Rescue for whale stranded off German coast in 'decisive phase'

A Kanye West concert scheduled to take place in a stadium in Poland in June was cancelled by the venue on Friday, following condemnation of antisemitic remarks by the US rapper. 

"The concert by Ye (Kanye West), scheduled for 19 June 2026 at the Superauto.pl Silesian Stadium, will not take place due to formal and legal reasons," venue director Adam Strzyzewski announced in a press release on the stadium's website. 

The Polish culture ministry previously said in a statement, received by AFP, that it was seeking to bar West from performing in the country. 

"The widely discussed actions of Kanye West, linked to his promotion of Nazism, are in manifest contradiction with Poland's values," Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska said. 

She went on to express her "clearly negative position" about the June 19 concert going ahead and called on its organisers "not to make public space available to promoters of a criminal ideology". 

Quoted by the Polish Press Agency PAP, Cienkowska said that she "cannot imagine" such a concert being held in Poland, "a country where people were murdered in German Nazi extermination camps".

She condemned West -- now legally known as Ye -- as an artist who "openly declares he loves Hitler, who promotes Nazi ideology and makes money by selling T-shirts emblazoned with the swastika".

She added that Warsaw had the means to bar the entry of undesirable individuals and, if necessary, it "will resort to them".

West announced on Tuesday that a concert he had planned to give in the French city of Marseille had been postponed after authorities voiced opposition.

Last week, Britain said it has blocked West from entering the country, leading to the cancellation of a London music festival where he had been scheduled to perform over three nights in July.

The 48-year-old musician has lost fans and several sponsorships in recent years following inflammatory comments and actions. 

He has previously said "I love Nazis", sold t-shirts featuring a swastika on his website, and last year released a track titled "Heil Hitler," which was banned by main streaming platforms. 

In January this year, he took out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal to declare "I am not a Nazi or an antisemite" and "I love Jewish people". He attributed his controversial behaviour to a "manic episode" brought on by bipolar disorder. 

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Atletico Madrid forward Antoine Griezmann said he is soaking up all the small moments he can during his last weeks at the club, ahead of the Copa del Rey final on Saturday.

The 35-year-old French star, Atletico's all-time top goalscorer, is leaving at the end of the season to join MLS side Orlando City.

Griezmann had an option to leave in March but wants to end his time at Atletico with silverware -- either the Copa del Rey or the Champions League, or ideally both.

On Tuesday Atletico reached the Champions League semi-finals, eliminating his former club Barcelona, and in Seville they face another former side of his in Real Sociedad.

"I realise (these are my last moments), when I'm at Camp Nou playing, enjoying every tackle from a team-mate, a pass, a bit of skill, some of the chants from the fans, a message from Cholo (coach Diego Simeone) on the touchline," Griezmann told reporters at La Cartuja stadium on Friday.

"I'm soaking it all in, enjoying it a lot."

Griezmann was at Barca during Atletico's La Liga triumph in 2021, meaning his last trophies with the Rojiblancos came in 2018 -- the Europa League and UEFA Super Cup.

The veteran attacker, who won the World Cup with France in 2018 as well, said he was overjoyed to be playing in another final, in his 10th season at Atletico over two spells.

Griezmann said he was not wondering whether it would be his last final or not, with Atletico taking on Arsenal in the Champions League semis, aiming to reach the European showpiece in Budapest.

"(I'm feeling) a lot of excitement, a lot of desire, happiness... I'm really happy to be able to play a final," explained Griezmann.

"I'm not thinking about whether it will be the last one or not, just that it's a very important match, a final that very few players get to play.

"So it's a huge joy, a source of pride, and I just can't wait for tomorrow to arrive and to be able to perform at the level we all expect."

Griezmann's first club in Spain was Real Sociedad, who stand between him another trophy.

"I'm not thinking about that too much because otherwise I get very emotional, and I don't want that... but I do owe them a huge amount," said Griezmann, who played in La Real's youth academy.

"They opened doors for me that weren't opened for me in France, I owe them so much and it will definitely be a special match."

- 'Back on earth' -

Simeone said his team had their feet back on the ground after the high of knocking out five-time Champions League winners Barcelona.

"We know how beautiful it is for any athlete to play in a final. Both the Real Sociedad boys and our players have a huge dream of winning. They'll give everything to achieve it," Simeone told reporters.

"On Tuesday we played an important match, which put us in a very beautiful position, the Champions League semifinal.

