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September 23, 2024 – 00:19
(Keystone-ATS) Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah exchanged fresh threats on Sunday amid escalating cross-border violence, with the international community calling for restraint amid fears of a conflagration.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has expressed concern that Lebanon could become “another Gaza”, referring to the war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas, sparked by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7.
Egypt has said it fears an “all-out war” in the Middle East, warning that the escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could undermine efforts for a ceasefire in the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army continues its retaliatory offensive.
The Israeli government now includes among its war aims the return to northern Israel of tens of thousands of residents who fled because of Hezbollah fire from neighboring southern Lebanon.
A powerful political and military player in Lebanon, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah opened a front against Israel on October 8, 2023 in “support” of Hamas, its ally, vowing to continue attacking Israel “until the end of the aggression in Gaza.”
“We are determined to ensure that the people of the north can return home safely. No country can tolerate shooting at its people, at its cities, and we will not tolerate it either,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
“We have inflicted on Hezbollah a series of blows that it could never have imagined,” he added, speaking for the first time on this subject since the attacks, attributed to Israel, on the Lebanese movement’s transmission devices and an Israeli strike that decapitated its elite unit on Friday.
“We are ready”
“We will reach out to anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel,” warned Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. This is “a message to Hezbollah, the Middle East and beyond.”
“Threats will not stop us: we are ready for all military scenarios” against Israel, said Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, the commander of the elite unit killed on Friday. He announced “a new phase” in the battle against Israel.
“We are ready to sacrifice our children and our grandchildren for Hassan Nasrallah,” the leader of Hezbollah, Amira Makki, in her sixties, told AFP, who attended the funeral holding up portraits of her relatives killed by Israeli gunfire.
On Sunday, the army continued its strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, where authorities reported three deaths, including two Hezbollah fighters.
The pro-Iranian Lebanese movement announced that it had fired on military sites in northern Israel. However, projectiles hit populated areas including the Haifa area, about thirty kilometers from the Lebanese border.
” Trust “
About “150 rockets, missiles and drones” were fired toward northern Israel “without causing significant damage,” the army said.
“I am worried, I know it is possible that the missiles will reach here,” said Ilan Ravor, a Haifa resident. But he said he has “confidence in the army” to protect him.
According to the army, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to take refuge in shelters in the north, where schools are closed until Monday.
The exchanges of fire have intensified since the wave of spectacular explosions of Hezbollah transmission devices which left 39 dead and 2,931 wounded on Tuesday and Wednesday in the movement’s strongholds in Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities.
On Friday, an Israeli strike on a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs decapitated Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, killing 16 members including Ibrahim Aqil. The total death toll has reached 45, including civilians, according to Lebanese authorities.
“Everything we can”
Faced with this spiral of violence, the United States, Israel’s main ally, “urged” its nationals to leave Lebanon.
“We will do everything we can to prevent a broader war from breaking out,” President Joe Biden said.
The European Union and London have called for an immediate ceasefire. “The region is on the brink of imminent catastrophe,” said the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.
Since October 8, violence between Israel and Hezbollah has left hundreds dead in Lebanon, mainly fighters, and dozens dead in Israel and the occupied Golan.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out an attack in southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza. Of the 251 people kidnapped, 97 are still being held in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
In retaliation, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007 and is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the EU.
His army has launched a major offensive in Gaza that has so far killed at least 41,431 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s health ministry. It has also caused a humanitarian disaster there.
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