France has deployed its carrier strike group, built around the flagship Charles de Gaulle, to the Mediterranean to support efforts to defeat Islamic State.

The French military said the engagement, expected to last until April 2022, came amid a “hardening of regional tensions”.

The task force will also work with units from the US, Morocco, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain.

The Charles de Gaulle, with 1,200 sailors, fighter jets, helicopters and surveillance planes on board, will be accompanied by three frigates, a supply ship, and a nuclear submarine.

They will join Operation Inherent Resolve, the international effort working to militarily defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The group may also take part in EU efforts to disrupt migrant trafficking in the Mediterranean and ensure Libya’s arms embargo is upheld.

“The deployment of this military capability, unique in the European Union, underlines France’s attachment to freedom of action and maritime and air traffic,” the French military said.

An attack on a military vehicle patrolling in Egypt’s Sinai region on Tuesday left five soldiers dead, sources have told to alaraby.co.uk.

The vehicle was participating in a combing operation near the town of Bir al-Abd in northern Sinai when it exploded, tribal sources and eyewitnesses said.

Among the dead were a military engineer, a sergeant, and three other soldiers, medical sources told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

The attack reportedly came hours after the Islamic State-affiliated Wilayat Sina group kidnapped six people from the same area.

The explosion came after weeks of relative calm in the region, scarred by years of conflict between the Egyptian government and the IS-affiliated group.

Fighting intensified after President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi led a military coup against Egypt’s first democratically leader, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013.

The Wilayat Sina (Sinai Province) affiliate of IS was formed a year later and hit and run attacks against Egyptian troops became common.

While Cairo says more than 1,000 militants have been killed, the civilian death toll is not known, as the Egyptian government has maintained a media blackout on independent reporting from the Sinai Peninsula.

A large group of the Syrian mercenaries in Libya received the second installment of their salaries, which were reduced by 300 dollars.

The total sums granted to Syrian mercenaries in Libya in January amounted to 900 dollars each, while 10,500 Turkish liras were handed over to their relatives in the countryside of Aleppo.

On the other hand, no date has been set for the resumption of the departure of Syrian mercenaries from Libya.

Activists in the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Syrian mercenaries supported by Turkey in Libya received part of their monthly salaries after seven months of non-payment, as Turkey granted the Syrian mercenaries, who did not receive their salaries during the past seven months, the dues of only three months.

Sources from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights revealed that in the camps of Syrian mercenaries supported by Turkey in Libya, the increasing tension between the fighters and their leaders grew because of the miserable living conditions in the Tripoli camps, which turned into prisons after preventing fighters from leaving them, as commanders continue to deduct large sums of money from the fighters’ monthly salaries.

According to the Syrian Observatory, daily tensions take place between the Syrian mercenaries and their leaders, whether in Libya or in the areas controlled by the Turkish forces and their proxy factions in northern Aleppo, where the fighters send voice notes to their commanders, appealing to pay their wages and return them to Syria.

It is worth noting that there are approximately 7000 Syrian mercenaries supported by Turkey in Libya operating under the control of the various factions of the “National Army”.

Iranian media, to mark the anniversary of the death of Qasem Soleimani, have provided unique new details about Iran’s support for Palestinian groups, like reported by jpost.com.

In a recent article from the Tasnim News branch located in Damascus, a report claims to provide new details on the “untold” story of how the Islamic Republic ran guns and technology to Palestinian groups. The report says that Soleimani, the Quds Force commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, worked for more than two decades to make Iran the “most relevant to different groups in Palestine” that were established.

Iran’s media says that Soleimani’s strategy was to “work closely with all these groups, regardless of their religious or political tastes, and this strategy was able to multiply the power of the resistance against the Zionist regime in Palestine.”

One of the groups was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). The report claims to have interviewed the son of Ahmed Jabril, who it calls a “former Palestinian militant.” Jabril was born in 1938. Recent reports place him as a supporter of the Assad regime during the civil war in Syria, where reports say he played a role suppressing other Syrians in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp.

Jabril died in July. The report says his son, Khalid, “currently the new deputy secretary-general of the front, spoke to Tasnim News Agency about the role of Soleimani in supporting Palestinian groups in the fight against the Zionist regime.”

