The Lebanese government’s Higher Relief Committee (HRC) said on Saturday that it will set up temporary tent camps in a bid to alleviate the growing housing shortage in Beirut. The housing shortage is a result of the influx of hundreds of thousands of people who have fled fighting in the south between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party with a military wing. The conflict began on 12 July after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. “As the number of displaced people increases, we are having to explore alternative ways to meet the basic needs of the displaced,” said the HRC’s Fadi Aramoune, who is coordinating the tent camps project. Read more about Camps to address housing shortage
4 August 2006 — The Government of Lebanon’s (GoL) Higher Relief Council (HRC) today reports that 907 people have been killed and 3,293 people have been injured due to the on-going conflict. The HRC also reports that 913,760 people (of which almost half are children), about one-quarter of Lebanon’s population, have fled their homes. Most of the displaced are said to be located in South Beirut, Tyre (Sur), Sidon (Saida), Chouf, and Aaley. Although an estimated 565,000 displaced persons are staying with relatives and friends, the HRC estimates 128,000 are located in schools and public institutions in Lebanon, and 220,000 have fled to neighboring countries, including 150,000 to Syria. Read more about Road Corridor from Syria Disrupted
Hezbollah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said today. Entering the fourth week of attacks, such rockets have claimed 30 civilian lives, including six children, and wounded hundreds more. “Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.” Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war.” Hezbollah claims that some of its attacks are aimed at military bases inside Israel, which are legitimate targets. Read more about Human Rights Watch: Hezbollah must end attacks on civilians
The Maliban glass factory, owned by an Indian businessman based in London, used to produce some 200 tons of glass a day in Chaura, 40km east of Beirut in the heart of the Bekaa Valley, and employed around 400 people. Now burnt steel bars rise like giant teeth against a clear blue sky. Salah Baraki, 60, the manager, looked out over a sea of devastation. “The factory is 42 years old, of which I worked here for 41,” he said. “In two minutes, everything was gone.” On 18 July, two Israeli fighter jets fired a handful of rockets on the production hall, reducing it to rubble. Read more about Factories come under fire
European and Arab governments are ready to step in with aid and equipment to help Lebanon tackle a 10,000-tonne oil spill that was the result of Israeli air strikes on the fuel tanks of Jiyeh power station, 20km south of Beirut, on 13 and 15 July. However, the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in the south of the country is stopping them from doing so, according to a member of the Lebanese environment ministry, who did not want to be named. “They cannot mobilise their forces until a ceasefire is called,” said the ministry official. “We are operating in a state of war so normal procedure cannot be followed in this situation … a lot of countries are on standby trying to get the aid to us,” she said. Read more about Oil-spill clean-up delayed by conflict
Getting emergency United Nations humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by the worsening conflict became even harder today after the UN said that Israeli shelling had severed the vital supply route between Syria and Beirut, as well as forcing the cancellation of all but one convoy to the devastated south of the country. “We do not have the humanitarian access we need for critical and vulnerable communities in south Lebanon … ” UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters in New York. Read more about No time to lose, UN warns as emergency aid supplies to Lebanon cut off by shelling
More than three weeks after hostilities began, Hizbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are still exchanging heavy fire in southern Lebanon with little sign of any abatement, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reported today. Although the number of rockets launched by Hizbollah from within UNIFIL’s area of operation during the past 24 hours was below the figures of recent days, the numbers remained large, UNIFIL said in a statement issued in the Lebanese city of Naqoura. Some rockets were fired from close to UN positions near Alma ash Shab and At Tiri. Read more about Southern Lebanon continues to endure intense fighting - UN mission
The road inland from the port city of Tyre, 60km south of Beirut, is riddled with craters filled with mangled cars. A cattle pen is jammed with dead and dying cows left to starve after their terrified owner fled. The road then forks east into the Aamel Mountains where entire towns are deserted, shops boarded up, bridges collapsed, and broken power lines flail in the wind. The once-bustling market town of Nabatiyeh, 30km east of Tyre, is a Hezbollah stronghold, with the faces of those killed fighting Israel emblazoned on flags. Now, just a few grocers and roaming cats are left. Read more about Holed up in southern mountains
The fact that over 600 civilians, including many children have died in Southern Lebanon and in Israel in recent weeks; The damage done to civilian infrastructure in Lebanon on such a scale as to render over 750,000 people homeless; The indiscriminate attack on a United Nations outpost in South Lebanon, involving the deaths of four UN Peacekeeping personnel; Recognising the important role of Unifil and the Irish Defence Forces’ contribution to that body; Appalled at the most recent slaughter in Qana over the weekend just passed … Read more about Ireland Foreign Affairs Committee Concemns Violence in Lebanon
The oil spill that has already polluted over 80 kilometres of the Lebanese coastline has reached the Syrian coastline and is spreading further north. Satellite imagery from the European Commission (EC) now shows that the oil slick has entered Syrian waters and has already contaminated approximately 10 kilometres of coastline north of the borders between Syria and Lebanon. “It is nearly three weeks since the bombing of the power plant and the initial satellite imagery unfortunately confirms that the oil spill is of a significant magnitude and spreading. …”, said United Nations Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of UNEP, speaking from Nairobi. Read more about Oil Spill Reaches Syrian Coastline
