Israel launches airstrike in central Beirut as clashes with Hezbollah fighters continue
Israel’s military told residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately on Thursday as it pressed on with its cross-border incursion and struck Hezbollah targets in a suburb of Beirut.
The latest warnings took the number of southern towns subject to evacuation calls to 70 and included the provincial capital Nabatieh, suggesting another Israeli military operation was imminent against the Iran-backed armed group.
Hezbollah also carried out new strikes, targeting what it called Israel’s “Sakhnin base” for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.
As it pushes into Lebanon, Israel is also weighing its options for retaliation against its arch-foe Iran, which launched its largest ever assault on Israel on Tuesday.
Asked on Thursday if he would support Israel striking Iran’s oil facilities, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters: “We’re discussing that.” The comments added to a surge in global oil prices, and rising Middle East tensions have raised traders’ worries about potential supply disruptions.
Ian Bremmer, a Middle East analyst and founder of the Eurasia Group, says vast distances and hardened targets make Iran a country that Israel would have a difficult time striking effectively on its own.
Biden said, “There is nothing going to happen today.” The president on Wednesday said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
The Pentagon said on Thursday that it was in discussions with Israeli officials about their possible response to Iran’s missile attack earlier this week but declined to offer more details on those talks.
“We are certainly talking to them about their response, but what their response might be, I’m just not going to speculate further on. But we do continue to engage with them,” said spokesperson Sabrina Singh.
‘Another sleepless night in Beirut’
In Beirut’s southern suburb known as Dahiyeh, a dense neighbourhood where Hezbollah holds sway, several explosions were heard on Thursday and several large plumes of smoke were rising after heavy Israeli strikes.
“Another sleepless night in Beirut. Counting the blasts shaking the city. No warning sirens. Not knowing what’s next. Only that uncertainty lies ahead. Anxiety and fear are omnipresent,” said UN special co-ordinator in Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert on X on Thursday.
Overnight, Israel bombed central Beirut in an attack the Lebanese health ministry said killed nine people.
Israel’s military said it struck 15 Hezbollah targets in Beirut on Thursday, including weapons sites and intelligence targets.
Reuters journalists reported hearing a heavy blast after a building in the district of Bachoura was targeted a few hundred metres from parliament, the closest an Israeli strike has come to the central downtown district.
A Hezbollah-linked civil defence group said seven of its staff, including two medics, were killed in the Beirut attack.
Israel also said it struck a municipality building in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, killing 15 Hezbollah members and destroying many weapons.
A number of countries were evacuating citizens from Beirut as governments worldwide urged their citizens to get out.
Attacks in Israel
At meetings in Doha this week, Gulf Arab states sought to reassure Iran of their neutrality in the conflict between Tehran and Israel amid concerns that a wider escalation in violence could threaten their oil facilities, two sources told Reuters.
Israel, which has been fighting Hamas militants in the Palestinian territory of Gaza for almost a year, sent troops into southern Lebanon on Tuesday after two weeks of intense airstrikes in a worsening conflict that has drawn in Iran and risks involving the United States.
Israel says its operations in Lebanon seek to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after evacuating from northern Israel by Hezbollah bombardments during the Gaza war.
Israelis are mourning eight soldiers killed in the Israel Defence Force’s ground operation against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israeli officials and civilians are also assessing and cleaning up the damage from Iran’s missile barrage.
More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced by Israeli attacks, and nearly 2,000 people have been killed since the start of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the last year, most of them in the past two weeks, Lebanese authorities said.
The World Health Organization said 28 health-care workers had been killed in Lebanon in the previous 24 hours. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said flight restrictions meant the agency would not be able to deliver a large planned shipment of trauma and medical supplies to Lebanon on Friday.
Hezbollah says it has repelled several land operations by Israeli troops, including with ambushes and in direct clashes.
Lebanese security sources say Israeli troops have entered Lebanese territory and been pushed back several times in recent days, without setting up a permanent presence.
Hezbollah said it killed 17 Israeli military personnel in combat in southern Lebanon on Thursday, citing its field and security sources. Israeli forces did not comment on the claim.
Israel’s military on Thursday reported the death of one soldier. On Wednesday, it announced its deadliest day in a year of clashes with Hezbollah with the deaths of eight soldiers.
Rocket sirens wailed constantly in northern Israeli towns, sending residents running for shelter, as Hezbollah kept up its cross-border fire.
The Lebanese army said two soldiers were killed by Israeli strikes in separate incidents in south Lebanon on Thursday, one in an attack on a military post and another in a strike on a rescue mission with the Lebanese Red Cross.
The army said that it returned fire when the military post was struck, a rare development for a force that has historically stayed on the sidelines of major conflict with Israel.