The younger Jabril, the report says, helps the regime fight against “armed terrorist groups.” This is ironic in a roundabout way, as the group transitions from being a terrorist group to helping the Assad regime “fight terrorism” and goes from caring about Palestinians to being an enforcer of a regime.
Iran claims to support these “Palestinian” groups, even if they do nothing for Palestinians. What matters is that the report claims to shed light on how Iran funnels weapons and support to them.

According to the report, Tasnim news met with Khalid Jabril, who told them about meetings with Soleimani. He says he went to an office of the Quds Force leader years ago and the office was festooned with maps of Syria and the location of ISIS and Jabhat Nusra fighters there.

“We want to remove the black area from the map where ISIS has taken over parts of Iraq.” This was probably around 2015-2016; the article doesn’t specify. It says that the son of Ahmed Jabril is a graduate of a military academy, apparently a Syrian one.

“This great martyr chose a process in his life that transformed him from a simple builder to an international commander who was able to completely change the geography of the region,” Khalid said in describing Soleimani.

The report says that Soleimani first met these men in 2000, and spoke about the Palestinian struggle. Even though the Iranian regime is a theocratic Shi’ite one which usually works with Shi’ite groups, Soleimani did not speak about religion, but he “spoke with complete clarity about the Palestinian issue as if he were a Palestinian…. he was more of a listened before he made wise decisions.”

Soleimani cared deeply for Jerusalem, the account says. He also apparently talked to Tansim about Jews. “In one of our meetings with Martyr Soleimani, we talked about the story of the Jews in the Holy Quran,” the report says. “Our conversation was very interesting and detailed.”

The assassinated IRGC leader apparently told the men stories and parables from the Quran involving battles that took place during the early formation of Islam. This was a parable for his belief that Jerusalem would one day be liberated from Israel, according to the account.

“Hajj Qasim [Soleimani] made a great effort to support the Palestinian resistance groups. We and you know that the Gaza Strip is a narrow geographical area that has been surrounded by the Zionist regime from land, sea and air, but despite this, the last battle, which was called the ‘Sword of Quds [Jerusalem]’, witnessed a qualitative and significant change,” the report said.

“We were in the rocket arsenals of the Palestinian resistance. We all know that the martyr Qasem Soleimani played a pivotal role in bringing the Palestinian resistance to a state of self-sufficiency at this level of missile arsenal.”

Of interest here, the report claims that Soleimani had worked with Lybian leader Muammar Qadaffi before his death in 2011. The interview says that they were trying to bring RPGs into Gaza a the time. The plan was to bring in weapons by sea. “There was a lot in common between them [Soleimani and Jabril], and to transfer the weapons, the arrival of the first ship was agreed upon, and the second ship was created by the Front [PFLP-GC], but [after] the third ship was seized, then the next ships came.”

Soleimani’s goal was to “strike such a balance between the Palestinian resistance and the occupying regime, which was established in 1948 and is supported by the Great Satan [America] and all European countries.”

He suggested developing missiles as a way to strike at Israel. “We coordinated with the Hamas movement on the issue of missiles and how to build missile propulsion and warheads and guided systems. All this was done with the knowledge and supervision of Soleimani, and this was a very important strategic issue for him. We were in an area where northerly winds blew northeast and northwest during the fourth to ninth months of the year,” the report says.

Now the interviewer turns to the use of balloons to terrorize Israel. This appears to reference the use of balloons during the last several years. They supposedly outfitted them with small warheads of one kilogram and gradually increased the warheads in size.

“What Martyr Qassem Soleimani did is over, and we are now in another generation that we must continue his path,” Khalid says. “Soleimani completed all the strategic projects he had built; the ‘Strategic project’ of 2000 [the Second Intifada] and the 2006 defeat of the Zionist regime in Lebanon [the 2006 war]. With the same approach, Hajj Qasim also confirmed his victory over ISIS and the prevention of the disintegration of Syria.” The reference to the intifada in 2000 is interesting and appears to confirm that Iran played a role in supporting it.

The report also mentions the assassination of the late Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri and the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. “The Lebanese government decided to limit the military activities of Palestinian groups and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine. International forces entered Lebanon at the time, and Syrian nationals were barred from entering. We faced pressures that we could not accept, and there were disputes with the Lebanese brothers.”

