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SWISS cancels flights to Beirut after deadly airstrike

SWISS airplanes docked
Various SWISS aircraft pictured at the airline's hub in Zurich airport. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has cancelled flights to and from Beirut on Wednesday due to the security situation in the Lebanese capital.

The airline is working to find alternative solutions for passengers affected, according to a statement published on Tuesday evening. Its next flights to and from Beirut are scheduled for Saturday, January 6. Further flights are planned until January 13, after which SWISS will not operate the route during the winter months (until March 22).

SWISS is continuing to monitor the security situation in the Middle East and is in close contact with local and international authorities, the statement added.

+ More coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian war

On Tuesday, Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chairman of the Palestinian organisation Hamas, was killed in an airstrike in Beirut. Al-Arouri is considered a co-founder of the military arm of Hamas, which immediately blamed Israel for the airstrike.

Swiss flights to Beirut were also suspended after the terror attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, and only resumed on December 16.

On October 7, Hamas fighters entered Israel from the Gaza Strip and killed, raped and abducted around 1,200 Jewish civilians at dawn. Since then, the Israeli army has been fighting in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to free Israeli hostages and destroy Hamas. According to the latter, over 20,000 civilians, most of them Palestinian, have lost their lives.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

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SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR