire, with three people killed during a strike on a car in the south of the country, as senior Israeli and Lebanese officials meet for a final day of talks in Washington.

According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA), three people were killed on Thursday, and one was wounded after the Israeli attack hit a car on the road between Zawtar and Mayfadoun in Nabatieh Governorate.

NNA also reported that Israeli forces burned a number of houses in the town of Ain Arab, after issuing warnings forcing residents to evacuate the town before 5pm on Wednesday.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, since the conflict began on March 2, 4,230 people have been killed and 12,179 others have been wounded.

Reporting from Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah remains “fragile” as the Israeli army continues to target “anyone or anything in front-line villages”.

“[These are ] villages on the outskirts [of the] city of Nabatieh, which lie along the area which is under Israel’s occupation,” Khodr explained. “So the message is they don’t want people to approach that area, there’ve been drone strikes, they’ve dropped stun grenades … people killed.

“Those villages, the Israeli army was not able to occupy them during weeks of fighting and it wants to still be able to control them by fire because the more territory you control, the more leverage you have in negotiations,” she said, adding that officials from Lebanon and Israel are discussing the possible and gradual handover of territory.

Ceasefire talks

Israel and Lebanon have been discussing a United States-backed proposal for the past three days, with the talks wrapping up in Washington, DC, on Thursday. The negotiations have been focused on Israeli forces handing over some of the territory they occupied during the fighting with Hezbollah to Lebanon’s military.

A US State Department official told the Reuters news agency that Israel had taken a “concrete step” towards the proposal, which had been part of the latest round of talks, by pulling back from a part of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

However, a senior Israeli defence official denied that there had been any pullback, adding that Israel would not be withdrawing from its buffer zone.

Moreover, a senior Lebanese military official also told Reuters that developments on the ground in recent days had shown the “opposite of a pullback”.

Still, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon were making good progress towards a “commitment of intent”.

“I think we are very close in our hopes of getting a commitment of intent between the two countries,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Bahrain.

“It’ll be a process, it’ll take some time, it’ll take a lot of work, but I can tell you that for the first time in 30 years, the sovereign government of Lebanon is speaking to the government of Israel directly.”

Under US pressure, Lebanese officials began direct talks in April with Israel in Washington.

Hezbollah, however, has condemned the Lebanon-Israel talks, demanding the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon first.

June 24 (UPI) — A U.S. airstrike launched last week in northwest Syria killed a senior Islamic State leader, U.S. military officials announced Wednesday.

U.S. Central Command said the Friday attack killed Ali Husayn al-Ulaywi as “part of ongoing U.S. efforts to disrupt and eliminate terrorists seeking to attack Americans abroad or the U.S. homeland.”

The announcement comes a little more than a month after U.S. and Nigerian forces killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, believed at the time to be second-in-command for USUS.

U.S. forces have been battling ISIS and its predecessors for more than a decade in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and other locations throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. This fight was entwined with both the Iraq war and the Syrian civil war.

“CENTCOM and our partners remain committed to rooting out remaining remnants of ISIS to ensure its enduring defeat,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander.

Several Russian regions are facing fuel shortages because of Ukrainian attacks.

A Russian missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has killed at least three people, as Moscow struggles with the economic strain of the four-and-a-half-year Russia-Ukraine war.

Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the Kryvyi Rih defence council, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday that 25 people had been wounded in the attack, which he said used a cluster munition warhead.

“People died within 200 metres [660 feet] of each other because of this barbaric weapon,” Vilkul said, adding that a day of mourning would be marked on Wednesday.

Kyiv has previously accused Moscow of using cluster munitions, which scatter into smaller explosives when dropped.

Reacting to the attack, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for more international pressure on Moscow to end the war and for quicker supplies of air defence systems.

“Every delay in implementing air defence agreements, every delay in supplies to protect Ukraine and Ukrainians is in effect a loss of life,” he wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine announced on Tuesday that its forces had targeted a railway bridge, a power plant and other key infrastructure in Russian-occupied Crimea.

Weakened rouble

Over the past few months, Russia and Ukraine have significantly ramped up attacks. As Moscow launches barrages of strikes on Ukraine, Kyiv in turn has targeted Russian refineries and infrastructure with its own drones.

Ukraine’s drone attacks have led to fuel shortages in Russia. Many regions across the country have reported restrictions on fuel sales and rising prices for oil products, creating concerns about the stability of Russia’s economy.

On Monday, the Moscow Exchange stock index fell by five percent before it rebounded slightly. It is still around its lowest level since March 2023, while the rouble weakened past the 75-mark against the US dollar for the first time since May 6.

