Keystone-SDA
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September 22, 2024 – 04:56
(Keystone-ATS) Dozens of Israeli warplanes carried out intense bombardments Saturday night in southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah. The raid came a day after an Israeli strike that decapitated the elite unit of the Lebanese movement, killing a total of 37 people.
This escalation, which raises fears of a full-scale war, has prompted Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati to cancel his trip to the UN in New York, calling for “an end to the terrible Israeli massacres.”
Faced with “the unpredictable nature of the ongoing conflict,” the United States on Saturday “urged” its nationals in Lebanon to leave the country “as long as commercial options remain available.”
“Major attack”
Hezbollah, a powerful political and military player in Lebanon, opened a front with neighboring Israel in “support” of Hamas, its ally, the day after the start of the war in Gaza triggered by an attack of unprecedented scale by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7, 2023.
In recent weeks, Israel has increased its strikes and threats against Hezbollah, whose rocket attacks on northern Israel, even if the vast majority are intercepted, have forced tens of thousands of residents to flee.
Maintaining military pressure, the Israeli army announced Saturday evening that it had “launched a large-scale attack in southern Lebanon after identifying Hezbollah preparations to fire” on Israel. “Dozens of planes” are involved in the operation, it said.
Earlier, it claimed to have targeted in the same area “thousands of launch pads” for rockets “ready to be used” to fire against Israel.
The Lebanese movement said it had fired dozens of rockets at military positions in northern Israel. “Around 90,” according to Israel. The rockets’ fall caused fires and damage.
“Trapped” pagers
This week, Hezbollah, a movement funded and armed by Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy, has been the target of spectacular attacks. On Tuesday and Wednesday, transmission devices – pagers, walkie-talkies – used by Hezbollah members exploded in the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as in southern and eastern Lebanon. The toll: 39 dead and 2,931 injured, according to Lebanese authorities.
Hezbollah and Beirut have accused Israel, which has not commented. The use of “booby-trapped” devices that appear to be “harmless” objects could constitute a “war crime,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has said.
Wanted by Washington
On Friday, Israel claimed responsibility for a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed at least 37 people, including Hezbollah commanders and civilians including women and three children, according to Lebanese authorities. The strike leveled a building in a densely populated area.
According to a source close to Hezbollah, it targeted a meeting of the command of the Radwan unit, the movement’s elite force, in the basement of a building, killing 16 members. Among them were Ibrahim Aqil, the head of the unit, and Ahmed Mahmoud Wahbi, who was in charge of military operations until the beginning of this year.
Ibrahim Aqil was wanted by Washington for his involvement in the bloody anti-American attacks in Beirut in 1983. He is the second senior Hezbollah military commander eliminated by Israel since October 2023, after Fouad Chokr on July 30, also in a strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