This is a reference not only to the murder of the former prime minister of Lebanon at the hands of Hezbollah but also to the aftermath of the 2006 war. “We went to Tehran and had a meeting with Soleimani and explained the issue.” According to this, Khalid had a brother named “Badr.” This could be a code name. Either way, the article says that they asked Soleimani about moving weapons to Palestinian groups.

According to a second Tasnim interview with Talal Naji of the PFLP-GC in Damascus, many Palestinian groups sent representatives to meet with Soleimani. “Some Palestinians had a great and exceptional opportunity to meet with him, and those who could not see him directly heard Hajj Qasim described through his actions and the services he rendered to the Palestinian people and Palestinian groups,” the report says.

The report says that Palestinians had been fighting Israel since the 1960s and they had “proved that Palestine is a single nation.” It says Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt looked to Iran and Soleimani for guidance, a claim that is clearly Iranian propaganda.

Iran’s current regime support goes back to the 1979 revolution when Khomeini expressed support for Jerusalem and the Palestinians. Iran “announced that every year, the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan should be dedicated to supporting Jerusalem and its people and the holy places of this city.” This became the annual “Quds” day event in Iran.

“Imam Khomeini also declared that Israel is a cancer that must be eradicated, and he supported the resistance groups with his instructions,” the report says. He met with Yaser Arafat and “the doors of the Islamic Republic of Iran were opened to all resistance groups. When Imam Khamenei took over the leadership of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the enthusiasm for supporting the resistance and the Palestinian people increased.” The support for the Palestinian cause thus moved to Tehran from previous patrons such as Nasser or the Soviet Union.

It took a decade or more for Iran to really provide assistance in the 1990s. This coincided with Soleimani’s rise. “Soleimani was a thoughtful, decisive, powerful and determined commander of a large and specialized apparatus that worked day and night to implement its goals.” He formed relations with Palestinian groups and “opened his heart and the heart of the Islamic Republic of Iran to all those who want to fight the Zionist enemy.”

He focused on expanding the capacity of Palestinian terror groups in Gaza to make better weapons. The article says this development was important. “Activists and fighters affiliated with Islamic resistance groups are aware of the influence, credibility and direct role of Sardar [Chief] Soleimani in developing the capacity of the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip.”

Their technological abilities were rudimentary in the 1990s the report says. “The first Palestinian resistance missile in Gaza had a range of only two kilometers. Imagine! That is very limited and even lower than the internationally recognized standards for small rockets,” the interview notes. Indeed, the first Qasam rockets could barely reach Sderot.

“Today we know that the Palestinian resistance has a missile with a range of 250 km.” This refers to an attack Hamas carried out in the May 2021 conflict. “The missile was fired at Ramon Airport toward the port of Aqaba and Eilat. The direct role and personal support of Sardar Soleimani led to the development of these capabilities.”

Soleimani increased meetings with Palestinian groups from 2014 through 2016, the report says. The interview says he “remembers that in one of those meetings that took place in 2015, we were accompanied by a delegation from various Palestinian groups, including our brothers in the Fatah movement in Ramallah, as well as Abbas Zaki, a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah Movement and leaders of other groups were all present.

“Haj Qasim’s words in this meeting were very clear and transparent, and at first, he encouraged all of us to national unity and the need to try to end the divisions, bring the views closer and give priority to confronting the Israeli enemy and putting aside differences.”

Soleimani met again with the Palestinian representatives in Tehran in 2016. Naji claims that the US and Israel both wanted to target the Quds Force chief; the Americans eventually killed him in January 2019.

“Certainly, one of the most important reasons for the assassination of Hajj Qasim was Palestine and his support for the Palestinian people. Hajj Qasim was not a thorn, but a sword in the eyes of the occupying Israeli regime and US hegemonic projects in our region,” Naji says.

The report notes how Soleimani also played a key role in Iraq working with Kataib Hezbollah to fight against ISIS. “The United States left Iraq in the first phase in 2011, “the report says. “The United States had more than 500,000 troops in Iraq who withdrew in 2011. Martyr Haj Qasim Soleimani played a major role in developing the power of the Iraqi national resistance to put pressure on the Americans and to prevent the American occupiers from feeling calm, stable and secure in Iraq.”

Next, Soleimani also focused on the war in Syria. “The second time we went to visit Hajj Qasim, the Iraqi People’s Resistance Forces had liberated most of the country as far as Mosul from ISIS, and thanks to him, Mosul was liberated. After that, we went to Syria and the liberation of Syrian lands began.”