"That can lift you up, but now we're back down to earth -- the earth is what counts. And we're on the ground now. And we know the difficulties we're going to face."

Atletico named midfielder Pablo Barrios in their squad for the game after a thigh injury which has kept him out since early March.

"Pablo will be with us tomorrow and we hope he can help us if the team needs him," added Simeone.

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A Frenchwoman who moved to the United States to marry a Vietnam war veteran she met six decades ago returned to France on Friday after she was detained by US immigration authorities, the French foreign minister said.

The 85-year-old woman, who was not being named at the family's request, "returned to France this morning, and we are pleased about that", Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters on a visit to the southern city of Montpellier.

The woman's son spoke of his "total relief" to the regional daily Ouest-France. 

Sebastien Arrouet, the mayor of the village of Orvault in western France where the woman lived, expressed "joy" at her liberation.

"Together with her son, we had opted for complete discretion to allow diplomatic channels to find a swift resolution for her release," he wrote on Facebook, adding that he was "eagerly looking forward to welcoming her back to Orvault".

The woman had travelled to Anniston, Alabama in 2025 to marry the former Air Force colonel, and was seeking a Green Card, which allows people to live and work permanently in the United States.

The couple first met some 60 years earlier when she was working as a bilingual secretary and he was a soldier stationed at a NATO base, reportedly in Saint-Nazaire, western France, but both ended up marrying other people.

Decades later, after they were both widowed, they reconnected.

According to the New York Times, the woman gave up her life in the village near the French city of Nantes and moved to Alabama, where the couple married in April 2025.

But the American died suddenly in January at the age of 85, throwing her immigration status into uncertainty and leading to her detention by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in Louisiana.

US media reports said his death also ignited an inheritance dispute between the woman and his son.

The US Department of Homeland Security told AFP on Tuesday that the woman had been detained on April 1. 

- 'Handcuffed and shackled' - 

She had entered the United States in June 2025 on a tourist visa that allowed her to stay for 90 days. However, she was still in the United States "seven months later", according to US authorities.

Citing accounts from US neighbours, her son told AFP that his mother was arrested, "handcuffed and shackled".

The ICE agency is regarded as the strong arm of US President Donald Trump's fierce anti-immigration campaign. It has faced nationwide criticism in America over its aggressive tactics against documented and undocumented immigrants, and for the shooting deaths of two US citizens this year.

As soon as news of the Frenchwoman's arrest broke, a diplomatic source had told AFP that the French Consulate General in Atlanta was "closely monitoring the situation" and providing her with "consular protection".

When asked about ICE's approach, Barrot criticised methods being used by US authorities without referring specifically to the Frenchwoman's case.

"There have been instances of violence that have raised our concern. But the main thing is that she is back in France, and that fully satisfies us," he said.

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France and Britain said Friday they will lead a multinational mission ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, while emphasising the force would be entirely defensive -- and only deployed once a peace in the region was agreed.

"I can confirm that, along with France, the UK will lead a multinational mission to protect freedom of navigation as soon as conditions allow," British Prime Minister Starmer said after co-chairing a meeting in Paris on the issue alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.

The event brought together over 30 other heads of state and government, most of them mainly attending by video link. Neither the United States nor Iran participated.

"This will be strictly peaceful and defensive as a mission to reassure commercial shipping and support mine clearance," said Starmer, adding that "over a dozen countries have already offered to contribute assets".

As the Paris talks were being held, Iran announced that the key shipping route would be open to commercial vessels as long as a ceasefire in the Middle East lasts. 

US President Donald Trump responded by saying his navy's blockade just outside the Strait of Hormuz of ships going to or from Iranian ports remains "in full force and effect".

Iran imposed its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz -- a critical shipping bottleneck through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes in peacetime -- immediately after the US and Israel launched their war against the Islamic republic on February 28.

Trump followed up with his US Navy blockade of vessels visiting Iranian ports after April 11-12 talks aimed at failed to yield any breakthrough.

The Paris talks' participants welcomed Tehran's announcement of the strait's reopening, but urged a "full, unconditional reopening by all the parties", Macron said.

He said the announcement made the multinational mission "all the more important because it is what will allow these announcements to be consolidated in the short term and, above all, to have a chance of lasting."

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who also attended the meeting in person, emphasised that such a force would need to await a "cessation of hostilities" but added: "Italy is ready to participate".

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Paris it would be "desirable" to have US participation in any mission.

