Several areas of eastern Lebanon were targeted by Israeli air raids on Wednesday. At least 40 people have died in the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
After his victory in the presidential election, Donald Trump spoke with several international leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister and the Republican notably “discussed the threat from Iran.”
We take stock of recent developments in the conflict.
40 dead in Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon
At least 40 people were killed Wednesday by Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon, the Health Ministry announced in the evening. “The series of strikes by the Israeli enemy on the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek” have killed “40 people and injured 53”, the ministry said in a press release, specifying that this was a provisional assessment.
The death toll includes eleven people killed in the town of Baalbek, including nine in the Shikan district, a heavily populated Sunni neighborhood of the Shiite-majority city. An AFP correspondent in Baalbek saw rescuers searching for survivors under the rubble after an attack on this poor neighborhood.
The city’s famous Palmyra Hotel was also damaged by the nearby strikes and the Health Ministry said two people were killed there.
An Israeli strike also killed 16 people in the village of Nasriyah, according to the ministry. “Rescue and rubble clearance operations continue to find the missing people,” underlined the same source.
The south of the Lebanese capital Beirut was also targeted. The area suffered at least two strikes early Thursday, about an hour after the Israeli army called on residents of four neighborhoods considered Hezbollah strongholds to evacuate, according to AFPTV footage.
Images showed two plumes of smoke above southern Beirut and AFP journalists present in the capital heard loud detonations. Earlier, Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee asked residents in four southern Beirut neighborhoods to evacuate, including a site near Beirut International Airport.
Hezbollah fires drones at Israeli base
Hezbollah claimed to have fired drones against an Israeli base south of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, specifying that it was the first time it had targeted this military installation. In a statement, the Lebanese Islamist movement said it had sent a “attack drone squadron against the Bilu base, south of Tel Aviv”.
Earlier in the day, the pro-Iran group said it had conducted a “complex attack” against “the Stella Maris naval base, northwest of Haifa, with a salvo of missiles and a squadron of drones,” and firing missiles at a military base near Ben-Gurion airport, south of Tel Aviv. Traffic was not affected, nor were the runways damaged, according to the Israel Airports Authority.
Netanyahu and Trump discussed the ‘Iranian threat’
Israeli Prime Minister and US President-elect Donald Trump spoke by telephone on Wednesday about the “Iranian threat”, in the wake of the victory of the Republican candidate, hailed by Benjamin Netanyahu as a “powerful re-engagement in the great alliance” between their two countries.
The conversation between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu “was friendly and cordial”, the two leaders “agreed to cooperate for the security of Israel” et “discussed the threat from Iran”, which also supports Hamas, according to Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
“Together we will strengthen the US-Israeli alliance, bring back the hostages, and will remain firm to defeat the axis of Evil led by Iran,” responded the new Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, on the social network
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Around 230 people evacuated from Gaza for medical reasons
The Israeli body overseeing civil affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Cogat) and the WHO announced on Wednesday the evacuation of around 230 patients and their relatives from the Gaza Strip to the United Arab Emirates and Romania.
The patients left Gaza by bus through the Kerem Shalom crossing point in the southeast of the territory and were transported to Ramon airport near the Red Sea, said Cogat, an organization dependent on Israeli Ministry of Defense. This transfer takes place in cooperation with the Emirates, the European Union and the World Health Organization (WHO), the organization added in a press release.
According to Cogat, this is the largest number of sick people and their families, including children, to be authorized to use the Kerem Shalom crossing point. “in recent months”.
The WHO indicated that 84 patients would be evacuated to the Emirates and six to Romania, however estimating between 12,000 and 14,000 the number of patients requiring evacuation.
