Lebanon

03 April 2020; MEMO: An Israeli infantry force crossed the fence along the Lebanese-Israeli border and carried out a search operation, forcing the Lebanese army and UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) to be on alert, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).

02 April 2020; MEMO: Philippines Ambassador to Lebanon Bernardita Catalla died early this morning of coronavirus in Beirut, according to local media reports.

Catalla, 62, was being treated in a hospital in Beirut for chronic respiratory problems after she contracted coronavirus.

BEIRUT (AP) — In the streets of Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah paramedics and volunteers on trucks and on foot sprayed disinfectants on shops and buildings. At a hospital where it once treated its wounded fighters, the group’s medical staff set up beds for a center to deal with coronavirus patients.

Hezbollah says it is turning the organizational might it once deployed to fight Israel or in the civil war in neighboring Syria to battle the spread of the virus pandemic in Lebanon.

BEIRUT, Mar 30 (NNN-NNA) – Former Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, said that, COVID-19 is not a door for discrimination in judicial decisions, stressing the need for the amnesty law to include the Islamist prisoners.

He said on twitter: “It is a good thing for the amnesty to include those whose sentence ends in six months, but what is more important is the fate of hundreds of Islamist prisoners, who are paying the price of the slowdown in trials or have been held under preventive detention for years.”

BEIRUT (AP) — Through 15 years of civil war and various bouts of violence since, Lebanon’s Barbar eatery never closed its doors, serving up sandwiches to customers even if it meant doing so from behind sandbags.

The coronavirus pandemic, however, has managed to do what various wars could not: Close bars, restaurants and entertainment spots across the tiny Mediterranean country. It’s an economic gut punch at a time when Lebanon is already mired in the worst financial crisis in its history.

24 Mar 2020; MEMO: Former Khiam prison guard and associate of Amer Fakhoury, Antoine Al-Hayek, was shot dead in the village of Mieh Mieh near the southern Lebanese port of Sidon on Sunday.

No one has claimed responsibility for Hayek’s shooting. Local news outlet MTV reported that Hayek was shot by a silencer-equipped pistol from a close distance inside his local vegetable shop.

BEIRUT, Mar 23 (NNN-NNA) – Lebanon on Sunday, received at least 22 billion Lebanese pounds (about 14.5 million U.S. dollars) donated by citizens, expatriates and officials to combat COVID-19, MTV reported.

The donation will be delivered through Bank Audi, to the Rafic Hariri hospital and other public hospitals involved in the fight against COVID-19, in addition to the Lebanese Red Cross and vulnerable people, who are in dire need to secure daily income to make a living, it said.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria, already shattered by nine years of war, has banned entry for foreigners arriving from many countries hit by the coronavirus as part of widening measures to combat the epidemic.

Although the government says it has yet to document any infections, Syria is seen at high risk.

“We have vulnerable populations in camps, refugees, slum areas at the outskirts of large urban centers,” the World Health Organization’s Syria representative, Nima Saeed Abid, told Reuters.

BEIRUT, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Finance Minister Ghazi Wazne said that negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) aimed at restructuring the country's debt showed huge differences, a statement issued by the Finance Ministry reported on Friday.

"We cannot take measures that will increase the suffering of the population; the upcoming negotiations will be tough," Wazne said.

However, Wazne emphasized the need for international funding in a bid to be able to solve Lebanon's problem.

BEIRUT, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that the resistance has nothing to do with the decision issued by the military court in Lebanon to acquit Amer Fakhoury, former head of an Israeli-linked prison.

Nasrallah made the remarks in a speech broadcasted on al-Manar local TV channel.

Lebanon's Military Tribunal issued a decision on Tuesday to drop charges against Amer Fakhoury who has been accused of collaborating with Israel in torturing prisoners in Khiam in southern Lebanon.