Merz said Germany would "take part in the further military planning discussions that are taking place, and we would also welcome, if possible, the participation of the United States of America".

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(The Center Square) – Republican efforts to impeach lead Democrats in Minnesota ran aground this week following a partisan deadlock in committee.

The House Rules and Legislative Administration Committee split along party lines, preventing the resolutions from advancing and effectively halting a push to investigate Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison over alleged failures to address the state’s alleged widespread fraud.

House Republican Floor Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, who co-chairs the committee, said the push for impeachment was driven by reports that there have been billions of taxpayers dollars lost to fraud in state-administered programs during Walz’s time in office.

“What most Minnesotans are demanding, especially today on tax day, is accountability for the multi-billion-dollar fraud scandal that’s embarrassing our state,” Niska said. “In any well-functioning business, a multi-billion-dollar fraud scandal would result in the CEO either resigning in disgrace or being fired.”

Niska argued impeachment is the legislature’s primary tool to hold top officials accountable.

Rep. Ben Davis, R-Merrifield, who sponsored the resolution targeting Ellison, said the scale of alleged fraud warrants an extraordinary response.

“We have an historic amount of fraud taking place in our state; historic actions are warranted,” Davis said.

The resolutions called for the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee to conduct impeachment investigations into “state officers” and report back by May 1 with potential articles of impeachment or other recommendations.

Walz’s impeachment resolution centered around allegations that Walz failed to act on warnings about fraud in state programs, allowed misuse of taxpayer funds to continue, and placed political considerations above enforcement of the law.

A separate resolution against Ellison accused the attorney general of “corrupt conduct in office and for crimes and misdemeanors,” including failing to impartially enforce the law, undermining protections for religious liberty, and suggesting political or financial support could influence official actions.

Democrats sharply criticized the impeachment efforts, calling them unserious and politically motivated.

Rep. Sydney Jordan, DFL-Minneapolis, described the resolutions as a “simple, stupid distraction,” “garbage,” and a “political circus,” arguing lawmakers should instead focus on preventing fraud going forward.

“Have there been crimes, charges and convictions for our executives? No,” Jordan said. “Do we impeach Minnesota’s elected officials just because we don’t like them? No.”

Jordan added that while fraud has occurred, the legislature should prioritize policy solutions rather than impeachment.

“We could be working on those instead of doing this and listening to people just air grievances against Keith Ellison and Tim Walz,” she said.

Other Democrats echoed that sentiment.

Rep. Michael Howard, DFL-Richfield, said it is “tough to take this seriously,” while Rep. Nathan Coulter, DFL-Bloomington, called the resolution “the most harebrained thing I think I have ever seen.”

Republicans pushed back on that characterization.

“Holding people accountable for $9 billion of fraud I don’t see as harebrained and I don’t think the people of Minnesota do either,” said Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover. “The people of this state want accountability.”

Despite Republican control of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, the resolutions had to first clear the Rules Committee—where Democrats had the votes to block them. With the tie vote on Wednesday, the impeachment push is effectively stalled.

In an exclusive interview with state Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove and chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee in the Minnesota legislature, she explained that the full scope of potential government knowledge of the fraud at the state level remains unclear.

“The real answer is, I don’t know,” she said when asked how deep potential wrongdoing might go.

Robbins said an ongoing lack of responsiveness from state agencies has only deepened those concerns.

“We have put out dozens of data requests that we have not gotten answers to,” she said. “I definitely think it’s beyond just mistakes . . . there is willful neglect and malfeasance.”

When seaman Rex Pereira saw missiles flying above his vessel in the Gulf, it sparked in him one desperate wish: to get back home to India.

Stranded by the Middle East war, like thousands of other seafarers, he feared for his life as he saw bombardments in the distance in Iran.

When he demanded to be repatriated from his supply vessel docked in Iraq, he did not expect the process would take him weeks and cost him hundreds of dollars.

Besides the perils of the US-Israeli war with Iran, he and many of the 20,000 other seafarers stuck in the region struggled with the shipping industry's poorly regulated working conditions.

"Whatever I have earned (on the ship), I think I paid the entire amount in travelling, so I didn't get anything in return. All of my savings are gone," the 28-year-old told AFP by phone from his home in Mumbai.

"The experience was really bad, so I don't think I will be going back to the sea."

- Passport struggle -

When the bombs started flying as the war broke out, Pereira contacted unions in India on March 3 for help to get home.

