Australia intends to add far-right extremist group The Base and the entirety of the Lebanese group Hezbollah to its list of outlawed terrorist organisations.

Hezbollah’s External Security Organisation has been listed since 2003, but including all Hezbollah entities as terrorist organisations would make being a member of, or supporting, those entities a criminal offense.

“The group continues to threaten terrorist attacks and provides support to terrorist organisations,” Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews said in a statement.

The Base, which originated in the United States, would become only the second far-right group to be designated a terrorist organisation in Australia after the British-based Sonnenkrieg Division was listed in August.

The remaining 25 terrorist organisations on Australia’s list are Muslim groups.

“The Base is a violent, racist, neo-Nazi group known by security agencies to be planning and preparing terrorist attacks,” Mrs Andrews said.

“The Base is currently proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom and is known to have organised paramilitary training camps overseas,” she added.

A charity has reported entire streets wiped out following a large explosion in Lebanon.

At least 50 people have been killed and 2,700 injured by the blast near Beirut’s harbour on Tuesday evening.

Authorities in Lebanon are yet to announce the cause of the explosion.

Save the Children said in a statement that members of their team on the ground in the city have reported entire streets destroyed and children unaccounted for.

Despite the charity’s offices in the city being badly damaged, they have pledged that a rapid response team is ready to offer support.

Jad Sakr, Save the Children’s country director in Lebanon, said: “We are shocked and devastated by the explosion today.

“The death toll may not be known for several days but we do know is that in a disaster like this, children may be hurt, shocked and separated from their parents.

“Our child protection teams are ready to support the government’s efforts, which will almost certainly go on for several days to come.

“It is vital that children and their families get access to the services they urgently need, including medical care and physical and emotional protection.”

He added: “The incident could not have occurred at a worst time and has hit communities who were already suffering from the impact of the Covid-19 crisis and the economic deterioration.

“Beirut’s main port, now completely damaged, is vital for much of the food, grains and fuel that Lebanon imports, and families will immediately feel the shortage in basic needs as a result of this tragedy.”

The UK has also pledged help, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying the Government is “ready to provide support in any way we can”.

It a tweet on Tuesday evening he also wrote: “The pictures and videos from Beirut tonight are shocking.

“All of my thoughts and prayers are with those caught up in this terrible incident.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah used drones to strike Islamic State in Syria close to the border with Lebanon, a military media unit it runs said on Monday, their first public declaration that they had used such a weapon.

Hezbollah deployed the drones to hit Islamic State positions, bunkers and fortifications in the Western Qalamoun area near the border with Lebanon, achieving direct hits, the military media unit said.

An official in the military alliance fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters it was the first time Hezbollah had declared its use of the weapons.

Footage released by the media unit seemingly taken from a drone, showed two types of munition, one of them with a tail fin, dropping towards the ground and explosions as they hit.

Early on Saturday Hezbollah and the Syrian army began an operation against an Islamic State enclave straddling the border with Lebanon in Syria’s Western Qalamoun.

The Lebanese army began a separate but simultaneous operation against the same jihadist pocket from inside Lebanon.

Any joint operation between the Lebanese army on the one hand and the Syrian army on the other would be politically sensitive in Lebanon and could jeopardise the U.S. military aid the country receives.

Islamic State holds the last militant pocket on the border after a Hezbollah offensive last month that forced Nusra Front militants to leave for rebel-held Idlib province in Syria.

Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers from Syria’s civil war in 2014 when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal.

Convoys of buses arrived on Monday to transfer thousands of Syrian militants and refugees from Lebanon’s border region into rebel territory in Syria in exchange for Hezbollah prisoners. Under a local ceasefire between the Sunni Muslim militants and the Shi’ite Hezbollah, about 9,000 fighters and their relatives were to leave. With no sign of any buses leaving, the departure was delayed to Tuesday from Monday for “logistical” reasons including having to wait for the rest of a total of 98 coaches to arrive from the Syrian side, a Hezbollah media unit said.

