RMEISH, Lebanon (AP) — Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes along the border with Lebanon Saturday as the militant Hezbollah group attacked several Israeli army posts, including one that was struck with two large rockets.
The escalation came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his powerful group is already engaged in unprecedented fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border. He threatened a further escalation as Israel’s war in Gaza with Hamas, Hezbollah's ally, nears the one-month mark.
Hezbollah is prepared for all options, Nasrallah declared, “and we can resort to them at any time.”
Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters attacked at least six Israeli posts along the border, saying “suitable rockets and weapons” were used. It added that “direct hits were scored and technical equipment was destroyed.”
The Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV network reported that Hezbollah fired Saturday two Burkan rockets, which carry heavy warheads, at an Israeli post known in Lebanon as Jal al-Allam. A Lebanese security official confirmed the report of Burkan rockets being used for the first time.
The rockets, whose name means “volcano” in Arabic, were previously used by Hezbollah and Syrian government forces to destroy the fortifications of Syrian opposition fighters.
They are one of a number of types of rockets and missiles that the heavily armed Hezbollah has in its arsenal.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that fighters shot down a spy balloon that Israel’s military posted over the northern town of Misgaf Am.
On the outskirts of the village of Rmeish, in a rugged area along the border, an Israeli airstrike caused thick gray smoke. Artillery shelling could be heard from a distance.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported airstrikes around several other border villages, including Labbouneh and Hibarieh.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Israeli warplanes, tanks and artillery fired toward the source of fire on the Lebanese side of the border and also targeted some Hezbollah arms depots, infrastructure and posts used by the Lebanese militant group.
Exchange of gunfire has been on the rise along the Lebanon-Israel border following the Oct. 7, attack by the Palestinian militant Hamas group that killed more than 1,400 civilians and troops in southern Israel.
Israel has since launched a wide aerial and ground attack on Gaza that has left more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian health officials.
Hezbollah started attacking Israeli positions on Oct. 8, in the disputed Chebaa Farms area along Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and within days the attacks spread to cover the whole border area.
On Saturday Hezbollah said one of its fighters was killed along the border raising the total death toll for the militant group since the fighting began to 56. Ten civilians, including a Reuters journalist, were killed as well as several Palestinian fighters.
Colombia will try to control its population of more than 100 hippopotamuses, descendants of animals illegally brought to the country by late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s, through surgical sterilization, the transfer of hippos to other countries and possibly euthanasia, the government said Thursday.
The drug baron brought a small number of the African beasts to Colombia in the late 1980s. But after his death in 1993, the so-called "cocaine hippos" were left to roam freely and environmental authorities have been helpless to curb their numbers.
The hippos, which spread from Escobar's estate into nearby rivers where they flourished, have no natural predators in Colombia and have been declared an invasive species that could upset the ecosystem.
Authorities estimate there are 169 hippos in Colombia, especially in the Magdalena River basin, and that if no measures are taken, there could be 1,000 by 2035.
Hippos — descendants from a small herd introduced by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar — are seen in the wild in a lake near the Hacienda Napoles theme park, once the private zoo of Escobar, in Doradal, Antioquia Department, Colombia, on April 19, 2023. RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images
Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said the first stage of the plan will be the surgical sterilization of 40 hippos per year and this will begin next week.
The procedure is expensive — each sterilization costs about $9,800 — and entails risks for the hippopotamus, including allergic reactions to anesthesia or death, as well as risks to the animal health personnel, according to the ministry. The hippos are dispersed over a large area, and are territorial and often aggressive.
Experts say sterilization alone is not enough to control the growth of the invasive species, which is why the government is arranging for the possible transfer of hippos to other countries, a plan that was announced in March. But the cost of deporting the hippos is also expensive — an estimated $3.5 million.
Muhamad said Colombian officials have contacted authorities in Mexico, India and the Philippines, and are evaluating sending 60 hippos to India.
"We are working on the protocol for the export of the animals," she said. "We are not going to export a single animal if there is no authorization from the environmental authority of the other country."
As a last resort to control the population, the ministry is creating a protocol for euthanasia.