Iran indeed played a key role in creating a nexus of power in Albukamal by 2018 where Kataib Hezbollah had set up a base in Syria and Iran began building the Imam Ali base in the country. Iran would soon be putting drones at T-4 to threaten Israel, with Hezbollah establishing more cells near the Golan to threaten the Jewish state.

“Soleimani did not oversee the plan solely from Tehran; Rather, he personally oversaw the battlefield, and we all know that he was at the forefront of the war on terrorism in Iraq and Syria. Today, photos and video clips of Martyr Qassem Soleimani are being published everywhere in Syria in Idlib province about his fight against terrorist groups that stood just a few meters away in Aleppo, al-Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, al-Mayadin, and Albukamal.”

Here the reference is clear to Soleimani carving out the Iranian corridor from Iraq to Syria via the border town of Albukamal. Today, Mayadin is used as a base to threaten US forces in easter Syria.

Soleimani frequently met with the groups he had supported across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and invited Palestinian groups to meet him. The interview includes details of wonderful dinners and entertainment. “Soleimani spends all his time standing for lunch or dinner, and never eats until he has entertained his guests.” Indeed, he was known not to have gained much weight during this time.

The accounts of Soleimani’s support for Palestinian groups are interesting. Much of the discussion is general but it provides key details about how Iran saw this support of Palestinian groups as important. It was part of its regional agenda.

Tehran not only supported the Second Intifada and played a key role in the 2006 war in Lebanon but also sought to bring weapons to Gaza in the early 2000s. The key was to give the Palestinian groups a strategic weapon with which they could challenge Israel. Iran knew Israel’s capabilities and wanted to develop asymmetric weapons that could get around Israel’s defenses.

Of interest here is also that the reports mention more frequent meetings after the 2014 war. Clearly, Iran was planning for the 2021 war. Once the conflict in Syria and Iraq had been reduced, the Islamic Republic changed focus. It wants to force Israel into a multi-front war.

The interviews are interesting because they do not mention Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is often thought to be an Iran proxy. What is clear is that Iran wants the world to believe that Soleimani played a key role in expanding Palestinian capabilities.

Gunmen affiliated with military chief Khalifa Haftar clashed with local security forces in the southern Libyan city of Sabha on Monday evening, according to authorities and Libyan media.

Observers fear that the country could return to fighting after a year-long ceasefire, just one week before Libyans head to the polls to cast their vote in a presidential election that may still be called off due to legal doubts over the eligibility of candidates.

“A militia armed with heavy weaponry and armoured vehicles… stole 11 four-wheel-drive vehicles from Sabha in an armed robbery,” the city’s police force said, according to AFP.

The interior ministry in Tripoli had sent the stolen vehicles to Sabha to secure the elections, according to a police statement.

The fighters attacked a police convoy and forced officers to drive the vehicles to Brak airbase, south of Sabha, the statement added.

Sabha police identified the attackers as members of a group affiliated with Haftar, a candidate in the 24 December elections who is in control of much of Libya’s south.

Local media said that the violence took place in central Sabha and that there was one casualty, however authorities did not immediately confirm any such reports.

Online footage shows a night-time exchange of small arms and artillery fire in the southern Libyan city.

The Sabha police department believes the attack is meant to destabilise the country’s southern provinces.

Libya, an oil-rich country, has been rocked by turmoil since a US-backed Nato intervention overthrew long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

In 2019, the country descended into full-scale war when eastern-based commander Haftar seized much of southern Libya including oil infrastructure, military sites and the southwestern city of Sabha, before launching a blistering assault on the capital Tripoli, 650 kilometres to the north.

The fighting devolved into a proxy conflict, with the UAE, France, Egypt and Russia backing Haftar’s forces, and Turkey intervening on the side of the Tripoli government.

A UN-brokered ceasefire in October 2020 ended the fighting and ushered in an interim government tasked with steering Libya towards elections. However, the country remains divided into warring eastern and western halves.

Both presidential and legislative polls had been slated for 24 December, but in early October parliament split the dates of the votes, postponing the legislative elections until January.

The path to the ballot box has been lined with disputes over the constitutional basis for the polls and the powers to be given to whoever wins.

