BEIRUT — Baby loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas) made their way from their sandy nests in South Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea, their flippers seemingly too large for their tiny bodies. Videos circulating on social media show these vulnerable creatures being carefully guided by a group of dedicated people to ensure they reach the water safely. Between mid-June and mid-September, such scenes regularly occurred at Al-Mansouri Beach, south of the city of Tyre, even as war loomed audibly in the background. The people, part of a volunteer group that has been tending the beach and the turtle nests there for two decades, continued their work this nesting season undeterred by the violence around them. A series of cross-border attacks between Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian Shia party in Lebanon, and Israel have spiraled since the beginning of the war in Gaza in October 2023. In South Lebanon, more than 600 people had been killed, including at least 147 civilians, as of Sept. 20, and more than 111,000 had been displaced from their homes, according to the latest figures from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Numbers have risen sharply since the recent escalation in which Israel detonated pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah militants and struck hundreds of targets, killing more than 500 additional people across the country including many civilians as of Sept. 23, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. In northern Israel, conflict with Hezbollah has killed dozens and displaced tens of thousands, according…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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South Africa Today – Environment
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