A group of hippos was brought in the 1980s to Hacienda Nápoles, Escobar's private zoo that became a tourist attraction after his death in 1993. Most of the animals live freely in rivers and reproduce without control.
Residents of nearby Puerto Triunfo have become used to hippos sometimes roaming freely about the town.
Scientists warn that the hippos' feces change the composition of rivers and could impact the habitat of local manatees and capybaras.
Independent journalist Audrey Huse, who has lived in Colombia for eight years, told CBS News that because the hippos roam freely, they end up killing fish and threatening endemic species like manatees, otters and turtles.
"Because they have no natural predators here, as they would in Africa, the population is booming an it's affecting the local ecosystem," Huse said. "Because they are such large animals, they consume considerable amounts of grassland and produce significant waste, which then poisons the rivers."
Hippos also pose danger to humans
While most of the focus has been on the impact on the ecosystem, the animals have also interacted with humans.
Recently, one of the hippos burst into a schoolyard in Doradal with both pupils and parents present. "The mothers get scared when they see an animal of that size," teacher Dunia Arango told AFP.
"There are about 35 children playing that could approach them and provoke a tragedy," said David Echeverri, an official from the local environment authority.
"While they may look very calm, at any moment, given their highly unpredictable behavior, they can attack, as has happened before."
John Aristides, 33, remembers very well that afternoon in October 2021 when he was fishing on the banks of a creek when a hippopotamus "lunged at me and hit me on the head with its lips."
He slipped trying to get away and was bitten on the arm.
"It grabbed me and threw me two meters," he added. "It didn't tear off my arm because they have very wide teeth."
But Aristides still spent a month in hospital recovering.
That is the closest Colombia has come to a fatal encounter but "if we don't do anything, then we expect to have thousands of hippopotami wandering around" in the future, said Echeverri, who earlier this year buried a hippo that had been hit by a driver. The animals can be deadly, killing an estimated 500 people every year in Africa.
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Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government.
A Guardian reporter in Rafah, on the southern edge of the strip, saw a steady stream of men of all ages with no phones, money or identity cards enter the territory on Friday morning via the Kerem Shalom crossing for commercial goods, having walked about 2km from the Israeli side of the border. Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news outlet, said about 3,200 people had been sent back through the checkpoint, which is controlled by Israel and Egypt.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions. “They are being sent back, we don’t know exactly to where, [and whether they] even have a home to go to,” its spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell told a news conference in Geneva. She said it was an incredibly dangerous situation.
The Israeli government has been contacted for comment on the transfer.
The fifth round of war between Israel and Hamas since the Palestinian militant group seized control of the strip in 2007 began on 7 October after a bloody rampage by Hamas in Israel killed 1,400 people. More than 9,000 Palestinians have subsequently been killed in the Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion on the tiny ribbon of land, home to 2.3 million people with nowhere to flee the violence.
On Thursday, Israel’s security cabinet said in a statement that the country was “severing all contact with Gaza”. “There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza,” it said.
Before this month, 18,500 married men over the age of 25 had permission from the Israeli authorities to enter the country, mostly to work in agriculture and construction, as part of an Israeli policy designed to alleviate Gaza’s crushing poverty and create an economic lifeline that it was believed Hamas would be loth to jeopardise.
An unknown number of these workers were swept up in raids across Israel in the days after 7 October and imprisoned under the principle of administrative detention, which allows the arrest of suspects without charge or access to the evidence against them on the grounds that they may break the law in future.
Many have alleged they were tortured or otherwise mistreated in military prison facilities over the last few weeks. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was repeatedly denied access to the arrested workers, who were held as “enemy non-combatants”.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) did not immediately reply to the Guardian’s request for comment on the arrests or ill-treatment allegations.
Several thousand people are believed to have made their way to the occupied West Bank over the last few weeks, seeking their countrymen and a relative berth of safety. The Guardian met several labourers from Gaza marooned in Ramallah, the West Bank’s administrative capital, earlier this week.
They had two great fears: they live in dread of a text message or phone call from Gaza saying their family have been killed or are missing under the rubble, and they worry Israeli police and soldiers will raid their shelter in Ramallah and lock them up as suspected terrorists.