Terrorist infrastructure at the largest Palestinian university, An-Najah National University was uncovered by a joint IDF and Shin Bet operation, IDF Spokesperson for Arab Media Avichay Adraee announced according to jpost.com.

11 Islamic Bloc student activists involved in Hamas operations in Judea and Samaria were arrested on campus in Nablus.

According to Adraee’s tweets, the suspects were involved in the “transfer of funds and organizing rallies in support of Hamas, in addition to incitement campaigns under the supervision and direction of senior Hamas officials.”

Adraee warned of students being recruited to Hamas through the Islamic Bloc, which indoctrinated students into adopting Hamas’s ideology. The Islamic Bloc demonstrated a “readiness to work” with the terrorist group, which covered students’ university tuition fees.

Adraee added that in recent years, a number of terrorist cells that had planned operations had members that belonged to the Islamic Bloc at An-Najah University.
With 23,000 students and 11 faculties, An-Najah National University is the largest Palestinian higher learning institution in the West Bank.

An-Najah University ranked 1st among Palestinian institutions, 11th in Arab World, and among the top 100 in the Times Higher Education Emerging Economies Ranking for 2022.

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group is trying to smuggle weapons into Israel for use by the Arab Israeli community in future clashes, a police official has said according to toi.com.

The Israel Police have noticed a significant increase in efforts to smuggle weapons into the country via the Lebanese and Jordanian borders in the months since a May conflict with the Gaza Strip that was accompanied by some of the most severe rioting in decades between the Jewish and Arab communities in Israel, Channel 12 reported Monday.

There has been a several-fold jump in smuggling and a marked improvement in the quality of the weapons being sent, in what police described as a “strategic threat” to the country, according to the report.

Police say the weapons’ intended destination is crime organizations in the Arab community, where they would also be available for terror attacks in the event of another surge in violence between Jews and Arabs.

The head of the northern district police intelligence department, Chief Superintendent Yaron Ben-Yishi, told the network that 95 percent of the smuggling from Lebanon is directed by the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Ben-Yishi said that whereas in the past Hezbollah tried to push drugs into Israel to “poison our young people,” the terror group has now switched tactics to focus on weapons smuggling instead in preparation for an expected “doomsday.”

During May’s clashes “they saw the sensitivity surrounding the Temple Mount [in Jerusalem] and they know that on the day that things explode, Arab Israelis will have enough weapons to use them for their [Hezbollah’s] hostile terror activities,” he said.

In July Israeli troops intercepted what was reportedly the largest attempt in recent years to smuggle weapons across the border from Lebanon.

Since the start of the year, northern district police officers have seized 140 pistols and 20 assault rifles but estimate that many more weapons were successfully brought into the country, Channel 12 reported in a preview of a more in-depth investigation to be broadcast Tuesday.

On Sunday, an Israeli man was shot dead and four others injured in a terror attack in the Old City of Jerusalem carried out by a Palestinian gunman. The shooter, an East Jerusalem resident identified as a member of the Hamas terror group, was armed with a submachine gun manufactured by Italian firearms producer Beretta, a significantly better quality weapon than the guns produced locally in West Bank workshops.

Arab communities have seen a surge in violence in recent years, driven mainly, but not only, by organized crime.

On Monday a school principal was shot and injured in the northern Arab Israeli city of Arraba.

Since the beginning of 2021, at least 111 Arabs were killed in suspected homicides, according to the Abraham Initiatives nonprofit. Of them, 93 were Arab citizens of Israel and another 18 were Palestinians, either from East Jerusalem or with Israeli residency.

Arab Israelis blame police, who they say have failed to crack down on powerful criminal organizations and largely ignore the violence, which includes family feuds, mafia turf wars and violence against women. The community has also suffered from decades of neglect.

In October, the cabinet passed a plan to allocate NIS 2.5 billion ($750 million) over the next five years to fight the wave of criminal activity in Arab communities.

The expansion of Al-Qaeda attacks in Mali threaten dozens of Moroccan truck drivers who transport goods to sub-Saharan Africa every day, like reported by middleeastmonitor.com.

The terror group has hit a 3,700-kilometre road to Morocco and it “has now become dangerous,” according to a report published by the Spanish news agency (Efe).

It all started when gunmen presumed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda killed a truck driver and his companion, both of whom were Moroccan, on 9 September.

