Lebanon said studying US truce plan for Israel-Hezbollah war

Lebanese officials were reviewing on Friday a US truce proposal in the Israel-Hezbollah war as Hamas said it was ready for a ceasefire on Israel's other front, in Gaza.

Israel has been at war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon since late September, after a year of relatively low-level cross border exchanges which Hezbollah said were in support of Hamas fighting Israel in Gaza.

A top government official in Beirut, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said US Ambassador Lisa Johnson discussed with senior Lebanese officials on Thursday a 13-point proposal.

It includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon will redeploy troops to the border. The official added that Israel has yet to respond to the plan.

Ceasefire efforts spearheaded by the United States and France have so far failed to halt the hostilities, which Lebanon says have killed more than 3,440 people since October last year.

Israel says it wants tens of thousands of its citizens, displaced since the firing began more than a year ago, back home safely.

On 23 September Israel escalated air strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and one week later sent ground troops in to the country's south, even as the Gaza war continued, particularly in the north of the Palestinian territory.

A senior Hamas official said Friday the group is "ready for a ceasefire" in Gaza, urging US President-elect Donald Trump to "pressure" Israel.

The appeal came nearly a week after Qatar, which hosts much of the Palestinian group's political bureau, suspended its mediator role until the warring parties show "willingness and seriousness".

"Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if a ceasefire proposal is presented and on the condition that it is respected" by Israel, Doha-based Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim told AFP.

"We call on the US administration and Trump to pressure the Israeli government to end the aggression."

More Israeli strikes hit Gaza, leaving residents of the central city of Deir el-Balah searching through the rubble of their destroyed homes.

"I woke up to the bombing at 2:30 am and was surprised by the rubble and glass falling on me and my children," said Mohamed Baraka, adding that the strike "resulted in three martyrs and 15 injuries".

Another resident, Marzuq Barak, called on "the world to stop the war and genocide that is happening. We are tired."

Aid looting

The war erupted with Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 43,764 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Militants also kidnapped 251 hostages during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.

Earlier Friday, Hamas-allied militant group Islamic Jihad released a new clip of Israeli-Russian hostage Sasha Trupanov, after issuing a first video earlier this week.

Trupanov, 29, appealed to Aryeh Deri -- leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, a member of Israel's governing coalition -- to help free him and the other hostages.

In September, Deri said bringing back the hostages was a "sacred duty".

Relatives and supporters of the captives have regularly demonstrated in Israel for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to reach a deal for their release.

Repeated mediation by Egypt, the United States and Qatar has failed to reach such a deal.

A report from 29 NGOs including Save the Children, Oxfam and Care, on Friday said aid entering Gaza had fallen to an all-time low.

When aid does get in to Gaza, where a desperate population awaits it, "looting is an ongoing issue" made easier by Israel’s military targeting of local police who would otherwise be able to prevent it, the NGOs said.

'Rockets stockpile'

As Israeli strikes continued in Lebanon, a building in Beirut's southern suburbs collapsed in a gigantic cloud of smoke and dust.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported a "heavy raid carried out by aircraft of the Israeli enemy" in the Ghobeiri area of southern Beirut, after two missile strikes on the same target by an Israeli drone.

Israel has pounded south Beirut for almost two months, killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah there in late September.

The Israeli military said it hit Hezbollah targets in the city on Friday.

Over the past day it also "struck and dismantled a rockets stockpile and 15 launchers" in southern Lebanon, the military said.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix, meeting Israeli officials Friday, "reiterated calls to uphold the centrality of Resolution 1701", a UN spokesman said.

That Security Council resolution ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, stipulating that only Lebanon's army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.

UNIFIL in a statement said an artillery shell hit one of its posts Friday and failed to explode, causing some damage but no injuries. It did not give the origin of the fire.

Among the latest casualties in Lebanon were 14 members of the main civil defence facility in the eastern Baalbek area killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday, said Samir Chakia, a local official with the agency.

"My dad was sleeping here with them," said Suzanne Karkaba, herself a rescuer. "Now it's my turn to pick up the pieces of my dad," she said with tears in her eyes.

(Source: by Aya Iskandarani, for AFP)