Israel’s aggressive assaults against Hezbollah after killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah have weakened and disoriented the militant group, but it still holds much of its previous territory and remains capable of posing a serious military threat.
After Iran’s missile attack on Israel on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Iran would pay, and Washington said it would work with its longtime ally to ensure Iran faced “severe consequences.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking in Doha, said on Thursday that Tehran would be ready to respond.
“Any type of military attack, terrorist act or crossing our red lines will be met with a decisive response by our armed forces,” he said.
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani urged serious ceasefire efforts to stop what he called Israel’s aggression.
The Lebanese border front opened after Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel a year ago in support of Hamas in its war with Israel in Gaza. Iran’s other regional allies — Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq — have also launched attacks in the region in support of Hamas.
Western nations have drafted contingency plans to evacuate citizens from Lebanon after Tuesday’s dramatic escalation, but none have launched a large-scale military evacuation yet, though some are chartering aircraft as Beirut’s airport stays open.
Global Affairs Canada is not offering what it terms “assisted departures,” but it is helping Canadian citizens and their families by arranging seats on commercial flights out of Lebanon.
The flights out of Lebanon land in Istanbul, and Canadians who avail themselves are responsible for their own airfare and subsequent arrangements for accommodation and travel.
Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:38:40 +0000
Ex-Colorado county clerk gets 9-year prison sentence for voting data scheme in wake of 2020 election
A U.S. judge ripped into a former county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential race.
District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa county clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.
“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”
Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.
The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from then-incumbent president Donald Trump. The discredited claims trace back to Trump himself, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol because of them, and who is still hinting at those claims in his current third run for president.
Peters sought fame: prosecutors
At trial, prosecutors said Peters, a Republican, was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the presidential election results.
A one-time hero to election deniers, Peters has been unapologetic about what happened.
Before being sentenced, Peters insisted that everything she did to try to unroot what she believed was fraud was for the greater good.
“I’ve never done anything with malice to break the law. I’ve only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” she told the court.
When Peters tried to press on with claims no legal authority has corroborated about “wireless devices” and software that changed ballot images in voting machines she drew the judge’s exasperation. Ballot recounts showed no discrepancies, he pointed out.
“I’ve let you go on enough about this,” Barrett said. “The votes are the votes.”
‘It’s just more lies’
Later, the judge noted that Peters has kept up public appearances in broadcasts to sympathetic audiences for her own benefit.
U.S. prosecutors say Donald Trump was acting outside the scope of his duties as president when he pressured state officials and then-vice-president Mike Pence to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat. The 165-page court filing was made public Wednesday.
“It’s just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people fawning over you,” Barrett said.
Peters had the right to be defiant, he noted, but it was “certainly not helpful for her lot today.”
The breach led by Peters heightened concerns that rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to attack voting processes from within.
It’s impossible to overestimate the damage Peters has done to other election workers in Colorado and elsewhere, Colorado County Clerks Association director Matt Crane told the court.
“In a real and specific way, her actions have led directly to death threats and general threats to the lives and the families of the people who work in our elections,” Crane said.
“She has willingly aided individuals in our country who believe that violence is a way to make a point. She has knowingly fuelled a fire within others who choose threats as a means to get their way.”
He, his wife and his children have been among those threatened, Crane said.
In Mesa County — a scenic, mostly rural area on the Colorado western slope known for its peaches, vineyards and mountain biking as well as oil and gas drilling — Peters’s actions have cost the local government some $1.4 million US in legal fees and lost employee time, County Commissioner Cody Davis said at the sentencing hearing.
Peters’s notoriety has also incurred other “unseen costs” for the area, Davis told the court.
“We have a lot of pride in this community but our reputation has taken a hit,” Davis said. “Her behaviour has made this county a national laughingstock.”
Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.
She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation.
Yet she persisted on social media to accuse Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, which made her county’s election system, and others of stealing votes.
The ‘gold standard’
Colorado won’t allow anyone to threaten its elections, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement in response to Peters’s sentencing.
“Colorado’s elections are the nation’s gold standard. I am proud of how we have responded to the first insider elections breach in the nation and look forward to another secure and successful election in November,” Griswold said.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in a statement called the sentence “fair and just.” He also said her conviction served as a warning that tampering with voting processes will bring consequences.
Dominion, founded in Canada, has launched a number of defamation suits in the wake of the 2020 election claims, as has a rival, Smartmatic.
Smartmatic has recently reached undisclosed settlements before trial against conservative news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network, for airing accusations about vote manipulation in the 2020 election made by allies of Trump.
Dominion reached a $787-million US settlement last year in a similar lawsuit with Fox News.
Published at Thu, 03 Oct 2024 20:04:20 +0000