In the devastating explosion in the Lebanese capital Beirut, an employee of the German Embassy was also killed, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced Thursday.
Germany will contribute €107 million in aid to the enormous number of Syrian refugees currently in various parts of the Middle East, development minister Gerd Müller announced today.
UPDATE: The United Nations issued a clarion call in Berlin on Tuesday for more funding to help countries such as Lebanon and Jordan host millions of Syrian refugees, warning it posed the world's "most dramatic humanitarian crisis".
German authorities banned a group on Tuesday accused of raising millions of euros for Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah and helping the families of suicide bombers. Police staged raids across the country.
Two German citizens kidnapped in eastern Lebanon were freed on Saturday, hours after their abduction, but police arrested them on drug trafficking charges, the official National News Agency
reported.
German investigators are uncovering the drug-smuggling business of the Syrian-backed Lebanese militant organisation Hezbollah, moving cocaine from Beirut into Europe via Frankfurt airport.
A Lebanese man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for a failed plot to blow up German passenger trains which a Düsseldorf court said could have triggered "a bloodbath of monstrous proportions."
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has banned the Lebanese station <i>Al Manar TV</i> from broadcasting in Germany, daily <i>Die Welt</i> reported on Friday.
Germany has called for an immediate end to the “power vacuum" in Lebanon, saying it was fuelling the tensions that pushed the country to the brink of a civil war this week.
