ISRAEL’S military operation on the Lebanese border has ended after discovering the sixth and final tunnel dug by Hezbollah militants for cross-border attacks.
Israel launched Operation Northern Shield early last month to detect and destroy what it called a vast network of Hezbollah tunnels aimed at helping militants sneak across the border to carry out attacks.
The tunnel would be destroyed in the coming days, military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said, adding that while more tunnels still existed on the Lebanese side of the border, this effectively marked the end of the ambitious military operation.
“We have achieved the goal that we set out to achieve a month and a half ago,” he said.
IN northern China, 21 coal miners were killed when a mine collapsed, state media has reported.
The disaster occurred on Saturday in Shenmu in the heart of the country’s coal-mining belt.
Sixty-six other miners were rescued, the city government said in a statement.
The number of fatalities reported in cave-ins, explosions and other disasters in Chinese mines has fallen over the past decade, but the industry still is the world’s deadliest.
MEANWHILE, in Austria, three German skiers have been killed in an avalanche – and a fourth is missing, police said on Sunday as snowfall set in again in the northern Alps.
The bodies of the men – aged 57, 36 and 32 – were recovered on Saturday evening near the ski resort of Lech, a few hours after the wife of one of the skiers reported them missing.
Police in Vorarlberg, Austria’s western-most province, said they had to call off the search for another missing German skier in the group, aged 28, because of heavy snow and the risk of avalanches.
AND finally, Greece’s defence minister Panos Kammenos, leader of the junior partner in the country’s coalition government, has resigned over the Macedonia name deal – which he opposes.
Kammenos announced his resignation after meeting with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday morning.
He said his party is quitting the government, with more details to come in a future press conference.
Greece and Macedonia agreed last June to a deal that would change the name of Greece’s northern neighbour to North Macedonia. In exchange, Greece would lift its objections to Macedonia joining Nato.
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