Air France and Transavia flights to Beirut and Tel Aviv from Paris are suspended at least until October 8 inclusive “due to the security situation at destination”, the airlines’ parent company announced on Monday.
The resumption of connections with the Lebanese capital, suspended on September 18, and with the large Israeli city, which had been relaunched on the 21st after a three-day interruption, “will remain subject to an assessment of the situation on site”, specified the Air France-KLM group in a press release.
Postponements or refunds offered
“Concerned customers will be notified individually and postponement or refund solutions will be offered to them,” the company underlined, recalling that “the safety of its customers and crews is its absolute priority.”
The suspension of flights by Air France and its low-cost subsidiary began after the simultaneous explosion across Lebanon of pagers used by members of the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah on September 17, an operation that the pro-Iranian group attributed to Israel.
After a year of exchanges of fire at the border, on the sidelines of the war in the Gaza Strip, Israel has moved the heart of its military operations to the north since mid-September, in order to weaken Hezbollah and allow the return of tens of thousands of residents displaced by incessant rocket fire.
More than a thousand people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese authorities, since the start of this military escalation. On Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a massive Israeli air raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut, stronghold of the Shiite movement.
Like the Air France-KLM group, its German competitor Lufthansa has suspended its airlines’ routes due to the situation in the Middle East: Tel Aviv and Tehran until October 14 inclusive, and Beirut until the 26th.