The deal includes the departure of all Nusra Front militants from Lebanon’s border region around the town of Arsal, along with any civilians in nearby refugee camps who wish to go. The truce echoes deals struck within Syria in which Damascus has shuttled rebels and civilians to Idlib province and other opposition areas. Such evacuations have helped President Bashar al-Assad recapture several rebel bastions over the past year. Lebanon’s Hezbollah has played a major role in fighting militants along the frontier during Syria’s six-year war, sending thousands of combatants to support Assad’s government. Last week, Hezbollah took most of the mountainous zone of Jroud Arsal in a joint offensive with the Syrian army to drive Nusra militants from their last frontier foothold. The Nusra Front was al Qaeda’s Syria branch until it severed ties and rebranded last year. It now spearheads the Tahrir al-Sham Islamist alliance in the Syrian war.

The Lebanese army, which receives considerable U.S. and British military support, did not take an active part in the operation, setting up defensive positions around Arsal. The next phase is expected to target a nearby enclave currently in the hands of Islamic State jihadists.

BODIES OF FIGHTERS EXCHANGED

“Buses that will transport Nusra Front militants and their families have started arriving in Jroud Arsal,” the military media unit run by the Iran-backed Hezbollah said via social media on Monday. The convoys rolled in from Syria and headed towards Lebanese army positions. Syrian Red Crescent ambulances arrived on the opposite side of the frontier, the media unit said. Footage from the border zone showed dozens of white buses driving through the barren hills. The Lebanese Red Cross has taken part in logistics. The first step of the ceasefire, brokered by Lebanon’s internal security agency, unfolded on Sunday as the two sides exchanged the bodies of dead fighters. A Lebanese security source said 200 militants with hundreds of their family members, as well as more than 5,000 refugees, were due to leave, mostly towards insurgent-held Idlib. Nusra Front will release eight Hezbollah fighters under the deal, three captured in recent days and five held in Syria, a Lebanese security source said. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV said the two sides would swap Nusra militants for the Hezbollah hostages near the city of Aleppo, which the Syrian government controls.

The U.N. refugee agency, not involved in the deal, was trying to reach refugees in the Arsal region to evaluate whether returns were voluntary, spokeswoman Lisa Abou Khaled said. “UNHCR believes that conditions for refugees to return in safety and dignity are not yet in place in Syria,” she said, with war continuing across large swathes of the country. The multi-sided Syrian conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven at least 11 million from their homes – about half Syria’s pre-war population. Nearly 1.5 million refugees have poured into Lebanon – around a quarter of its population – where most languish in severe poverty. Several thousand live in makeshift camps east of Arsal. 

Hezbollah’s top military commander Mustafa Badreddine has been killed in a blast at a base near Damascus airport, the Lebanese Shi’ite group said on Friday, one of the biggest blows to its leadership the Iranian-backed organisation has ever sustained.

Hezbollah did not immediately say on Friday who it blamed for the attack, but its deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said there were clear indications of who was behind it, and the group would announce the outcome of its investigation within hours. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

At least one Hezbollah figure blamed the group’s age-old enemy Israel, which has struck Hezbollah targets in Syria several times in the past since civil war started there in 2011. Israel declined to comment, but a former Israeli official said his country would be glad Badreddine was dead.

Hezbollah also has many other foes in Syria, where it fights in support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad against a range of Sunni Muslim groups including Islamic State.

Thousands of Hezbollah fighters and leaders gathered at a mosque in Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut and gave  Badreddine a military funeral, waving Hezbollah flags. They chanted Shi’ite religious slogans, as well as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.

Speaking at the funeral, Qassem also vowed that the group would continue on the “path” of Badreddine.

In a letter, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif extended condolences “for the martyrdom of this great jihadist … who embodied devotion and vigour and was legendary in his defence of high Islamic goals and his defence of the Lebanese people who resist oppression and terrorism.”

