The British Foreign Office said on Wednesday that it advises its citizens not to travel to Lebanon at all due to the risks associated with the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
It also encouraged British citizens in Lebanon to leave the country now “while commercial (flight) options are still available.”
“There are ongoing exchanges of mortar and artillery shelling and air strikes in southern Lebanon, on the border with Israel,” the Foreign Office said in its updated travel advice. “Tensions are high and events could escalate without warning, which could affect or limit routes out of Lebanon.”
It called on British nationals in Lebanon to register their presence with the British Foreign Office. Family members of employees at the British Embassy were temporarily withdrawn.
The embassies of the United States and France in Lebanon witnessed demonstrations denouncing the Israeli bombing of Gaza.
The Lebanese National News Agency reported, on Wednesday, that a demonstration was launched at night in the direction of the US Embassy junction in Lebanon in the Awkar area, in protest against what they considered to be the “Israeli attack” on the Baptist Hospital in Gaza, which was denied by the Israeli army.
The agency pointed out that the Lebanese security forces and the army took strict security measures in the vicinity of the embassy, and also cut off all roads leading to it with barbed wire.
Al-Hurra website’s correspondent in Beirut reported that security forces used water cannons and smoke bombs to disperse the demonstrators in front of the American embassy in Awkar.
The Lebanese security forces set up a large iron barrier blocking the road leading towards the embassy, while a number of protesters tried to remove the barbed wire, cut it, and throw stones at it.
Social media sites in Lebanon circulated videos showing dozens of motorcycles in car parades, and it was said that they were heading to the vicinity of the American embassy in Lebanon to participate in the protest.
The vicinity of the French embassy in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, witnessed an angry protest movement by dozens of angry young men, including skirmishes and shoving with members of the Lebanese army who were deployed in front of the entrance to the embassy to prevent the protesters from entering.
The vicinity of the building of the United Nations ESCWA (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia), in central Beirut, witnessed a gathering of a number of angry young men, who set fires in front of the building, and proceeded to destroy and remove the barriers erected at its entrance.
Social networking sites circulated calls for gatherings in several places in the capital, Beirut, and other cities such as Tripoli, Sidon, Nabatieh, and Tire, which witnessed vigils and marches denouncing the bombing of the Baptist Hospital.
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced on Tuesday that at least 500 people were killed in an “Israeli air strike” on the National Arab Hospital in the Strip, according to what was reported by Reuters.
The Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) indicated that hundreds were killed and wounded in the bombing of Al-Ahly Al-Arabi Hospital (Al-Maamdani) in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City.
The Palestinian Agency reported that aircraft launched a raid on the hospital while thousands of displaced citizens were present who took refuge there after their homes were destroyed and were searching for a safe place.
For its part, the Israeli army denied responsibility for an attack on a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, saying that military intelligence information indicated that the hospital “was subjected to a failed missile attack launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement in the Strip.”
An Israeli army spokesman said in a statement, “The intelligence information we obtained from multiple sources indicates that the Islamic Jihad movement is responsible for launching the failed missile that hit the hospital in Gaza.”
But a spokesman for Islamic Jihad denied Israel’s account of the movement’s responsibility for the Gaza hospital strike.
2023-10-18 23:18:56
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