The Kremlin dismissed concerns about the rouble’s weakness.

“The stability of the Russian economy, macroeconomic stability, is absolutely ensured,” government spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, efforts to end the war have remained effectively frozen as United States President Donald Trump has shifted his focus to Iran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told foreign envoys in Moscow on Tuesday that the Americans seemed to be “abandoning any claim to the role of an objective mediator and are instead pursuing a course of escalating sanctions pressure on Russia”.

June 22 (UPI) — An explosion at Qatar’s largest natural gas plant killed 13 people and injured about 66, authorities said.

The blast, caused by a technical malfunction, took place Sunday as the facility restarted its natural gas production after a shutdown caused by the Iran-U.S. war, authorities from the interior ministry said. It took place in the Ras Laffan industrial zone. The nearby Ras Laffan Port is the largest artificial harbor in the world and was targeted by Iranian strikes earlier this year, BBC News reported.

Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, Qatar’s energy minister, said that the explosion would not affect the country’s exports and that it was an accident and “not sabotage or hostile in nature.”

All of those killed were workers at the plant, The New York Times reported. They were all from India or Pakistan, BBC News said.

“We convey our deepest condolences to the families of those who have unfortunately passed away in the sad incident at Ras Laffan Industrial City last night,” the Embassy of India in Doha said in a social media post.

Liquified natural gas is important to Qatar’s economy, and the country is one of the world’s largest exporters of it. Ras Laffan is the largest site in the country for producing LNG. Qatar had ceased production earlier in the Iran-U.S. war and has said damage from attacks during the conflict could take years to repair.

The blast turned the city’s skyline orange and was felt by residents more than 43 miles away, BBC News said.

A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.

The Sheriff’s Office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”

Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.

Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line as though it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.

“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show.

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the office said in a news release.

Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to the Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.

BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving

Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in Yosemite National Park.

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.

“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.

Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.

Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know whether Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.

“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing, `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.

Bynum writes for the Associated Press.

President Donald Trump has posted a video of a ‘swift and lethal’ US strike he claims has killed the leader of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang. Trump said Venezuela helped the US with the strike on Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores.

An Israeli strike on a vehicle in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon killed two people and sparked a fire that spread to nearby cars. Israel has continued to attack Lebanon despite a US-announced ceasefire on April 16.

Emergency Lawyers said dozens were also wounded in the strike that came less than 24 hours after similar drone attacks.

A drone strike on a market in central Sudan has killed at least 11 people and injured dozens more, according to a local rights group, as escalating aerial attacks further increase the death toll of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The attack on Saturday targeted the main market in Abu Zaeima, a paramilitary-controlled town in North Kordofan state, according to Emergency Lawyers, which has documented abuses since fighting erupted in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The group said the casualty figures could rise, but did not specify who carried out the attack. Neither side has claimed responsibility.

Emergency Lawyers said the strike came less than 24 hours after similar drone attacks struck nearby villages and a civilian vehicle.

Condemning the attack, it said the repeated targeting of civilians, villages and public transport reflected a blatant disregard for human life and the basic principles of international humanitarian law.

The group added that the continued loss of civilian life should not be treated as routine and called for an end to such attacks, as well as accountability for those responsible.

Two witnesses told the AFP news agency that another drone hit a fuel station later on Saturday in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, which the RSF has partially encircled for months.

A medical source at a hospital there said four wounded civilians had been brought to the facility.

Drone warfare

Nearly 70 people were killed in two separate drone strikes in the West and North Kordofan states over the past week, according to Emergency Lawyers and a local leader.

Drone warfare has become increasingly more common in Sudan’s conflict.

The United Nations said in May that at least 880 civilians were killed in drone strikes nationwide between January and April.

Fighting has intensified in Kordofan and Blue Nile State near the Ethiopian border since the RSF captured el-Fasher last October, the military’s last major stronghold in western Darfur.

Since then, more than 300,000 people have fled front-line areas, including el-Fasher and parts of Kordofan and Blue Nile, according to the UN.

Kordofan, rich in oil and arable land, is strategically significant, linking RSF strongholds in the neighbouring Darfur region to the country’s army-controlled east. The region remains largely contested between the army and the RSF.

Now entering its fourth year, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 13 million others, creating what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.

Israeli forces kill three high-ranking Lebanese soldiers as Arab nations condemn Iran’s attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait.

Casualty toll is expected to increase, reports Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud.

At least five people have been killed while attending a wedding in Gaza City after Israeli forces bombed the wedding tent.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from the enclave on Saturday, said several projectiles exploded in or near tents that were part of the wedding, with shrapnel flying into surrounding areas.

