Israeli minister’s Al-Aqsa mosque visit sparks condemnation

JUREUSALEM: Israel said on Tuesday that it had agreed to release five Lebanese citizens detained during its war with Hezbollah as a goodwill gesture to the neighboring country’s new president.
“In coordination with the United States and as a gesture to Lebanon’s new president, Israel has agreed to release five Lebanese detainees,” a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s office said that the decision came following a meeting held earlier in the day in the Lebanese border town of Naqoura that included representatives of the Israeli army, the United States, France and Lebanon.
“During the meeting, it was agreed to establish three joint working groups aimed at stabilising the region,” the prime minister’s statement said.
“These groups will focus on the five points controlled by Israel in southern Lebanon, discussions on the Blue Line and remaining disputed areas, and the issue of Lebanese detainees held by Israel.”
The Blue Line is the UN-patrolled demarcation line that has marked the Israel-Lebanon border since 2000.
In an interview to Lebanese news channel Al Jadeed, US deputy special envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus said the five Lebanese prisoners were a mix of civilians and soldiers.
“I’ll let the government of Lebanon make the announcement of who is in the mix. But there are some soldiers and civilians in the mix of five,” she said.
On November 27, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-French mediated truce that largely halted more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of full-blown war in which Israel sent in ground troops.
While the ceasefire continues to hold, Israel has periodically carried out air strikes on Lebanese territory, it says to prevent Hezbollah from rearming or returning to the territory along its northern border.
On Saturday, the military targeted a Hezbollah militant with an air strike in southern Lebanon. Lebanese media reported one killed and another wounded in what it said was an Israeli drone strike on a car.
The ceasefire required Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and to dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
Israel had been due to withdraw completely from Lebanese territory by February 18 after missing a January deadline, but decided to keep troops at five locations it deemed strategic.

DAMASCUS: A Syrian fact-finding committee investigating sectarian killings during clashes between the army and loyalists of Bashar Assad said on Tuesday that no one was above the law and it would seek the arrest and prosecution of any perpetrators.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by witnesses and a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population are members of the ousted president’s Alawite sect.
“No one is above the law, the committee will relay all the results to the entity that launched it, the presidency, and the judiciary,” the committee’s spokesperson Yasser Farhan said in a televised press conference.
The committee was preparing lists of witnesses to interview and potential perpetrators, and would refer any suspects with sufficient evidence against them to the judiciary, Farhan added.
The UN human rights office said entire families including women and children were killed in the coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Assad loyalists.
Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa told Reuters in an interview on Monday that he could not yet say whether forces from Syria’s defense ministry — which has incorporated former rebel factions under one structure — were involved in the sectarian killings.
Asked whether the committee would seek international help to document violations, Farhan said it was “open” to cooperation but would prefer using its own national mechanisms.
The violence began to spiral on Thursday, when the authorities said their forces in the coastal region came under attack from fighters aligned with the ousted Assad regime.
The Sunni Islamist-led government poured reinforcements into the area to crush what it described as a deadly, well-planned and premeditated assault by remnants of the Assad government.
But Sharaa acknowledged to Reuters that some armed groups had entered without prior coordination with the defense ministry.