The owner of his vessel had his passport and was refusing to give it back.

The unions contacted the Indian embassy in Iraq, which made visa requests and pressed Iraqi immigration officers to force the owner to return Pereira's documents.

In the meantime, his ship was running out of food and water.

He and his crewmates had to boil water to drink, and collected water dripping from air conditioning units to shower and wash their clothes.

– Long journey home –

When he finally got his necessary visas a month later, on April 2, a long and expensive journey home began.

"An immigration officer came to pick me up on April 5 and dropped me at the Kuwait border. After that, I was alone," he said.

He took a bus and three taxis, travelling for 17 hours to reach Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia, where he took a flight to Mumbai early on April 7 -- two full days after he had left his vessel in Iraq.

He spent $1,350 in total to get home: $200 for part of the plane ticket -- the rest was paid for by his company -- $450 for the taxis and $700 for visas.

He said he hoped to get reimbursed by the Indian recruitment agency that got him the job, but had not heard back from it since he got home.

– 'Logistical nightmare' –

"This type of situation is unfortunately very, very recurrent," says Mohamed Arrachedi, Network Coordinator for the Arab World and Iran at the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF).

The off-duty captain of one vessel which was stuck off Qatar told AFP that replacing seafarers in the Gulf amid the war was a "logistical nightmare" and could cost up to twice as much as in non-war times.

Because of this, many ship owners were reluctant to let their crew sign off, said Manoj Yadav, the General Secretary of the Forward Seamen's Union of India.

Even when seafarers are authorised to leave, the process is "delayed because processing of visas taking longer than usual, and because very few flights are available", Yadav told AFP.

He said more than 200 Indian seafarers had asked his union for help with bringing them home.

Some of them had to travel "nearly 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) by road from Iran to Azerbaijan to catch a flight to India".

- Fear on board -

Shivendra Chaurasiya's journey home lasted three days. He reached his village in Uttar Pradesh, India on April 6.

After joining the crew of a bulk carrier in December, he was stuck while it was anchored at Bandar Abbas, Iran, from late February.

He described the fear he felt on board, seeing ships hit by strikes.

"My life was at risk. I used to think, which meal might be my last one? Maybe today's breakfast is my last."

Unlike Pereira's, his employer paid for his entire trip home.

Doing so is a legal requirement for companies whose ships are covered by the International Bargaining Forum (IBF)'s labour agreements -- around 15,000 vessels worldwide, according to the IBF.

– $300 salary –

Seafarers wishing to leave vessels with no such agreements in place either have to pay for their own way home or are left stranded.

One 21-year-old seafarer, who asked to be identified only as Manish, said he could not afford to get home.

"I have not received my salary of 300 dollars a month," he said.

He spoke on Monday to AFP from the cargo vessel he joined nine months ago, stuck in Iran since the start of the war.

His contract had ended but he said the vessel's owner was refusing to pay for his return home despite a clause in his contract -- seen by AFP –- that explicitly stated the owner had to.

"We have no provisions, no food, and too many problems", he told AFP. "Please, tell someone who can help with a ticket to go back to my homeland."

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(The Center Square) – The U.S. will receive Iran’s “nuclear dust,” President Donald Trump said Friday.

“The U.S.A. will get all the nuclear ‘dust,’ created by our great B2 bombers – no money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

It is unclear whether the agreement to hand over the nuclear materials is part of a finalized deal with the Islamic Republic.

The president confirmed the agreement is separate from the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, pausing Israeli forces targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s largest terror proxy.

“This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, and deal with the Hezbollah situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!” Trump added.

The announcement comes shortly after the president and Iranian officials said the Strait of Hormuz fully reopened, following Iranian officials' confirmation that the reopening was due to the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Iran closed strait shortly after the beginning Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, leading to a halt of commercial shipping traffic, including oil shipments.

After the announcement of the reopening Friday morning, the price of crude oil dropped over 10%, to just over $81 a barrel. Oil had reached its peak on April 6 at $112 per barrel.

The announcements come as the clock is ticking on the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, and as Trump maintains the two countries are close to a deal, underscoring that Iran must commit to not producing nuclear weapons.

The president indicated that talks in Pakistan may resume over the weekend after Vice President JD Vance failed to produce a deal last weekend. The White House has yet to announce a second round of talks; however, Trump has said he has been in direct contact with Iranian officials.

On Monday, Trump announced a total blockade of Iranian ports in an effort to squeeze the regime economically.