“When we hear the Israelis might be coming, we run for the hills and scatter like ants,” said one migrant worker. “Even the old guys run.” He was one of approximately 700 men from Gaza who had turned the gym and recreational centre in Ramallah into a de facto refugee camp.
A month ago they had belonged to the relatively privileged cohort of Palestinians from Gaza with permits to leave the impoverished territory and work in Israel, where salaries are six times higher, according to research released last year by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
Up until 7 October, more and more workers were crossing into Israel each day – 18,500 of a promised 20,000 permits, taking home £2m a day, according to Palestinian and Israeli statistics. During the programme, more Palestinians left the strip each day than in the previous 16 years of siege put together.
That money was making a big difference in Gaza, where unemployment had hovered at about 45% for the last few years. Families were able to clear debts from businesses and projects that failed due to the restrictions placed on the strip’s economy; rebuilding after the 2021 war took place more swiftly than after previous episodes of conflict and new cafes and shops were opening.
But after Hamas attacked southern Israel, Israeli security forces started rounding up the workers from Gaza. It is not clear how many are still detained, or how many are still in hiding in Israel or the West Bank, left to feel like fugitives.
“When I saw the news, I knew it was too dangerous to go to work. The police were arresting all Gazans,” said Ahmad, 31, who had a job as a cook in a Tel Aviv shawarma restaurant. He and six fellow labourers from Gaza hunkered in their shared basement apartment, wondering what to do. After two days, Ahmad left to buy food. On his return he discovered the apartment empty and turned upside down – police had raided and arrested his flatmates.
Ahmad linked up with other workers from Gaza in Tel Aviv who rented a bus and fled to the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority provided mattresses and food to the men at the Ramallah recreation centre, one of several shelters around the territory, but it can do little to shield them from Israeli raids.
The labourers pass their days charging their phones, reading the news and trying to connect with friends and relatives back home. When they receive grim news, some wail and faint – ambulances have been summoned – and others lapse into silence. “My wife and sons are OK but I have nightmares,” said Ahmad.
Abu Mahmoud, 56, who used to clean a supermarket in the coastal city of Herzliya, braces himself every time he phones his wife, who is in Gaza City with their children. “There is bombing day and night. They can’t eat or sleep.”
His six-year-old daughter pleads with him to come home. “She says ‘Baba, come, we need you’,” he said.
Mahmoud said he would go if he could, notwithstanding the carnage, but Israel has blockaded the enclave. “All I can do is tell my wife to be strong.”
Sayef Olehe, 30, who fled his job as a butcher, said he veered from anxiety about his family to concern he would be arrested. “No one knows anything about the ones who have been jailed.”
In a recent phone call, his three-year-old daughter asked a question he could not answer. “She said: ‘Why are you working in Israel? They are killing us.’”
While U.S. officials have insisted that the Israel Defense Forces will take the lead on rescuing hostages taken from Israel to Gaza on Oct. 7, the Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that U.S. forces have launched reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles over Gaza as part of the search.
The flights began following Oct. 7, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.
“In support of hostage recovery efforts, the U.S. is conducting unarmed UAV flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts,” he said.
On Thursday, Ryder reiterated during a briefing, “Just to be crystal clear, that it is [Israel’s] operation, they’re running their operation” when it comes to strikes on Gaza. But the U.S., Ryder said, is helping with planning and intelligence for hostage recovery.
Senior officials have said since the days following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the militant group Hamas that the U.S. would not be sending combat troops to Israel, nor would it be sending its own forces into Gaza to recover American hostages.
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“The Israelis have made it very clear that they don’t want foreign troops on their soil, that they want to prosecute these operations on their own,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing Oct. 12. “The Israelis have made it clear that they would not welcome [foreign involvement] in any event.”
The U.S. has repositioned troops to other parts of the Middle East, however.
Two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group with embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit, several Air Force fighter squadrons and 300 support troops have all been tapped to deter further escalation of the Israel-Hamas war and to increase U.S. force protection in U.S. Central Command.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed into law a bill revoking Russia’s ratification of a major nuclear test ban treaty, a move signaling Moscow is continuing to brush aside nuclear restrictions amid its war with Ukraine.
