NNA – House Speaker Nabih Berri paid tribute today to the people of the southern Lebanese border villages, “the guardians of the borders of our land, our sovereignty, our independence, the headlines our pride, our dignity, and our strength,” considering that they have confirmed once again their greatness in both resistance and national affiliation.

Addressing the southerners, he said, “Your actions today confirmed that the standards of patriotism, identity, and belonging to Lebanon, the homeland, the message, freedom, and liberation, are embodied in you and the land on which you stand and defend with your utmost precious belongings...Blessed is the land that grows proud today with your presence on its hills and fields and above the rubble of the homes destroyed by the arrogance and terrorism of the Israeli enemy....Your actions today confirm that a homeland possessing determination like yours, a will like yours, a love for the land like yours, an immeasurable loyalty like yours...is a homeland that must triumph.”

Berri concluded: “The baptism of blood embodied today by the southern Lebanese, women, children and elderly with their bare chests, and by more martyrs and wounded who were killed with live bullets fired by the Israeli occupation soldiers at unarmed civilians in Mays al-Jabal, Houla, Kfar Kila, Blida, Aitaroun, Yaroun, Maroun al-Ras and Khiyam, confirms with conclusive evidence that Israel is persisting in violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and breaching the terms of the ceasefire agreement, and that the blood and wounds of the unarmed southern Lebanese are an explicit and urgent call to the international community and the countries sponsoring the ceasefire agreement to take immediate and urgent action to compel Israel to withdraw immediately from the Lebanese territories that it still occupies in southern Lebanon.”

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