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September 21, 2024 – 8:42 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) The Israeli army bombarded southern Lebanon heavily on Saturday, after decapitating the elite unit of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in a raid that killed 37 people, raising fears of a full-scale war.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has cancelled his participation in the UN General Assembly, calling for “an end to the terrible Israeli massacres” in Lebanon. The armed movement Hezbollah opened a front with Israel there after the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago.
A powerful political and military player in Lebanon, Hezbollah says it wants to “support” Hamas in the war against Israel.
This war in the devastated and besieged Palestinian territory is showing no sign of abating, with the Civil Defense announcing on Saturday the death of 21 people in an Israeli bombing of a school housing thousands of displaced people.
Shooting on the Israeli-Lebanese border
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in Gaza and has stepped up threats in recent weeks against Hezbollah, whose attacks on northern Israel, even if the vast majority are intercepted, have forced tens of thousands of residents to flee. Israel is especially demanding that Hezbollah withdraw from the border areas of southern Lebanon.
Maintaining military pressure, Israel on Saturday carried out new intense strikes against southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah, saying it had targeted “thousands of launch pads” of rockets “ready to be used” to fire against its territory.
The Lebanese movement claimed for its part to have fired dozens of rockets towards military positions in northern Israel. “Around 90” according to Israel.
Beepers and walkie-talkies booby-trapped
This week, Hezbollah, a movement financed 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, Hezbollah strongholds. The toll: 39 dead and 2,931 injured according to Lebanese authorities.
Hezbollah and Lebanese authorities have blamed 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, said on Friday.
On Friday, Israel claimed responsibility for a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed at least 37 people. They included Hezbollah commanders but also civilians including women and three children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
The strike, which left a huge crater and flattened a building, hit a densely populated area where rescuers, aided by bulldozers, continued to search through the rubble for survivors.
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, 16 of whose members were killed. Among them is Ibrahim Aqil, the head of the unit and the second senior Hezbollah military commander eliminated by Israel since October 2023.
Deadly raid on Gaza school
In the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, the civil defense reported 21 dead “including 13 children and six women” one of whom was pregnant, in an Israeli strike on the Al-Zaytoun C school in Gaza City (north).
The army said it had “carried out a targeted strike on terrorists operating” in the Al-Falah school, adjacent to the Al-Zaytoun school, referring to Hamas fighters.
Human losses related to the war continue to rise. At least 41,391 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
The attack carried out by Hamas on October 7 in southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and which includes hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza. Of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 97 are still being held prisoner.
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