Word: hizballah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...locked in a brutal six-week confrontation with militants inspired by al-Qaeda. And a series of bomb attacks and the assassination of a Sunni politician last month underscore the deep divisions tearing apart this tiny country. Those divisions have steadily widened since last year's monthlong war. Then, Hizballah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, was the toast of the Arab street, after fighting the Israeli army to a standstill. Hizballah soon came under intense domestic and international pressure to disarm, but it has managed to replenish its arsenal with the aid of its patrons, Iran and Syria, according...
...Lebanon itself, Hizballah spearheads the opposition drive to unseat the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The country has been politically gridlocked since November when six ministers - including all five Shi'ites - quit the government. Siniora and his allies accuse Hizballah of pushing an agenda on behalf of Iran and Syria. The frail government has survived strikes and an indefinite opposition sit-in that has paralyzed central Beirut. It retains broad support among Lebanese Sunnis and Druze, and the sympathy of moderate Arab states and the West. The Shi'ite community, Lebanon's largest sect, overwhelmingly sides with...
...craggy mountains flanking the Bekaa Valley, fresh Hizballah recruits are undergoing monthlong basic training sessions involving 20-mile (32-km) route marches with rifles, ammunition and rock-filled backpacks. A year ago, Salem, a university student and Hizballah militant, was spending alternate weeks patrolling Lebanon's southern border with Israel. Now he regularly enrolls for refresher training courses in the Bekaa. The training camps are hidden in remote wooded areas, with no permanent structures to give away their presence to Israeli jets and drones overhead. The fighters are taught how to strip, handle and shoot weapons, plant roadside bombs, navigate...
After the war in south Lebanon last summer, the small United Nations peacekeeping mission here was bolstered by the arrival of thousands of crack European troops determined to keep Hizballah fighters away from the border with Israel. A year on, however, and some of those same European contingents are now seeking the cooperation of the Iran-backed Hizballah to help protect them from Al-Qaeda-inspired militants...
...Hizballah grudgingly accepted Resolution 1701 at the end of the war and redeployed its fighters and military hardware north of the border district. "Here, [Hizballah] are not moving anything during the night or during the day," Graziano said "We have 400 patrols [a day] and 150 permanent observation posts, so it's not easy for them...