标签： Jamaica

BEIRUT, LEBANON – Just one day after Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend a fragile six-week-old ceasefire for another 45 days, the Israeli military launched a sweeping wave of airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Saturday, deepening despair among tens of thousands of already displaced Lebanese residents and casting severe doubt over the future of the truce.

Israeli officials confirmed the strikes were targeting positions held by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Ahead of the bombardment, Israeli authorities issued an evacuation order covering nine southern Lebanese villages, triggering a new wave of civilian flight. Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency documented strikes hitting more than 24 villages across the region, with one strike landing more than 31 miles from the Israeli-Lebanese border. Local media reported that hundreds of additional residents have fled north, seeking safety in the coastal city of Sidon and the capital Beirut.

The ceasefire, which originally took effect on April 17, has been rattled by near-constant violations from both sides since its implementation. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement Saturday welcoming the truce extension, calling on all involved parties to honor the cessation of hostilities in full. But the agreement has done little to halt active clashes: Israel has maintained consistent strike operations inside Lebanese territory and continues to hold territory along the shared border, while Hezbollah has launched regular retaliatory attacks targeting northern Israel and Israeli military positions inside southern Lebanon – including multiple claimed assaults on Saturday.

According to data from Lebanese authorities, more than 2,900 people have been killed in Lebanon in Israeli attacks since cross-border hostilities erupted in March. More than 400 of those deaths have occurred since the original April ceasefire went into force. For its part, Israel has confirmed 19 of its soldiers have been killed in confrontations with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Saturday’s strikes follow indirect negotiations between Israeli and Lebanese envoys in Washington, the latest round of talks following the first direct discussions between the two nations – which have never maintained formal diplomatic relations – in decades earlier last month. Those talks produced the agreement to extend the ceasefire, but the deal has split Lebanese political and armed factions.

Hezbollah has rejected the US-facilitated negotiations, and issued a statement Saturday condemning the proposed security framework as a new series of unauthorized concessions made by the Lebanese government to Israel. “Many Lebanese see the extension of the ceasefire through this track as an extension of their ongoing killing and a cover for the aggression on them and their homeland,” the group’s statement read. In justifying its Saturday attack on Israeli troops in the southern Lebanese town of Khiam, Hezbollah said the action was a response to repeated Israeli ceasefire violations and attacks on southern Lebanese villages.

For the tens of thousands of Lebanese displaced from the south by months of fighting, the gap between the announced truce extension and ongoing deadly attacks has eroded any remaining faith in the agreement. “This is not a truce as long as Israeli attacks continue against the south and its people, with deaths, injuries and destruction,” said Ali Salameh, 60, a displaced resident sheltering in a Beirut school since the war began. Many other displaced residents echoed this frustration, saying they backed Hezbollah’s continued resistance to Israeli attacks. “What kind of a truce is this when they have just threatened villages and people are being displaced? Where is the state? We stand only with the resistance,” said Nawal Mezhir, another displaced southerner.

Lebanon’s Washington-based negotiating delegation struck a more optimistic tone in its statement Friday, welcoming the truce extension and the new US-facilitated security track. The delegation said the agreement “provides critical breathing space for our citizens, reinforce state institutions and advance a political pathway toward lasting stability.”

The current round of cross-border hostilities began on March 2, when Hezbollah launched a large rocket barrage against Israel in retaliation for the killing of a top Iranian commander. Even before Saturday’s large-scale strikes, violence had continued through the ceasefire period: on Friday, a day before the extension was finalized, Israeli jets struck the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, near the city’s famous ancient ruins. An AFP correspondent on the ground documented extensive destruction to the targeted neighborhood. Ibrahim Kahwaji, a tailor who suffered a leg wound in the strike, described the campaign as a deliberate effort to force civilians out of southern Lebanon. “They are emptying the south of its population… It’s a real occupation. We want a solution,” Kahwaji said.

The Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives, one of the world’s most coveted luxury diving destinations, is reeling from its deadliest recorded diving incident after a rescue diver participating in the search for four missing Italian divers died on Saturday, marking the fifth fatality in the tragedy. The chain of events began on May 14, when a group of five Italian divers set out from a liveaboard dive vessel for an excursion off Vaavu Atoll, and failed to surface as scheduled.

By the end of that first day, search teams had recovered only one of the divers’ bodies, leaving four still unaccounted for deep in local waters. When rescue operations entered their third consecutive day on Saturday, Staff Sergeant Mohamed Mahudhy, a diver with the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF), surfaced from his search mission in critical condition. He was rushed immediately to a local medical facility for emergency care, but succumbed to his condition shortly after arrival, the MNDF confirmed in an official public statement.

The victims of the initial incident have been identified by Italy’s University of Genoa: a senior marine biology professor, her daughter, and two early-career researchers from the institution. Italy’s foreign ministry has already formally confirmed that all five Italian divers involved in the outing are dead. The one recovered body was found trapped in an underwater cave at 60 meters – double the maximum permitted diving depth of 30 meters set by Maldivian safety regulations. Government officials have launched a full formal investigation to determine why the group exceeded this official depth limit, and what broader safety failures contributed to the disaster.

Hours before the rescue diver’s death was announced, Maldivian tourism authorities took immediate regulatory action: they suspended the operating license of the MV Duke of York, the 36-meter luxury liveaboard that hosted the Italian expedition, indefinitely. The suspension will remain in place until the full investigation into the incident concludes. The vessel, which is designed to host up to 25 passengers on multi-day diving itineraries, is a popular option for divers exploring the Maldives’ remote coral atolls.

Made up of more than 1,100 low-lying coral islands spread across 800 kilometers of the Indian Ocean along the equator, the Maldives has built its $3 billion tourism industry around its reputation for pristine reefs and world-class diving. While water sports and diving-related fatalities are statistically rare in the South Asian nation, a small number of deadly diving incidents have been recorded over the past five years. This current disaster is the deadliest diving accident in the country’s modern tourism history, and is already prompting scrutiny of safety protocols for liveaboard dive operations across the archipelago.

NASSAU, Bahamas — The Bahamas’ national immigration agency has carried out a large-scale deportation operation, sending 107 Haitian migrants back to their home country as part of the government’s sustained crackdown on violations of national immigration regulations. In an official public statement released after the operation, the Department of Immigration outlined details of the repatriation, noting that the group deported included 22 adult women and five minor children. Authorities confirmed that the majority of the deported individuals had remained in the Bahamas beyond the timeframe allowed by their entry permits, while others were taken into custody after entering the country without proper authorization.

The repatriation flight, operated by Bahamas’ national carrier Bahamasair, departed from the Lynden Pindling International Airport in the capital Nassau. Department officials emphasized that all established public health and security protocols were strictly implemented throughout the entire deportation process, prioritizing the safety and health of both immigration officers overseeing the operation and the migrants being deported. Upon landing in Haiti, the 107 migrants will undergo standard entry processing by Haitian immigration officials. The five underage girls in the group will be transferred to Haiti’s national child welfare services for further care and support, per arrangements between the two countries’ authorities.

This large operation was not the only immigration enforcement action Bahamian authorities took this week. Just days earlier, the department completed a second deportation that involved 15 foreign nationals from a range of countries across the globe. Among that smaller group were three Jamaican citizens, two Colombians, two Mexicans, two Peruvians, two Romanians, one Cuban, one Ecuadorian, one additional Haitian, and one Moldovan national, all of whom had been found to be in violation of Bahamas immigration rules.

The Department of Immigration reiterated that these ongoing enforcement operations are a core part of the government’s commitment to upholding the country’s immigration laws and maintaining order along its borders. It called on members of the Bahamian public to actively support these efforts by reporting any suspected immigration violations to the relevant authorities, reinforcing the message that compliance with national entry and residency rules is a shared responsibility.