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October 14, 2024 – 9:44 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel would continue to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah” in Lebanon, the day after the pro-Iranian movement’s deadliest attack on Israeli soil in nearly a month. military escalation.
A drone attack carried out by the Lebanese Islamist movement on Sunday on a military base in Binyamina, in northern Israel, killed four soldiers and left more than 60 injured according to rescuers.
“I want to be clear: we will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon, including in Beirut,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the base.
On Monday, an Israeli strike left 21 dead, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, in the Christian village of Aïto, in northern Lebanon.
This is the first time that this village has been targeted by recent Israeli bombings, most of which were directed against the regions where Shiite Hezbollah is most established, in the south and east of Lebanon as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut.
According to an AFP photographer, the targeted building, located at the entrance to the village, was razed.
After months of border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, the Israeli army intensified its air raids on Lebanon on September 23 then launched ground operations there on the 30th.
“Painful attack”
Hezbollah said Monday it had carried out strikes on Israel, including a “salvo of rockets” on the northern city of Safed, in response to Israeli bombings on Lebanon.
The Islamist movement also claimed to have targeted an Israeli naval base near Haifa then a barracks near Netanya, a coastal town north of Tel Aviv, and reported “violent fighting” in Aita al-Chaab, a border village. in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army said it had intercepted projectiles fired from Lebanon in central Israel, as well as two drones coming from Syria. Sirens rang out in central Israel, particularly in Tel Aviv, the country’s economic center.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday he had informed the United States that Israel would provide a “strong response” to Hezbollah after the Binyamina attack, described as “painful” by the chief of staff Israeli General Herzi Halevi.
“Last night was crazy. There was a huge boom,” Yousef, the manager of a restaurant in the village of Kfar Kara, near the base, told AFP. “And suddenly the ambulances started passing, first one, then two, then three and more and more,” he continued.
After weakening Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel moved the war front to Lebanon in mid-September, saying it wanted to allow the return to the north of the country of 60,000 inhabitants displaced by border violence.
At least 1,315 people have been killed across Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures. The UN has recorded nearly 700,000 displaced people since that date.
“No withdrawal from UNIFIL”
Deployed in southern Lebanon, the UN peace force (UNIFIL) denounced “shocking violations” by Israel against its positions, reporting in particular a “forceful” entry on Sunday of two Israeli tanks into one of its positions.
The Israeli army said one of its tanks crashed into a UNIFIL post while evacuating wounded soldiers.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose country has peacekeepers in Lebanon, assured Monday that there would be “no withdrawal” of UNIFIL troops, after Benjamin Netanyahu called for them to be “put to rest”. ‘shelter immediately’. The EU has condemned “unacceptable” attacks against the UN force.
The war in Lebanon and that of Gaza, triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil, is coupled with an escalation between Iran and Israel, which threatens to respond to an Iranian missile attack October 1st.
The United States announced on Sunday the deployment of a high-altitude anti-missile defense system in Israel, in support of its ally. Iran has said it is “totally ready” to face war.
In the besieged Gaza Strip, Civil Defense announced that an airstrike on the town of Deir el-Balah (center) left four dead and many injured in the compound of the al-Martyrs hospital. Aqsa, specifying that it was the seventh strike of its kind to hit “tents for displaced people”.
The Israeli army said it carried out a strike on a “command and control center (of Palestinian fighters), which was located in a compound previously used as a hospital”.
Despite the strikes, a new vaccination campaign against polio was launched on Monday in the center of the small territory, plunged into a humanitarian disaster.
The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 42,289 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
