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BEIRUT: Israeli warplanes flying at low altitudes violated Lebanese airspace 40 minutes after the start of midnight mass on Friday morning while targeting Iranian missile installations in Hama, Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human rights.
Meanwhile, Provisional Government Health Minister Hamad Hassan announced the registration of the first case of the new COVID-19 strain in Lebanon.
Hassan said the infected person returned to Beirut from London on December 21.
He called on passengers on the same flight and their families to be cautious and quarantine at home for ten days, and stressed that the ministry is “following up on the case and the people who came into contact with him.”
The infected person is a Lebanese citizen living in Tripoli, he said, adding that he is currently in self-isolation at home with his mother and in “stable condition.”
This has raised concerns, and MP Georges Adwan called on officials to immediately halt flights from Britain and to take strict action before it is too late.
However, the minister said that “it is not the responsibility of the Ministry of Health to close the airport or cancel flights. Those are the prerogatives of the government, and the scientific committee recommended the suspension of flights with Great Britain, and the technical monitoring committee should have acted on the recommendation. “
President Michel Aoun did not attend Christmas Mass at the Maronite Patriarchate on Friday for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Thursday, Lebanon recorded a new catastrophic number of infected cases, as laboratory tests recorded 2,708 new cases, bringing the total number to 165,933 with 20 new deaths.
In a socially estranged service in the Maronite Patriarchate, Patriarch Bechara Al-Rai reiterated his criticism of “loyalty beyond Lebanon to prevent the formation of the government.”
He said: “We expected the political authority to take advantage of the recommendations of international conferences and the assistance of donor states, and to initiate reform projects to halt the collapse, but we were surprised to interrupt the reform plans and suspend international initiatives and conferences. that were held to restore Lebanon.
“We expected that officials would rush to form a government capable of facing the challenges to revive the state and institutions and make decisions, but we were surprised to establish conditions, contrary conditions and updated parameters, and to link the formation of the Lebanese Government with the conflicts. of the region and the world, and now we are left without an operational constitutional power, and the collapse is getting worse ”.
Al-Rai said that if “respecting the powers and criteria and distributing portfolios is important, then the honor of the people is above all, and above the people.”
He added that they had asked the president and interim prime minister Saad Hariri to “form a team that is above all parties, to be liberated, even temporarily, from all pressures and to cooperate together in the formation of a government of non-political specialists. However, our wishes collided with some invented conditions that have no place at this stage and have no justification in a government of specialists.