A source at al-Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera reporters on the ground that more than a dozen people were wounded in the attack.

Women and children are believed to be among the casualties, Mahmoud said, adding that the casualty toll is expected to rise.

This is a developing story. More to come…

52-year-old Ryan McFarland killed six of his family members and later took his own life when confronted by the police in Muscatine in the US state of Iowa.

At least two Palestinians were killed and around a dozen wounded when an Israeli air strike hit a crowded cafe at Gaza’s seaport. Witnesses said people had gathered there to escape the heat and enjoy a public holiday, as attacks continue despite an October ceasefire.

At least 16 students were killed and dozens injured after a fire tore through the dormitory of a girls’ boarding school in Kenya’s Rift Valley early Thursday. Panicked parents gathered outside the school searching for their children hours after the blaze was extinguished.

May 27 (UPI) — The U.S. military has killed another person in its latest strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Trump administration’s deadly crackdown on alleged narcotics trafficking in interenational waters.

The Tuesday strike was the 58th publicly disclosed by U.S. Southern Command in President Donald Trump‘s monthslong campaign, which has now killed at least 194 people.

SOUTHCOM said three people were aboard the boat and that the U.S. Coast Guard has been notified to conduct search-and-rescue operations.

As with the previous strikes, SOUTHCOM claimed in a statement that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

No evidence has been made public amid the campaign, which began in early September.

A black-and-white aerial video accompanied the SOUTHCOM statement showing a boat racing across the water and then erupting into flames.

SOUTHCOM says the boats are operated by one of 10 drug cartels and gangs that Trump has designated as terrorist organizations. Trump has said the United States is in “armed conflict” with the designated organizations in justifying the use of military force in drug-enforcement operations.

However, his administration has been accused of committing extrajudicial killings with the attacks by numerous legal and human rights organizations, as well as by United Nations experts.

Critics contend that it is unlawful for the Trump administration to use the military for ostensibly law-enforcement operations.

Several injured people have been transported to hospitals to be treated for chemical burns.

A chemical tank has imploded at a Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility in the US state of Washington, killing several people and critically injuring others, authorities said.

Emergency responders on Tuesday remained at the site in the city of Longview in Cowlitz County, about 70km (45 miles) north of Portland, Oregon, the Longview Fire Department said in a joint written statement with Nippon and the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Department.

Multiple patients who suffered from chemical burns and other injuries were transported to nearby hospitals. Authorities said the implosion posed “no immediate threat to the surrounding community”.

The statement said that officials “can confirm fatalities related to the incident” along with “multiple critical injuries”, but did not provide figures.

At least nine workers and one firefighter were taken to hospitals from the site, said Scott Goldstein, the Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue chief who was among those who responded. The number of deaths was “undetermined”, he said at a news conference.

PeaceHealth St John Medical Center in Longview told ABC News it had seen nine patients related to the incident, including one who had died. Six of the patients were in fair condition, and two other patients had been transferred to other facilities, the hospital told ABC.

The joint statement said that a tank containing “white liquor”, a chemical solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide used in the production of paper pulp, had ruptured at about 7:15am local time (14:15 GMT).

Goldstein said at the news conference that the 80,000-gallon (about 300,000-litre) tank was approximately 60 percent full.

In southern California, meanwhile, authorities have been monitoring an overheating industrial tank containing methyl methacrylate, a highly flammable chemical used in the production of plastics. The worst-case possibility of an explosion was ruled out on Monday at the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove after a crack relieved some of the mounting pressure, officials said.

Orange County Fire Authority spokesman Greg Barta said in an update on Tuesday morning that the temperature in the tank was holding steady and that crews were working to ensure that people evacuated could get home as soon as possible.

May 26 (UPI) — An implosion at a manufacturing facility in Washington killed multiple people and injured 10 others, including a firefighter, local authorities said Tuesday.

The implosion at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility in Longview, Wash., happened around 7:20 a.m. The facility is a pulp and paper mill, and the implosion involved a vat of a chemical used in paper treatment called white liquor.

White liquor is made of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate, Cowlitz County fire chief Scott Goldstein told NBC News.

The Longview Fire Department said there was no immediate threat to the public, but the implosion killed multiple people and caused chemical burns and other injuries to others. Officials transported multiple people — including one firefighter — to hospitals in Longview and Vancouver.

Officials haven’t specified how many were among the dead. The Seattle Times reported that emergency responders were also searching for potentially missing people.

Goldstein said some of the injuries were minor while others were more critical.

