Wave of Israeli strikes hit banks in Lebanon
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Al-Qard al-Hassan bank has been under US sanctions since 2007, with the US saying it allows Hezbollah to bypass banking systems. Meanwhile the US Middle East envoy Amos Hochstein has arrived in Beirut in an attempt to find a negotiated end to the war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Also on the programme: the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon talks about the situation on the ground; and we head to Moldova, the eastern European country which has voted by a tiny margin in favour of joining the European Union.
(Image: A poster depicting late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is seen outside a damaged branch of ‘Al-Qard al-Hassan', a financial institution linked to Lebanon's Hezbollah, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces in Tyre, Lebanon, on 21 October 2024. Credit: Reuters/Aziz Taher)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello welcome to news hour it's coming to you live from the BBC World Service |
| 0:06.9 | studios in London I'm Tim Franks we've got a remarkably close vote in a former Soviet Republic to tell you about along with the |
| 0:15.1 | death of a hugely influential and controversial Muslim cleric and also why a group of |
| 0:20.4 | professional women football players are angry with their governing body. |
| 0:24.7 | That's all to come. |
| 0:25.9 | But we're going to begin in Lebanon where the US is making a renewed effort to rein in the war |
| 0:31.6 | between Israel and the Hezbollah militia, a war which appears only |
| 0:35.8 | to be intensifying and widening. |
| 0:38.7 | That renewed effort is being led by President Biden's special envoy, Amos Hochstein. Shortly before he arrived in Beirut, |
| 0:46.6 | the Israeli Air Force had hammered targets in the capital and in southern Lebanon, apparently |
| 0:52.1 | targeting branches of a bank Israel accuses of financing Hezbollah. |
| 0:55.8 | We'll hear more about that in a moment. |
| 0:58.2 | Speaking at the start of his visit, though, Mr. Hoekstein sounded deeply downbeat. This is a really heartbreaking moment for me to be here in Lebanon. |
| 1:11.0 | The people of Lebanon like everyone in the region just want to go home, build a peaceful, secure, and safe and prosperous future for themselves and their families. |
| 1:26.4 | This is my sixth or maybe seventh visit to Lebanon in the past year and while we spent 11 months containing the conflict, we were not able to resolve it. |
| 1:37.1 | In each of my visits, I cautioned that the situation was urgent and the status quo was not sustainable. |
| 1:49.0 | We were either going to reach a solution or things were going to escalate out of control. I stood at this |
| 1:55.8 | very podium time after time including as recently as August and cautioned about the urgency. |
| 2:05.6 | Our resolution was possible, but it was rejected and the situation has escalated out of |
| 2:12.2 | control as we feared that it could. |
| 2:17.0 | Hezbollah started firing missiles into Israel back on October the 8th last year, a day after the |
| 2:22.1 | mass massacres which prompted Israel's devastating |
... |
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