[NewsMax] The military is increasing its surveillance of Mexican drug cartels to collect intelligence to determine how to best counter their activities, the top general overseeing troops in North America said on Thursday.
"We have also increased some uniquely military capabilities that will get after... the cartels, which are driving the illegal migration, and that is primarily through airborne ISR to get more information on those and figure out how we can counter their actions," said Air Force General Gregory Guillot, head of U.S. Northern Command.
Asked if he would need a carrier strike group in the waters between the United States and Mexico, Guillot said: "I will need significant increased maritime presence in cooperation with the Coast Guard."
[IsraelTimes] Israeli troops reportedly shot and severely injured a young girl, causing her to lose her eyesight, during a West Bank raid on Tuesday.
Eight-year-old Jannat al-Matur was shot by an Israeli sniper through a window while at her home in Sa’ir, north of Hebron, her father told Palestinian media.
The sniper’s bullet grazed the girl’s head and shrapnel from the gunfire hit her face, leaving her blind.
Al-Matur’s father says that she will need to undergo surgery to restore her eyesight. She is currently in stable condition.
“Within an instant, I found myself covered in blood, bleeding and I didn’t know what happened to me,” said the child to Palestinian outlets while in the hospital.
A Convoy containing the Deputy Head of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), has been attacked by Hezbollah Supporters near Beirut International Airport, with at least one Vehicle being burned and several UNIFIL Staff Members being injured before the Lebanese Army… pic.twitter.com/kDEQtYRO69
A crowd of Hezbollah supporters has set UNIFIL vehicles on fire near Beirut Airport and are now beating up UN soldiers at the scene pic.twitter.com/yWcEG6TGkJ
No, Israel didn’t bomb Lebanon. Hezbollah terrorists decided to burn down the city after the Lebanese government blocked an Iranian regime airplane from landing in the country.
Remember this next time Hezbollah terrorists cry wolf after they provoke Israel… pic.twitter.com/xSFwLbmljM
The outgoing deputy commander of UNIFIL was injured Friday, the international peacekeeping force said, after a convoy taking troops to the Beirut airport was attacked amid pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in the area.Supporters of the Hezbollah terror group have blocked the road to the country’s only airport for two consecutive nights over a decision barring two Iranian planes from landing in the Lebanese capital. The decision came after the Israel Defense Forces said Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... was smuggling cash to Hezbollah via civilian flights.
According to Saudi-owned network al-Arabiya, the three-car UNIFIL convoy was assaulted by young men who beat officers, stole equipment and burned at least one vehicle.
In a statement, UNIFIL demanded a full and immediate investigation by Lebanese authorities and for all perpetrators to be brought to justice.
"We are shocked by this outrageous attack on peacekeepers who have been serving to restore security and stability to south Leb ...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects.... during a difficult time," said the UN peacekeeping force. "Attacks on peacekeepers are flagrant violations of international law and may amount to war crime."
"Peacekeepers continue to work to restore security and stability in south Lebanon in accordance with our mandate under Security Council Resolution 1701," the statement added, referring to the UN decision ending the 2006 Second Lebanon War that requires Hezbollah to pull its fighters north of the Litani River.
The statement did not name the injured deputy commander, a post held since 2022 by Maj. Gen. Chok Bahadur Dhakal, of Nepal, who was set to leave the country after completing his mission when the convoy was attacked.
The Lebanese military vowed to take "firm action to prevent any breach of public order and arrest troublemakers" in "several areas, particularly the area around the airport."
The incident underscored tensions in Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s new government, which includes Hezbollah as a minor member.
Hezbollah and its allies appeared to be scrambling to distance themselves from Friday’s attack. Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV said in a statement posted on its social media accounts that "unruly elements caused chaos with suspicious objectives on the Beirut airport road."
The fellow Shi’ite Amal Movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Knobby Berri
...perennial Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians... , a Hezbollah ally who secured the terror group a place in the government, said in a statement that "the attack on UNIFIL is an attack on southern Lebanon" and called for the army and security forces to pursue the perpetrators. "Except for Hezbollah, they're cool. Look at someone else"
The United States condemned the attack, saying it was"reportedly by a group of Hezbollah supporters."
Salam, the former top judge at the International Court of Justice, was tapped for premier by Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, whose election last month, with the backing of Washington, Riyadh and Gay Paree, ended a two-year impasse.
Aoun had previously served as head of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Upon accession to the presidency, he vowed to uphold the state’s monopoly on arms — a thinly veiled threat against Hezbollah’s extensive arsenal. The Iran-backed terror group was the only armed force not to surrender its weapons to the state after Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
In retaliation for what it described as Israel’s illegal threat, Tehran on Friday blocked Lebanese planes from landing in Iran, stranding dozens of homebound Lebanese.
Throughout the nearly 14-month war with Hezbollah, which ended with a November 27 ceasefire, Israel has repeatedly accused the terrorist organization of using Lebanon’s only airport to smuggle arms from Iran.
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Something comes to mind about lying down with dogs...I can't remember the rest.
[IsraelTimes] Large bags of captagon pills found in village of Qusair, where residents return after more than a decade of civil war
In a desolate area of Syria where the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah once held sway, security forces shot open the gates to an abandoned building and found a defunct drug factory.
Syria’s new authorities launched a security campaign last week around Qusair at the porous Lebanese border, cracking down on drug and weapons smugglers.
They have also accused Hezbollah, which for years propped up former Syrian President Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now... , of firing at them in festivities in the weeks since his ouster.