Washington State Department of Ecology spokeswoman Anna Izenman told The Times that spill responders were on site evaluating any potential environmental impacts from the incident. She said white liquor can’t be collected and cleaned up in the same manner as oil; it can only “self-neutralize” with water over time.

A Baloch separatist group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a train carrying soldiers in Quetta, Pakistan. The suicide car bombing killed at least 24 people and injured dozens more, including women and children.

Mohammad Abu Mallouh, ​Alaa Zaqlan and their child, Osama, killed in the attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp, medics say.

An Israeli air raid on a home in Gaza has killed three members of a family, including a six-month-old child, medical workers said, as Israel continues to violate the “ceasefire” brokered by the United States last year.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said it received the bodies of a couple and their young child in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Medics identified those killed in the attack on an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp as Mohammad Abu Mallouh, his wife Alaa Zaqlan, and their child Osama, the Reuters news agency reported.

Medical workers said about 10 people were wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Since the “ceasefire” came into effect in October, Israel has continued with its near-daily attacks across the besieged Palestinian territory, which Gaza health authorities say have killed nearly 900 people.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said Israeli bombing began on Sunday as Palestinians were fleeing following forced displacement orders. He said many people ran while carrying personal belongings, including mattresses.

Separately, Israeli forces continued demolishing homes and civilian infrastructure in eastern Gaza on Sunday behind Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line”, referring to Israeli-designated military zones and buffer areas inside the enclave, he said.

Israeli jets also carried out air raids on Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday, causing extensive damage near a hospital, Mahmoud said.

Earlier this month, the Gaza Government Media Office said it had documented at least 2,400 Israeli violations in the first six months of the ceasefire, including more than 1,100 air raids and at least 921 shootings targeting civilians.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. Israeli officials acknowledged the data was broadly accurate in January, after casting doubt on their credibility for two years.

On Saturday, five police officers and a 13-year-old boy were killed in an Israeli attack.

Talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent end to the war have stalled, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire. Israel says Hamas’s refusal to disarm is a key obstacle, while the Palestinian group says negotiations have been paused due to continued violations and restrictions on aid entering Gaza.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch said the territory’s humanitarian infrastructure remained in peril, more than six months after the start of the ceasefire.

President Xi Jinping has called on authorities nationwide to learn from the incident.

A gas explosion at a coal mine in China has killed at least 90 people.

State media Xinhua said 247 workers had been on duty underground when the blast ripped through the Liushenyu mine in Qinyuan county, Shanxi province, on Friday.

China’s coal mines are considered among the deadliest in the world due to poor safety standards, weak regulation, and corruption as companies seek to profit from the country’s rapidly expanding economy.

Rescue operations were ongoing as emergency crews continued searching for survivors of the explosion, the deadliest mining disaster reported in China in more than a decade.

The blast occurred shortly after a carbon monoxide alert was issued, with some reports claiming gas levels had exceeded safe limits.

According to state-run broadcaster CGTN, the person responsible for overseeing the mine has been arrested while authorities investigate the cause of the explosion.

President Xi Jinping has urged authorities across China to intensify efforts to prevent major accidents in the wake of Friday’s blast.

“All regions and departments must learn from the lessons of the accident, remain vigilant regarding workplace safety, thoroughly investigate, rectify all types of risks and hidden dangers, and resolutely prevent and curb the occurrence of major and serious accidents,” Xi said.

Video footage posted online from the scene showed several ambulances gathered near the mine.

Shanxi province, where the incident occurred, is China’s main coal-mining region. More than one billion tonnes of coal were extracted there last year, almost a third of the country’s total output.

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, accounting for more than half of global consumption.

The country is also the world’s largest annual greenhouse gas emitter, while being the biggest producer of renewable energy.

A Ukrainian strike collapsed a five-storey college dormitory in the Russian-occupied city of Starobilsk, killing four people and injuring at least 39 others. Rescue operations continue as more people are believed to be trapped under the rubble.

At least five people have been killed as Israeli air attacks hit several locations in southern and eastern Lebanon.

A series of Israeli air attacks on southern and eastern Lebanon has killed at least five people and injured more than a dozen, according to the Health Ministry.

Despite Israel agreeing to a ceasefire extension with Hezbollah, the attacks on Sunday included the municipalities of Tayr Felsay, Tayr Debba, Az-Zrariyah and Jebchit.

According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA), at least three people were also killed in a separate Israeli attack on the village of Jouaiya.

The Israeli military issued forced displacement orders to residents in the villages of Sohmor, Roumine, al-Qusaibah, Kfar Hounah and Naqoura in southern Lebanon.

