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Medical workers claim Israel is targeting them directly amid its war with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon
Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon — Israel’s military said Tuesday that it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council who’d been seen as a possible next leader of the group, in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiya three weeks ago. That was just days after the Israel Defense Forces killed the Iran-backed, U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah in a different airstrike in Lebanon.
Many of the group’s leaders have been killed over the last month and a half, including three more commanders just this week, but the fighting still rages in Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry says almost 2,000 people have been killed since Israel dramatically ramped up its assault on Hezbollah in mid-September.
There were more airstrikes on Beirut overnight, and with each one, teams of first responders jump into ambulances and head straight for the buildings reduced to rubble. CBS News met some of the medical workers who risk their own lives to save people in the war zone.
While rushing into danger is second nature to them, Hussein Fakih, who leads the rescue team in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, less than 10 miles from the Israeli border, claims he and his fellow medics are being deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. He was seriously wounded by an Israeli missile that struck next to their base.
Courtesy of Nussein Fakih/Lebanese Civil Defense
He said that for months after Oct. 8, 2023, when Israel started bombing Hezbollah targets in response to the group’s incessant rocket and drone launches against Israel — more than 13,000 over the last year, according to the IDF — his team did not feel directly threatened. But Fakih said that changed more recently, and the IDF “started targeting directly the places the teams are working. More than once.”
“Our vehicles are clearly marked with the internationally recognized symbols for rescue workers,” he said it seems to provide no protection.
Fakih’s nephew Hussein Jaber is also a first responder. Seeing so much death up close has been tough for him, and harder still when it was one of his own.
The “worst day,” he said, was just last week, when an Israeli strike hit next to their base, wounding his colleague Naji Fahs.
“He was married and had two children. Was about 50 years old,” said Jaber. “He was a few meters away from me. Unfortunately, he was wounded in an airstrike that was right next to our station and he died. May he rest in peace.”
Fakih told CBS News that eight members of his team had been killed and 35 wounded over the last month alone, “plus 90% of our equipment was hit and was broken.”
“Our job is to help people,” Jaber said. “To keep them safe… Our colleagues died and our friends are wounded, and we were wounded, too, but we will continue to help the people and protect their livelihoods. In fact, this gives us greater incentive to continue our humanitarian mission.”
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As CBS News finished interviewing Jaber, there was a strike nearby. Duty called, and just like that, Jaber was off.
Two hours later, he raced to yet another emergency scene.
“Anyone there?” he called out into the pile of rubble. He and his colleagues pulled 12 bodies from the rubble.
Shortly after carrying out that grim work, Jaber was wounded in another Israeli strike.
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His injuries were minor, and the team is so short-staffed that he went straight back to work.
According to United Nations humanitarian agencies, at least 87 health care workers had been killed in the country as of Oct. 10, and ambulances and relief centers had been “targeted or hit in Lebanon, causing further casualties.” According to CBS News’ own count, that death toll has risen to at least 120.
CBS News asked the IDF about the civil defense teams’ claims that they’re being directly targeted. In a statement, the military said it “operates in strict accordance with international law. It must be emphasized, however, that Hezbollah unlawfully embeds its military assets into densely populated civilian areas, and cynically exploits civilian infrastructure for terror purposes.”
The IDF said, as it has many times about its operations in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, that it makes “all feasible efforts to mitigate harm to civilians during operational activity,” including by giving “advanced warnings to civilians in Lebanon where Hezbollah embedded its military assets and weapons.”
While the IDF does often issue evacuation orders ahead of strikes, Lebanese rescuers and civilians have told CBS News that such warnings are not always issued before missiles slam into residential areas.
contributed to this report.
President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that he will nominate former White House aide Brooke Rollins to be his agriculture secretary, the last of his picks to lead executive agencies and another choice from within his established circle of advisers and allies.
The nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, which will be controlled by Republicans when Trump takes office Jan. 20, 2025. Rollins would succeed Tom Vilsack, President Biden’s agriculture secretary who oversees the sprawling agency that controls policies, regulations and aid programs related to farming, forestry, ranching, food quality and nutrition.
Rollins, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development, is a longtime Trump associate who served as his former domestic policy chief. She is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration.
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Rollins, 52, previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Rollins’ pick completes Trump’s selection of the heads of executive branch departments, just two and a half weeks after the former president won the White House once again. Several other picks that are traditionally Cabinet-level remain, including U.S. Trade Representative and head of the Small Business Administration.
