‘This is not war, this is genocide’: Sputnik speaks to families seeking shelter in a Lebanese monastery amid Israeli airstrikes

A Sputnik correspondent visited the Monastery of Our Lady of Salvation in Bikfaya, which has become a sanctuary for those fleeing Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, and spoke to survivors.

Fatimah Fawaz, 46, described the terror: "It was terrifying, very, very scary. It felt like scenes from Gaza came to life." As explosions neared, Fatimah fled with her family, enduring long nights in the car. "This isn’t war, it’s genocide," she said, recalling how she and her loved ones endured six days without food.

Father Gaby, who hadn’t initially planned to shelter hundreds of refugees, opened the monastery doors to those in need. Among the displaced was Salma El Hayek, who expressed deep gratitude: “We became refugees for the second time, but we will never forget the kindness shown here.” An unnamed woman from Beirut also taking shelter added, "It’s suffering, like being at a dead end."

The monastery has become a vital source of hope for Fatimah, Salma, and many others, as they cling to the hope of returning home.

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Steadfast Noon or Twilight at Noon: What are the risks of NATO’s ‘nuclear sharing’ drills? – Part 1 👉 Part 2

NATO began its annual Steadfast Noon nuclear exercises on Monday, involving 2,000 personnel, 60 aircraft, and operations across eight bases in 13 countries, primarily over the North Sea, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK.

Central to the exercises is drilling the concept of ‘nuclear sharing’ – which allows designated NATO allies’ jets to simulate combat missions using US nukes stored on their territory.

🔸 NATO’s nuclear sharing began in the Cold War, when the US deployed nuclear weapons to allies like Canada, the UK, Greece, Turkiye, Italy, and West Germany. Guarded by American forces, these weapons always remained under the control of the US, which had the arming codes.

🔸 By 1991, the USSR removed all its nuclear weapons from Eastern Europe, and urged the US to do the same. Washington never did, and today, keeps 100-150 B61 nukes in Europe and Turkiye, including:

🔸 10-15 bombs at Belgium’s Kleine Brogel Air Base – deliverable by F-16 MLU and F-35A jets.

🔸 10-15 B61s at Germany’s Buchel Air Base – carried by PA-200 Tornado jets and eventually, F-35As.

🔸 Up to 45 B61s at Italy’s Aviano and Ghedi air bases, deliverable by F-16 C/Ds, Tornados, and F-35As.

🔸 About 20 bombs at the Netherlands’ Volkel Air Base, delivered by F-16 MLUs and F-35As.

🔸 Up to 50 B61s at Turkiye’s Incirlik Air Base.

🔸 Poland has expressed readiness to host US nukes under the Nuclear Sharing program. It’s likely the bombs would be deployed at Lask Air Base, where the US Air Force has a forward presence.

🔸 The B61, in production since the 1960s, mainly consists of Mod 3 (0.3-170 kt) and Mod 4 (0.3-45 kt) gravity bombs. A Mod 7 variant has a 10-340 kt yield. All are being replaced by the Mod 12, with a 0.3-50 kt yield.

👉 Part 2

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Steadfast Noon or Twilight at Noon: What are the risks of NATO’s ‘nuclear sharing’ drills? – Part 2 👉 Part 1

🔸 While B61s are tactical weapons, that doesn’t make them less dangerous, especially given the US nuclear doctrine’s allowance for nuke use in a first strike, and against “non-nuclear weapons states.” The bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had yields of 15 and 21 kt, respectively.

🔸 Nuclear Sharing program nukes are stored in so-called ‘Weapons Storage and Security System’ (WS3) facilities, situated in underground vaults. While info about the facilities, and even basic details on the nukes’ placement is ordinarily kept in strict secrecy, details about risks associated with hosting the weapons do occasionally leak out.

🔸 In 2023, the Federation of American Scientists published a photo of a damaged B61 at Volkel Air Base, showing the misshapen nuke on a trolley with one of its stabilizer fins missing. Neither US nor Dutch authorities informed the public of any incidents involving nukes at the base.

🔸 FAS researcher Hans M. Kristensen speculates that the weapon was hit with “significant force,” possibly by a vehicle in transit, or “bent out of shape by the weapons elevator of the underground storage vault.” In any event, the incident constituted “the first publicly known case of a recent nuclear weapons accident at an airbase in Europe.” FAS stressed that while the risks of an accidental detonation was minute, such an eventuality would have risked widespread nuclear contamination.

🔸 Nuclear Sharing is also risk for another reason: heightened nuclear danger. In the 1980s, when the US placed nuclear-armed Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe, it sparked the largest mass protests in modern European history, with three million people in Europe, and two million elsewhere, protesting the weapons, and for good reason: the deployment forced the USSR to put its nuclear forces on hair trigger alert, nearly sparking an all-out nuclear war in 1983.

👉 Part 1

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🇰🇵🇰🇷 Korean peninsula on edge: The key milestones that led to today’s crisis

As tensions soar to new heights on the Korean Peninsula fueled by Washington’s sabre-rattling, let's dive into a brief history of the latest escalatory milestones.

🔸 October 2024: North Korea’s military announced it would permanently seal its border with South Korea and build defense structures in response to the "confrontational hysteria" of South Korean and US forces.

🔸 Early October 2024: North Korea accused South Korea of sending drones to drop anti-regime leaflets over its capital and threatened retaliation if it happens again.