Russian state-run media reported Putin’s signing of the law, which was passed by the Russian parliament last month following public comments from Putin signaling his intent to revoke the treaty banning nuclear bomb testing,
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened in 1996 and was eventually ratified by 178 countries, including Russia.
However, several major powers, including the U.S. and China, did not ratify the treaty, and it never went into effect because it did not reach its required threshold.
When he signaled an intent to revoke the CTBT, Putin noted the U.S. never ratified the treaty.
The Kremlin said the revocation of the nuclear test ban evens the playing field, according to Russian state-run media outlet TASS.
Still, major powers have not tested nuclear bombs since the 1990s. It’s not clear if Putin intends to test any nuclear bombs in the near future or if the move is simply to keep the threat of nuclear weapons in the eyes of Western powers amid the war in Ukraine.
Putin and his allies have increasingly threatened to use nuclear weapons, and the Russian leader moved smaller yield tactical nuclear bombs to Belarus earlier this year.
Russia in October also completed a test of an experimental, long-range cruise missile that is nuclear powered after an initial ground launch.
ROME, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Wednesday that he will attend the COP28 climate conference starting next month in Dubai, the first time a pontiff will be at the U.N. environmental meeting since they began in 1995.
The pope told Italy's state-run RAI television TG1 news in an interview that he expected to be in Dubai Dec. 1-3. The conference runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.
In Dubai, the pope is expected to drive home his recent appeal for action to curb global warming.
"We are still in time to stop it," Francis said in the interview, speaking of global warming. "Our future is at stake, the future of our children and our grandchildren. A bit of responsibility is needed."
Francis, 86, has made protection of the environment one of the hallmarks of his papacy and met last month with COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber.
In a major document on Oct. 4, Francis appealed to climate change deniers and foot-dragging politicians to have a change of heart, saying they cannot gloss over human causes or deride science while the planet "may be nearing the breaking point".
The document, known as an Apostolic Exhortation and titled Laudate Deum (Praise God), was a follow-up to Francis' 2015 encyclical on the environment "Laudato Si" (Praise Be).
Laudate Deum was prompted by recent extreme weather events and mentioned the challenges facing COP28 several times.
Failure in Dubai, Francis said in the document, "will be a great disappointment and jeopardize whatever good has been achieved thus far".
Heads of state usually attend only the opening sessions of the conferences and make keynote addresses. U.S. President Joe Biden spoke at the start of the last two meetings at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last year and Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. Such conferences are also occasions for bilateral meetings.
Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Diane Craft and Jonathan Oatis
ROME, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Wednesday that he will attend the COP28 climate conference starting next month in Dubai, the first time a pontiff will be at the U.N. environmental meeting since they began in 1995.
The pope told Italy's state-run RAI television TG1 news in an interview that he expected to be in Dubai Dec. 1-3. The conference runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.
In Dubai, the pope is expected to drive home his recent appeal for action to curb global warming.
"We are still in time to stop it," Francis said in the interview, speaking of global warming. "Our future is at stake, the future of our children and our grandchildren. A bit of responsibility is needed."
Francis, 86, has made protection of the environment one of the hallmarks of his papacy and met last month with COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber.
In a major document on Oct. 4, Francis appealed to climate change deniers and foot-dragging politicians to have a change of heart, saying they cannot gloss over human causes or deride science while the planet "may be nearing the breaking point".
The document, known as an Apostolic Exhortation and titled Laudate Deum (Praise God), was a follow-up to Francis' 2015 encyclical on the environment "Laudato Si" (Praise Be).
Laudate Deum was prompted by recent extreme weather events and mentioned the challenges facing COP28 several times.
Failure in Dubai, Francis said in the document, "will be a great disappointment and jeopardize whatever good has been achieved thus far".
Heads of state usually attend only the opening sessions of the conferences and make keynote addresses. U.S. President Joe Biden spoke at the start of the last two meetings at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last year and Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. Such conferences are also occasions for bilateral meetings.
Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Diane Craft and Jonathan Oatis
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