Trump didn’t offer many specifics about his agriculture policies during the campaign, but farmers could be affected if he carries out his pledge to impose widespread tariffs. During the first Trump administration, countries like China responded to Trump’s tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports like the corn and soybeans routinely sold overseas. Trump countered by offering massive multibillion-dollar aid to farmers to help them weather the trade war.
President Abraham Lincoln founded the USDA in 1862, when about half of all Americans lived on farms. The USDA oversees multiple support programs for farmers; animal and plant health; and the safety of meat, poultry and eggs that anchor the nation’s food supply. Its federal nutrition programs provide food to low-income people, pregnant women and young children. And the agency sets standards for school meals.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has vowed to strip ultraprocessed foods from school lunches and to stop allowing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries from using food stamps to buy soda, candy or other so-called junk foods. But it would be the USDA, not HHS, that would be responsible for enacting those changes.
In addition, HHS and USDA will work together to finalize the 2025-2030 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They are due late next year, with guidance for healthy diets and standards for federal nutrition programs.
A coalition of conservation groups and Native American tribal citizens on Friday called on President Joe Biden to designate nearly 140,000 acres of rugged, scenic Badlands as North Dakota’s first national monument, a proposal several tribal nations say would preserve the area’s indigenous and cultural heritage.
The proposed Maah Daah Hey National Monument would encompass 11 noncontiguous, newly designated units totaling 139,729 acres in the Little Missouri National Grassland. The proposed units would hug the popular recreation trail of the same name and neighbor Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the 26th president who ranched and roamed in the Badlands as a young man in the 1880s.
“When you tell the story of landscape, you have to tell the story of people,” said Michael Barthelemy, an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and director of Native American studies at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College. “You have to tell the story of the people that first inhabited those places and the symbiotic relationship between the people and the landscape, how the people worked to shape the land and how the land worked to shape the people.”
The U.S. Forest Service would manage the proposed monument. The National Park Service oversees many national monuments, which are similar to national parks and usually designated by the president to protect the landscape’s features.
Supporters have traveled twice to Washington to meet with White House, Interior Department, Forest Service and Department of Agriculture officials. But the effort faces an uphill battle with less than two months remaining in Biden’s term and potential headwinds in President-elect Trump’s incoming administration.
If unsuccessful, the group would turn to the Trump administration “because we believe this is a good idea regardless of who’s president,” Dakota Resource Council Executive Director Scott Skokos said.
Dozens if not hundreds of oil and natural gas wells dot the landscape where the proposed monument would span, according to the supporters’ map. But the proposed units have no oil and gas leases, private inholdings or surface occupancy, and no grazing leases would be removed, said North Dakota Wildlife Federation Executive Director John Bradley.
The proposal is supported by the MHA Nation, the Spirit Lake Tribe and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe through council resolutions.
If created, the monument would help tribal citizens stay connected to their identity, said Democratic state Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille, an MHA Nation enrolled member.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service. In a written statement, Burgum said: “North Dakota is proof that we can protect our precious parks, cultural heritage and natural resources AND responsibly develop our vast energy resources.”
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven’s office said Friday was the first they had heard of the proposal, “but any effort that would make it harder for ranchers to operate and that could restrict multiple use, including energy development, is going to raise concerns with Senator Hoeven.”
A city in New Mexico has reached a $20 million settlement with the family of a woman who was shot and killed by a police officer now charged with second-degree murder.
Teresa Gomez, 45, was fatally shot in October 2023 shortly after a Las Cruces police officer on a bicycle approached her while she sat in a parked car with another person, authorities said. Body camera video shows the officer shot Gomez three times as she tried to drive away.
The officer, identified by the city as Felipe Hernandez, was charged in January and fired months later from the Las Cruces Police Department.
“This settlement should be understood as a statement of the City’s profound feeling of loss for the death of Gomez and of the City’s condolences to her family,” the city of Las Cruces said in a news release sent Friday.
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. His trial is scheduled for June 2. The Associated Press sent an email Saturday seeking comment from Hernandez’s attorney.
A lawyer for the Gomez family said her relatives are grateful to the city “for recognizing the injustice of Teresa’s death,” the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
“They trust that the city will redouble efforts to make sure no other family suffers the tragedy of losing a loved one to abusive police conduct,” Shannon Kennedy said in a statement to the newspaper.