The U.S. government believed Badreddine, 55, was in charge of Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria.

He is the most senior Hezbollah official killed since 2008 when his brother-in-law, long-serving military commander Imad Moughniyah, was blown up by a bomb planted in his car in Damascus that Hezbollah blamed on Israel.

The latest killing follows other recent losses for Hezbollah and Iran in Syria, despite Russian military intervention in support of Assad and his allies in a five year multi-sided civil war that has drawn in neighbouring states and world powers.

At least four prominent figures in Hezbollah have been killed since January 2015. A number of high-ranking Iranian officers have also been killed, either fighting Syrian insurgents or in Israeli attacks.

Hezbollah said it was investigating whether the explosion at the base was caused by an air strike, a missile attack or artillery bombardment. It did not say when he was killed.

“This is an open war and we should not preempt the investigation but certainly Israel is behind this,” said Nawar al-Saheli, a Hezbollah member of Lebanon’s parliament, hinting at the prospect of retaliation: “The resistance will carry out its duties at the appropriate time.”

Israel never confirms or denies allegations of targeted killings of individuals abroad. When asked by an interviewer on Israel Radio about possible Israeli involvement, cabinet minister Zeev Elkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declined to comment.

Hezbollah is Lebanon’s most powerful political and military group, having grown stronger since forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. The sides fought a 34-day war in 2006, their last major conflict.

Israel deems Hezbollah its most potent enemy and worries that it is becoming entrenched on its Syrian front and acquiring more advanced weaponry.

“We don’t know if Israel is responsible for this,” Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, told Israel’s Army Radio. “Remember that those operating in Syria today have a lot of haters without Israel.”

“But from Israel’s view, the more people with experience, like Badreddine, who disappear from the wanted list, the better,” he said.

A U.S. Department of the Treasury statement detailing sanctions against Badreddine last year said he was assessed to be responsible for the group’s military operations in Syria since 2011, and he had accompanied Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during strategic coordination meetings with Assad in Damascus.

U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition effort against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, said it was too soon to assess what impact Badreddine’s death might have on Hezbollah but noted that it had suffered heavy casualties in Syria.

“But with regards to this specific strike, who took it and what the downstream impact is going to be of losing this leader – it’s simply too soon to tell,” he said.

HIJACKERS SOUGHT HIS RELEASE

Announcing his death, Hezbollah quoted Badreddine as saying he would return from Syria victorious or as a martyr. A photo released by the group showed him before his death, smiling and wearing a camouflage baseball cap.

Badreddine’s death sparked wide condemnation from Lebanese political allies. “His martyrdom is a big loss for the Lebanese in their fight against Israeli-Zionist aggression and Takfiri terrorism,” Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, in reference to Israel and Sunni miliant groups.

“His loss will leave a vacuum but the lesson is to continue on the path that he chose — resistance and Jihad until victory is achieved.”

Badreddine was sentenced to death in Kuwait for his role in bomb attacks there in 1983. He escaped from prison in Kuwait after Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded the country in 1990.

His release from jail in Kuwait was one of the demands made by the hijackers of a TWA flight in 1985, and of the hijackers of a Kuwait Airways flight in 1988.

For years, Badreddine masterminded military operations against Israel from Lebanon and overseas and managed to escape capture by Arab and Western governments.

Badreddine was also one of five Hezbollah members indicted by the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the 2005 killing of statesman Rafik al-Hariri, one of Lebanon’s most prominent Sunni Muslim figures. Hezbollah denied any involvement and said the charges were politically motivated.

Around 1,200 Hezbollah fighters are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian conflict. These include prominent figures Samir Qantar and Jihad Moughniyah, the son of Imad Moughniyah, who were killed in separate Israeli attacks last year.

Hezbollah responded in both cases, though the incidents were contained, with the sides seeking to avoid any repeat of the 2006 war which exacted a heavy price in Israel and Lebanon.