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Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday told a United Nations Security Council delegation his country does not want war with Israel, days after civilian representatives from both sides held their first talks in decades.Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem, whose militant group refuses to disarm, on Friday backed Lebanon’s pursuit of diplomacy but called the inclusion of a civilian representative in talks with Israel a “misstep”.During Aoun’s meeting with UN Security Council ambassadors, the president said the Lebanese “do not want war again, the Lebanese people have suffered enough and there will be no going back”, according to a presidency statement.Aoun called on the envoys to support the Lebanese army’s efforts to disarm non-state groups. The army expects to complete the first phase of its government-approved plan by the end of the year.”The Lebanese army will play its full role… The international community must support and assist it,” Aoun said.He added there was “no going back” on the decision, “even if it requires some time, because the Lebanese are tired of military confrontations”.Despite a November 2024 ceasefire that was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, Israel has kept up strikes on Lebanon and has also maintained troops in five south Lebanon areas it deems strategic.- ‘Under fire’ -On Wednesday, civilian representatives from Lebanon and Israel joined the meetings of a committee tasked with monitoring the ceasefire, a move Aoun has said was to avoid a second war on Lebanon.In a televised address, Hezbollah chief Qassem said his group supports the state’s decision to choose “diplomacy to end the aggression and implement” the ceasefire, but he strongly criticised the inclusion of a civilian representative.”We consider this measure an additional misstep on top of the sin” of the government’s decision in August to task the army with disarming Hezbollah, he said.”This concession will not change the enemy’s position, nor its aggression or occupation,” he added, urging authorities to reconsider.Aoun emphasised Friday “the need to pressure the Israeli side to implement the ceasefire and withdraw, and expressed his hope for pressure from the delegation”.He said that any outcome from these talks “depends primarily on Israel’s position, upon which the negotiations will either reach practical results or fail”.The committee will hold a new round of talks, with the civilian representatives included, starting December 19.- ‘Clear violations’ -The UN delegation visited Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday and met with Lebanese officials on Friday. It is due to inspect the border area in southern Lebanon the following day, accompanied by US envoy Morgan Ortagus.After meeting with the delegation, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close ally of Hezbollah, stressed that “negotiating under fire is unacceptable”.”Stability in the south requires Israel’s adherence to UN Resolution 1701 and the ceasefire agreement by halting its daily violations and withdrawing behind the international border,” he added, referring to a UN resolution that ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.On Thursday, Israel struck four southern Lebanese towns, saying it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure including weapons depots to stop the group from rearming.UN peacekeepers called the strikes “clear violations of Security Council resolution 1701”.The peacekeepers also said their vehicles were fired on by six men on three mopeds near Bint Jbeil on Thursday. There were no injuries in the incident.Hezbollah refuses to disarm but has not been responding to Israeli attacks. It has, however, promised a response to the killing of its military chief in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last month.

A treasure trove of 225 funerary figurines have been discovered inside a tomb in the ancient Egyptian capital of Tanis in the Nile Delta, a rare find that has also solved a long-running mystery. “Finding figurines in place inside a royal tomb has not happened in the Tanis necropolis since 1946,” French egyptologist Frederic Payraudeau told reporters in Paris on Friday. Such a find has also never happened before further south in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings near modern Luxor — apart from the tomb of the famous boy king Tutankhamun in 1922 — because most such sites have been looted throughout history, he added.Payraudeau, who leads the French Tanis excavation mission, said the remarkable discovery was made on the morning of October 9.The team had already excavated the other three corners of a narrow tomb occupied by an imposing, unnamed sarcophagus.”When we saw three or four figurines together, we knew right away it was going to be amazing,” Payraudeau said.”I ran out to tell my colleagues and the officials. After that it was a real struggle. It was the day before the weekend — normally, we stop at 2 pm. We thought: ‘This is not possible.'”The team then set up lights to work through the night.It took 10 days to carefully extract all of the 225 small green figurines. They were “carefully arranged in a star shape around the sides of a trapezoidal pit and in horizontal rows at the bottom,” Payraudeau said.The funerary figurines, which are known as ushabti, were intended as servants to accompany the dead into the afterlife.More than half the figurines are women, which is “quite exceptional”, Payraudeau said.Located in the Nile Delta, Tanis was founded around 1050 BC as the capital of the Egyptian kingdom during the 21st dynasty.At the time, the Valley of the Kings — which had been looted during the reign of pharaohs including Ramses — was abandoned and the royal necropolis was moved to Tanis, Payraudeau said.- One mystery leads to another -The royal symbol on the newly discovered figurines also solves a long-standing mystery by identifying who was buried in the sarcophagus. It was pharaoh Shoshenq III, who reigned from 830 to 791 BC. This was “astonishing” because the walls of a different tomb at the site — and the largest sarcophagus there — bear his name, Payraudeau said.”Why isn’t he buried in this tomb?” the expert asked.”Obviously, for a pharaoh, building a tomb is a gamble because you can never be sure your successor will bury you there,” he said.”Clearly, we have new proof that these gambles are not always successful,” Payraudeau said with a smile.Shoshenq III’s four-decade reign was turbulent, marred by a “very bloody civil war between upper and lower Egypt, with several pharaohs fighting for power,” he said.So it is possible that the royal succession did not go as planned and the pharaoh was not buried in his chosen tomb.Another possibility is that his remains were moved later due to looting. But it is “difficult to imagine that a 3.5 by 1.5 metre granite sarcophagus could have been reinstalled in such a small place,” Payraudeau said.After the figurines are studied, they will be displayed in an Egyptian museum, Payraudeau said.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry said that Israeli forces killed a man in the northern occupied West Bank on Friday.”Bahaa Abdel-Rahman Rashid (38 years old) was killed by Israeli fire in the town of Odala, south of Nablus,” the health ministry said in a statement.Shortly before, the Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams handled the case of a man “who suffered a critical head injury during clashes in the town of Odala near Nablus, and CPR is currently being performed on him”.The Israeli military told AFP it was looking into the incident.Witness and Odala resident Muhammad al-Kharouf told AFP that Israeli troops were patrolling in Odala and threw tear gas canisters at men who were exiting the local mosque for Friday prayer.Rashid was killed by live fire in the clashes that followed, added Kharouf, who had been inside the mosque with him.The Israeli military said Friday it had completed a two-week counter-terrorism operation in the northern West Bank during which it killed six militants, and questioned dozens of suspects.It told AFP that Rashid was not among the six militants killed over the past two weeks.Dozens of men including Rashid’s father gathered at the nearby city of Nablus’ Rafidia hospital to bid him goodbye on Friday, an AFP journalist reported.Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.It has not ceased despite the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas that came into effect in October.Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them militants, but also scores of civilians, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.At least 44 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.