"We’ve begun to comb factories used by Hezbollah and remnants of the defunct regime," said Major Nadim Madkhana, who heads Syria’s border security force in Homs province near Leb ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?... Before Syria’s war erupted in 2011, Syrians and Lebanese lived side by side in the border area — a mostly tribal region long renowned for smuggling.
In April 2013, Hezbollah announced it was fighting alongside Assad’s forces and leading battles in the Qusair area, a rebel stronghold at the time.
After weeks of battles that displaced thousands of Syrians, Hezbollah seized control of the area, establishing bases and weapons depots and digging tunnels — which Israel repeatedly targeted in subsequent years.
Hezbollah’s support for Assad was as much an act of loyalty for its fellow member of the "axis of resistance" as it was a necessity for its own survival, with Syria acting as its weapons conduit from Iran.
"Under the defunct regime, this area was an economic lifeline for Hezbollah and drug and arms traders traffickers," Madkhana said.
In the building raided by Syrian border security, AFP correspondents saw large bags of captagon pills — a potent synthetic drug mass-produced under Assad that sparked an addiction crisis in the region.
Both the sanctions-hit ousted government and Hezbollah, which is proscribed as a terrorist organization by many countries, have faced accusations of using the captagon trade to finance themselves.
In the months leading up to Assad’s December 8 ouster, Hezbollah pulled many of its combatants back to Lebanon to fight an all-out war with Israel.
But it was only after his overthrow that it rushed the majority of its forces and allies out of the country.
Attesting to the speed of the pullout, plates of food were left to rot in the kitchen of one facility.
DRUG TRAFFICKERS
Snow-speckled dirt tracks leading to the facilities still bear marks left by barricades that smugglers had set up "to delay our advance," Madkhana said.
In recent days, Syrian forces have clashed with "Hezbollah loyalists and regime remnants" in the area, some of them armed with rocket launchers, he added.
Charred vehicles lay by the side of the road near damaged luxury villas built by narcos, residents of the area told AFP.
Hezbollah provided cover for Lebanese and Syrian smugglers operating at the border, the residents said.
After more than five decades of rule by the Assad family, the rebels that once fought the ousted president’s army are now running the country, and that has had a knock-on effect on neighboring Lebanon.
Earlier this week, Madkhana told AFP that Syrian forces had started coordinating with the Lebanese army at the border.
Last week, the Lebanese army said it was responding to incoming fire from across the Syrian border.
Syria shares a 330-kilometer (205-mile) border with Lebanon that lacks any official demarcation, making it ideal turf for smugglers.
’BANNED FROM RETURNING’
Since Assad’s ouster, Syrians displaced during the war have started returning home to Qusair.
After spending almost half of his life as a refugee in northern Lebanon, Hassan Amer, 21, was thrilled to return.
"I was young when I left, I don’t know much about Qusair," he said, painting the walls of his house with help from neighbors and families.
"We returned the day after the regime fell," he said, beaming with pride.
Hezbollah "took over Qusair and made it theirs while its people were banned from returning," he said, adding that schools and public institutions had been turned into bases.
In 2019, Hezbollah said residents of Qusair could return home, citing a decision by Assad’s government.
Mohammed Nasser, 22, and his mother were among the lucky ones allowed back in 2021.
"My elderly grandfather was alone here... and I was under 18," he said, meaning he was not yet due for conscription.
His father stayed in Lebanon, fearing arrest.
For years, Nasser’s family and a couple of others were the only Syrians living in the area, he said, while Lebanese "loyal to Hezbollah lived in the less-damaged houses."
Nasser’s 84-year-old grandfather, also named Mohammed, recalled the day Assad and his family fled.
"On liberation day, they fled... and the town’s people came back at night, before sunrise, to the sound of the call to prayer," he said.
[IsraelTimes] Military says fighter jets hit terror group’s weapons storage sites and rocket launchers, which were operated in ‘blatant violation’ of agreements, as row emerges over withdrawal deadline
The Israel Defense Forces carried out Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in southern Leb ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?... late Thursday night, saying it targeted Hezbollah terror group facilities.
The sites hit by fighter jets were used by Iran-backed Hezbollah to store weapons and launchers and had "posed a direct threat to the Israeli home front," the military said.
The strikes took place near the towns of Yohmor, Deir Siryan, Yater, and Zibqin in southern Lebanon, according to local reports.
According to the IDF, Hezbollah activity at the sites "constitutes a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon."
The strikes came at the same time that pro-Hezbollah protesters — some hundreds, according to local reports cited in Hebrew media — clashed with the Lebanese army in Beirut, after aviation authorities reportedly informed an Iranian passenger flight that it would not be permitted to land in Lebanon, after the IDF said Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... was using such flights to smuggle cash to Hezbollah.
They also came amid clashing statements about the IDF’s future in southern Lebanon.
Israel said Thursday it would remain in five key points past the deadline for withdrawal stipulated by a November ceasefire agreement, and the US signaled support for the move. However,
the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Knobby Berri
...perennial Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians... — a Hezbollah ally — said that he and the country’s president and prime minister all opposed any lingering Israeli presence.
Under the deal, Lebanon’s military was to deploy in the south alongside United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period, which was extended until February 18. Iran-backed Hezbollah was also meant to leave its positions in the south, near the Israeli border, over that period.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel is entitled to act against immediate threats posed by Hezbollah but must forward complaints about longer-term threats to an oversight committee composed of representatives from the US, La Belle France, Lebanon, and the international observer force UNIFIL.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects....
...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?...
...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?...