In a second Truth Social post Friday morning, the president confirmed the naval blockade on Iran remains in effect "until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete."

Trump added, "the process should go very quickly in that most of the points are already negotiated" in relation to reaching a final deal with the Islamic Republic.

In addition to no nuclear weapons, Trump has insisted the deal must also include Iran ceasing support for terror proxies, such as Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Mild-mannered and measured no longer: US President Donald Trump's threat to destroy Iran's centuries-old civilisation was the red line that prompted Pope Leo to show his colours, analysts say.

Leo XIV, the first US pope, had been largely leaving criticism of the Trump administration -- from its warmongering to crackdown on immigrants -- to US bishops.

Elected in May, "from the very start he absolutely did not want to appear as the international anti-Trump personality", Vatican expert Marco Politi told AFP.

Pontiffs traditionally do not interfere in politics.

Leo was also wary of worsening a rift between conservative and reform-minded Catholics that dogged his predecessor Pope Francis.

But the spat may actually help reunite the divided factions, as the Church rallies to defend Chicago-born Leo from Trump's attacks.

Though Leo has pushed for peace from day one, the row has given the head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics "a greater platform", US Vatican expert Elise Ann Allen told AFP.

"This has been Leo all along, but the world is finally waking up to who he is," she said.

Politi said the turning point was Trump's apocalyptic threats of destruction in Iran, after US-Israeli strikes launched a conflagration in the Middle East that has shaken the global economy.

Trump's threats sparked speculation that nuclear weapons could be deployed.

"The risk of dropping an atomic bomb -- Prevost had to step up, and from that moment on he has been increasingly tough," Politi said, referring to the pope by his birth name.

Leo declared Trump's threat "unacceptable" and urged Americans to demand their congressmen "work for peace", prompting a scathing criticism from the US president, who slammed the pontiff as "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy".

- 'Found his voice' -

It was "a mediaeval attack, never in modern times have we seen a head of state attack the Rome papacy so directly," Politi said.

The clash has "given Leo a chance to show his colours in a way that he has not before", Allen said.

A defiant Leo said that he had "no fear" of the Trump administration.

Disoriented Catholics, shocked by Trump -- including his posting of an AI social media image of himself as Jesus -- have rallied around the pope, the analysts said.

After US Vice President JD Vance -- a Catholic -- urged the Vatican to "stick to matters of morality", Leo on Thursday said the world was "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants", and renewed criticism of those who use religion to justify war.

Before this, Leo was seen as "a very sensitive, highly cultured pope, but he wasn't considered as charismatic as Francis or John Paul II," Politi said.

Now he has "become a point of reference for global public opinion... for the majority of nations" which "don't want a policy of brutality like the one pursued by Trump," he said.

Allen said she thinks support for Leo, the voice of morality in a world struggling with a "crisis of conscience", will only grow.

"He's found his footing in the papacy and he has found his voice," she said.

"And I don't think he's going to back down."

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A key Atlantic Ocean current system that helps regulate the planet's climate could weaken more than expected by 2100, with potentially devastating consequences worldwide, a new study has found.

Known as Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), this conveyor belt of currents plays a crucial role in redistributing heat by transporting warmer waters from the tropics northward.

An AMOC collapse could lead to harsher winters in northern Europe, droughts in South Asia and the Sahel region in Africa, and higher sea levels in North America, among other consequences.

Previous climate model projections have estimated an average slowdown of around 32 percent by the end of the century due to climate change.

The latest study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, estimates that the system could slow by 51 percent by 2100 under a mid-range scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, with a margin of error of plus or minus eight percentage points.

"We obtained an estimate of a future AMOC slowdown that is more severe than we expected," climate scientist Valentin Portmann, the paper's lead author, told AFP.

"We are closer to a critical state that is worrying," Portmann said.

Predicting what will happen to AMOC in the future is a topic of debate in the scientific community.

"There is a kind of consensus on the fact that this circulation will slow down. But there is still quite a bit of debate about the intensity of this slowdown," said Florian Sevellec, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Brest, France.

- Refining predictions -

In its 2021 report, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said AMOC will "very likely decline" over this century.

But the panel of international experts also expressed "medium confidence" that a collapse of AMOC would not take place before 2100.

The latest study, conducted by researchers from the CNRS and the University of Bordeaux in southwest France, seeks to "refine this estimate of the future slowdown" and "reduce uncertainty", Sevellec said.