“It’s been another violent day here in southern Lebanon,” reported Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto, from the southern city of Tyre. “As the ceasefire comes into place, we have seen the exact opposite happening with Israel intensifying its attacks,” he said.

At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “holding territory, clearing territory, protecting Israel’s communities, but also fighting an enemy that is trying to outsmart us”.

Since the war resumed on March 2, at least 2,988 people have been killed and 9,210 injured in Israeli attacks across the country, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Sunday.

Talks in Washington

Sunday’s attacks followed talks in Washington, DC, where the two countries agreed a 45-day ceasefire extension – even though the original accord which began on April 17 has never been observed.

The third round of talks in the US capital concluded after the first direct meeting in decades last month between Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations.

NNA reported that the ceasefire extension is intended to allow for a US-facilitated security track to begin on May 29, with the next round of talks between the two sides planned for June 2 and 3 in Washington, DC.

Hezbollah opposes direct negotiations, especially as Israeli forces continue to bomb southern Lebanon and occupy parts of it since the ceasefire.

“The direct negotiations that the authorities in Lebanon have conducted with the Israeli enemy have … led them down a dead-end path that will result in nothing but one concession after another,” Hezbollah legislator Hussein Hajj Hassan said on Sunday.

“Neither they nor anyone else will be able to carry out what the enemy wants, especially when it comes to the issue of disarming the resistance,” he said, adding that authorities were creating “very big predicaments” for the country.

On Saturday, Hezbollah said it struck a military target in northern Israel, having earlier announced several operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

The war is having a disastrous humanitarian impact. Between March and April, more than 1.2 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to fighting, according to the Danish Refugee Council.

The conflict is pushing the economy towards breaking point. Bassem El-Bawab, head of the Lebanese Business Association, said the country has suffered more than $25bn in direct and indirect losses since Israel’s war started in 2024.

Around $12bn will be needed for reconstruction, with El-Bawab warning that the total could rise further if the conflict continues.

He added that Lebanon is losing about $30m daily in indirect economic damage, alongside the direct destruction of homes, businesses and infrastructure.

EastEnders’ Mark Fowler has resorted to desperate tactics to clear his debt to gangster Delaney, but fans think there’s a further twist on the way that will be fatal for one character

EastEnders fans are convinced Mark Fowler’s latest desperate antics will prove fatal for one character. In Thursday’s episode, airing on 14 May, Mark learned that his debt to gangster Russell Delaney had been doubled after his father, Grant Mitchell, threatened the drug lord. In his panic, his aunt Sam, managed to convince him to do something drastic.

Sam told Mark that he needed Lauren Beale to start working with him on stealing cars and selling them on her car lot. Lauren refused to do that before but Sam suggested that if Mark made it so that she had no choice but to turn to him, then he could get his money. As such, they took a car Lauren was due to sell and set fire to it.

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Fans noticed that just before this scene, Bea Pollard, who had been kicked out of Honey and Billy Mitchell’s home after stealing Honey’s identity, was sleeping rough on some bin bags. Some thought she might be too close to the fire and die as a result, as the character is thought to be leaving soon.

“I think Bea was bedding down in one of the lock ups by the car,” one fan said. “Hopefully that will be her leaving scene.” Another added: “Was that Bea asleep on the ground when Mark threw petrol all over the car and put a lighter to it?” A third said: “I thought the same thing. Near the car – bet she saw it all.”

But others pointed out that it looked more like Bea was in McClunky’s, the chicken shop where she works. One wrote: “Bea camping out at mcklunky’s on a bin bag…”

Another said: “Sure she was in the chicken shop.” A third added: “She was in the chicken shop, you could see counter in the background.”

This comes as Bea’s actions left Honey hospitalised. When it was revealed that Bea used Honey’s identity to open a credit card account, which landed her friend in £5,000 debt, Bea tried to convince Honey that it was all a misunderstanding.

When that didn’t work, she said she only did it so that she could buy things for people and make them like her. It was close to persuading Honey to let her stay, until Honey’s husband Billy came home.

Billy threw Bea out on her ear. In a fit of rage, Bea flipped the safety lever on his ladder, so that when he went up to clear the drains, he would fall.

But in a sick twist, it was Honey who went up the ladder. She fell from the ladder and couldn’t be roused by Billy, as Bea watched on from the shadows.

Honey was rushed to hospital, where she eventually woke up. But despite convincing everyone that she wasn’t responsible for Honey’s fall, Bea was not allowed to stay with them in Walford and was told to leave.

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