The attackers withdrew after the attack without taking anything from the trucks, which rules out that the motive behind the attack was theft.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Al-Qaeda affiliates have admitted to carrying out similar attacks on Moroccan drivers.

Ten days of driving
To reach Mali’s capital from Morocco, truck drivers travel about 3,700 kilometers, which normally takes ten days, unless two drivers go on the trip, then it will only take eight days, of which a whole day is spent waiting in the long truck lines at the Guerguerat border crossing between Western Sahara and Mauritania.

Once in Mali, part of the cargo is unloaded at Bamako, which in turn is a strategic transportation point; Another part of the shipment goes from there to different countries in the sub-Saharan region; Niger, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.

Some estimates put the number of Moroccan trucks working on that road to be between 1,300 and 1,800, depending on the seasons.

The head of Mali’s Financial Transport Council, Youssef Traoré, said terror groups “carry out attacks against trucks operating between Malian cities and neighbouring countries on a daily basis. Many attacks occur between Zhao and Sevare (in the north) and no one is compensating the owners.”

Traore added: “The terrorists carry out their attacks on this road to punish the truck drivers; who supply the United Nations Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) with fuel, which is a target for terrorists, especially to pro-Al-Qaeda.”

Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa reportedly threatened Tarek Bitar, the judge leading the investigation into the Beirut Port explosion which devastated Lebanon’s capital in August 2020, this week, saying the movement would remove Bitar from his position by force if the judge displeases them.

“We have had enough of you. We will go to the end of the legal path, and if that does not work, we will remove you by force,” said Safa to Bitar, according to Edmond Sassine, a journalist with the Lebanese LBCI news.

LBCI and the Lebanese Annahar news both reported based on judicial sources on Wednesday that Bitar had confirmed the reports about the alleged threat by Hezbollah.

Lebanese Interior Ministry Bassam Mawlawi denied to the Lebanese Al-Akhbar news that he was aware of the reported threat to Bitar, saying that “security forces are doing their duty and the judge is doing his duty.”

Families of the victims of the Beirut explosion expressed outrage at the report, telling Lebanese media that they would be guards under Bitar’s house and stressing that the judiciary must be respected.

The head of Lebanon’s Kataeb Party, Sami Gemayel, spoke out against the threat, saying his party holds Hezbollah responsible for obstructing the investigation into the port blast.

Hezbollah has been accused for being responsible for the improper storage of the ammonium nitrate which caused the explosion last year, as the terrorist movement largely controls Lebanon’s ports.

Safa was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in 2019 for exploiting Lebanon’s ports and border crossings to smuggle contraband, including illegal drugs and weapons, into Beirut and facilitate travel on behalf of Hezbollah.

Last week, Bitar issued an arrest warrant for former public works minister Youssef Finianos, a Hezbollah ally sanctioned by the US. Bitar has also issued requests to question former prime minister Hassan Diab and other top officials.

Finianos has filed a request to remove Bitar from the case due to “legitimate suspicion,” saying the arrest warrant was illegal and claiming he beared his responsibilities while in office.

Over a year after an explosion in the Beirut port killed over 200 people and wounded thousands, the investigation is still ongoing without any conclusions reached nor any officials charged or sentenced.

Hezbollah has reportedly denied having any responsibility for storing the ammonium nitrate or arms at the port. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah claimed in August that investigations were being held up in an effort to help insurance companies avoid paying the victims.

The explosions was caused by a large amount of ammonium nitrate improperly stored at the port for years. The chemicals arrived on a Russian-leased cargo ship that made an unscheduled stop in Beirut in 2013. An FBI report seen by Reuters earlier this year estimated around 552 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded, far less than the 2,754 tonnes that arrived.

A report released by Human Rights Watch earlier this year concluded there was strong evidence to suggest some Lebanese officials knew about and tacitly accepted the lethal risks posed by ammonium nitrate.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed the need for the immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from Libya, including all foreign troops and mercenaries.

Blinken made the demand yesterday during a ministerial conference that took place on the sidelines of the 76th UN General Assembly.

The Ministerial Conference on Libya was held with the participation of the countries of the Berlin Process, neighbouring African states along with Greece and Spain, which participated as observers.

In his statement, the US Secretary of State strongly supported the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops and mercenaries from the country, not hesitating to directly name Turkey.