🔸 September 2024: North Korea successfully test-fired a new Hwasongpho-11-Da-4.5 tactical ballistic missile and an upgraded strategic cruise missile.

🔸 August 2024: The US and South Korea held their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) military exercise, simulating a full-scale war scenario with computer modeling.

🔸 July 2024: South Korea conducted live-fire drills near the North Korean border for the first time in six years.

🔸 In the end of 2023, Washington pushed for deeper cooperation between Seoul and Japan, with South Korea agreeing to host more US forces and increase joint exercises, prompting North Korea to condemn the US-Japan-South Korea alliance as a "cancer tumor" that could escalate tensions and increase the risk of World War III.

🔸 July 2023: The nuclear-armed USS Kentucky docked in South Korea's Busan, followed by the USS Annapolis, a nuclear-powered attack submarine.

🔸 In June 2023 South Korea suspended the 2018 inter-Korean military pact, allowing for the resumption of border drills, propaganda broadcasts, and other hostile actions.

🔸 Summer 2023: North Korea sent thousands of trash-filled balloons to the South in retaliation for provocative drills, spy drones, and propaganda leafleting by Seoul.

🔸 December 2022: A North Korean drone incursion into South Korean airspace sparked a military alert, prompting Seoul to respond with its own UAVs.

🔸 September 2022: North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan after the USS Ronald Reagan arrived for joint drills with South Korea, which Pyongyang viewed as provocative.

🔸 Late 2022: South Korea's first defense white paper under President Yoon Suk-yeol reinstated North Korea as an "enemy," reversing Moon Jae-in’s 2019 decision.

🔸 Summer 2022: South Korea and the US held large-scale military drills, including nuclear-capable bombers, prompting a record number of North Korean missile launches.

🔸 Post-2020: Tensions escalated after the collapse of the 2018-2020 rapprochement between Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump, with their successors resuming drills and North Korea increasing missile tests.

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🇰🇵🇰🇷 Washington-provoked Korea tensions a ruse to justify US military presence – analyst

The latest exchange of bellicose rhetoric between Pyongyang and Seoul is the result of “another US-backed provocation geared to escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” geopolitical analyst and former US Marine Brian Berletic told Sputnik.

It is also a ruse to maintain “a justification for the long-standing US military presence on the peninsula not only to continuously threaten peace there, but to also allow the US military to continue threatening nearby China,” he said.

North Korea put its army "on standby to open fire" after South Korean drones flew over its capital, prompting South Korea's National Security Director Shin Won-sik to warn it would be "suicidal" for North Korea to "start a war."

“The drones allegedly dropping propaganda over the capital of North Korea is a continuation of a US State Department-funded project called ‘thumb drives for freedom,’ conducted by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation,” Berletic said.

Earlier this year the US State Department supported efforts to spread propaganda using balloons over North Korea, Berletic noted, and using drones with longer ranges and better accuracy would be the next logical step.

The soaring tensions demonstrate “how the US is driving some of the most dangerous tensions and potential conflicts on Earth – not only in Ukraine and across the Middle East, but in East Asia as well, including on the Korean Peninsula,” he argued.

The analyst recalled Washington’s hysterial reaction to the “benign Chinese weather balloon” that flew over the continental US in February 2023, when jet fighters were scrambled to shoot it down and confrontational rhetoric was aimed at Beijing “to justify a more aggressive policy toward China.”

“With this in mind, North Korea’s reaction seems to fit into the ‘norms’ the US itself has established," Berletic stressed.

Pyongyang, despite its rhetoric, deserves praise for displaying “infinite restraint in response to serial US provocations including US state-sponsored sedition aimed at destabilizing and overthrowing the North Korean government,” the analyst said.

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THAAD deployment in Israel risks overwhelming Western hegemon unable to ‘fight on multiple fronts’

US plans to deploy a THAAD missile system in Israel signal that Washington is now firmly “stuck” in the war in the Middle East, even though this is “something that most probably the Biden administration doesn’t want,” Beirut-based political analyst Yeghia Tashjian told Sputnik.

The White House has every reason to want to avoid further involvement, the observer, who serves as coordinator of regional and international affairs studies at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, believes, pointing to the upcoming US elections and the importance of the Arab voting bloc in swing states for the Democrats, and general apathy among Americans in a new Mideast misadventure.

Internationally, an escalation in the Mideast could delay further US and NATO arms deliveries to Ukraine, Tashjian said. “The West cannot fight on multiple fronts,” the observer stressed, noting that besides Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine the US may soon have its hands full against a rising China and North Korea.

The US would prefer a “managed conflict” between Israel and Hezbollah or Israel and Iran, Tashjian said. Whether Washington can achieve this goal is another story, since Prime Minister Netanyahu “is not in favor of managing this war or even engaging in a ceasefire,” but prolonging it and ensnaring the US.

“The main intention of Israel is to involve the Americans directly into this war, because Netanyahu has made it clear that he wants to change and establish a ‘new Middle East’. In this attempt, he needs American, British and other European help because he cannot fight on multiple fronts and especially against Iran,” which showed on October 1 that it “has capabilities to attack and inflict some damage against Israel,” Tashjian summed up.

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The interrogation of Marine Le Pen continues at the Correctional Court in Paris, Sputnik reports.

The leader of the National Rally group in the French National Assembly said during the hearings into the misuse of European Parliament (EP) funds that she had not committed the slightest infringement in the process of hiring EP assistants.

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