While nearly all climate models predict an AMOC slowdown by 2100, the projections range widely: from as little as three percent to as much as 72 percent, depending on varying emissions scenarios.

Portmann said the new study seeks to narrow that uncertainty using "observational constraints" -- a statistical approach that combines real-world observations with results from climate models.

- 'The debate is not over' -

Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said the paper showed that pessimistic models "are unfortunately the realistic ones, in that they agree better with observational data".

Rahmstorf, who who was not involved in the study, said that this means AMOC would be so weak by 2100 that it would "very likely" be "on the way to full shutdown".

Fabien Roquet, a physical oceanography professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said the study was interesting but he cautioned that another team using a similar method reached opposite conclusions last year.

"What is certain, however, is that the climate is warming rapidly," Roquet said. 

"Whether the AMOC weakens or not, large-scale changes are already underway... and should intensify in the coming decades."

"The debate is not over," said Sevellec, who was also not part of the research team but whose thesis on AMOC was used for the study. "One paper does not settle a scientific debate."

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In cars and on motorbikes, people trickled back into Beirut's southern suburbs Friday, passing bombed-out buildings to check on homes and loved ones after a ceasefire began between Israel and Hezbollah.

"We'd been on the street going from place to place because there was no space in the shelters," said Insaf Ezzedine, 42, who had fled the area's Hay al-Sellom neighbourhood.

AFP spoke to Ezzedine and others on the sidelines of a media tour organised by Hezbollah in several areas of the southern suburbs -- a stronghold of the group, where journalists' freedom of movement was restricted.

The damage in parts of the suburbs caused by Israeli attacks since March 2 is enormous.

"The strikes were very strong and the houses were damaged and shaken up -- all the buildings are old in Hay al-Sellom," Ezzedine said, as her young daughter clutched a doll on the back of their motorbike.

"We hope the war will stop and we'll all go back to our homes and live in peace. We want to live with our kids in safety," she said.

"We're heading to my brother's home because ours was badly damaged."

On one main road, a huge pile of concrete rubble was littered with items including solar panels and water tanks. Shopfronts opposite had blown-out metal doors and shattered glass.

Families surveyed the destruction as they passed, some with belongings packed into their cars, and an occasional Hezbollah supporter flying the group's yellow flag drove by.

- 'For the kids' sake' -

Elsewhere, as blue-uniformed cleaners swept a street strewn with debris, Samia Lawand, 75, was in a car with her daughter and grandchildren.

"We came to check on the house and to get a few things and found the place was damaged... now we're leaving again," she said, sitting in the front passenger seat.

"The glass is shattered and everything is everywhere -- you can't stay there," said her daughter Mariam, 42.

On one major thoroughfare, the side of a building was blown off, exposing rooms with office furniture and even a dentist's chair.

Elsewhere, opposite a bombed-out building with a blackened facade, mangled cars could be seen near a portrait of Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem.

Close to an overpass, Hassan Hanoud, 34, said he was heading home with his children, wife and mother after fleeing to central Beirut.

"We left for the kids' sake," he said, a young child in his lap.

"The last time we went back, the doors and windows were broken," said Hanoud.

Now "the kids want to go home", he added, a young girl sitting behind him holding a plush toy.

In the Tahouitet al-Ghadir area, an AFP correspondent saw people gradually returning as shopkeepers cleared away debris or reopened stores.

Residents hugged and cried, happy to see their loved ones again.

- 'Fear and hope' -

"I came back at midnight as soon as the ceasefire began," said Mustafa, 65, who owns a garage and spent most of the war "going from tent to tent" near the Beirut seafront.

"There's no better feeling than coming back to your area and your people," he added.

Elsewhere in the southern suburbs, retired soldier Ezzedine Shahrour, 76, from south Lebanon's Kfar Hammam, was wearing a black suit and carrying bread and other groceries.

"I've been telling my children to take us home, but they say they can't because the situation is still dangerous," he said.

"There's fear and hope" after the ceasefire, said Shahrour, who has a son in the army and another in the security forces.

Also walking by was Jaafar Ali, 73, who had fled to Beirut from the southern city of Tyre with his family, and who had come to check on relatives.

"We left in our pyjamas. We don't know how we got out. We don't know what's happened to the house," he said.

"We're happy (about the ceasefire), but we've paid a high price. Our homes were badly damaged. We've lost a lot... I feel like crying.

"Thank God we're still fine, but what about all the people who died under the rubble?" he asked.

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