Israel announces the death of its first soldier in Lebanon

Israeli troops began fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Wednesday. The army, which also carried out new airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement, announced that Captain Eitan Itzhak Oster, 22, had fallen in combat in Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it had activated a bomb against an Israeli unit near the border, after reporting clashes there with “infiltrated” Israeli forces, the day after Israel announced its first ground raids against the Islamist movement.

According to an Israeli official, the ground operation carried out since Tuesday consists of “localized raids of a very limited scale”, intended, after more than a week of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah, to “remove threats” in the north of Israel.

At the same time, Israel and Tehran exchanged threats in the wake of the massive attack launched Tuesday by Iran to avenge the death of Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli raid Friday in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and Palestinian Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh. The latter was killed on July 31 in an attack in Tehran, blamed on Israel by Iran and Hamas.

Iran’s chief of staff, General Mohammad Bagheri, warned that Iran would strike “with greater intensity”, targeting “all infrastructure” in the country in the event of Israeli retaliation.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has called for a decisive strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Iranian attack sparked a wave of calls for restraint, notably from Moscow, which warned on Wednesday of an “alarming” spiral, and from Beijing.^ Germany called on its nationals to leave Iran and urged this country to “refrain from any further attacks, including through its allies”.

The UN Security Council is due to meet urgently on Wednesday, and Rome has called a G7 meeting, according to an Italian government source.

This escalation comes after a year of war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and cross-border exchanges of fire with Hezbollah, Hamas’s ally.

Before the missile salvos, an attack, carried out Tuesday in Tel Aviv by Palestinians from the West Bank, one shot dead and the other injured, according to the police, led to the death of seven civilians, including a Greek, according to Athens.

In Lebanon, more than a thousand people have been killed, according to the Ministry of Health, since the explosions of Hezbollah transmission devices on September 17 and 18, attributed to Israel, and the start of massive bombings which targeted Hezbollah strongholds. Islamist movement from September 23.

According to the disaster management unit, 1,873 people have been killed in Lebanon since cross-border firefights began a year ago.

On Wednesday, the Israeli army also announced that it had attacked two schools in the north of the Gaza Strip and a third in the center, used, according to it, by Hamas as command centers.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced Tuesday that he had declared United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gueterres “persona non grata in Israel,” accusing him of not having condemned Iran by name for its massive attack on Israel. Tuesday evening.

“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil. We are dealing with an anti-Israeli secretary general who supports terrorists, rapists and murderers,” Katz said in a statement.

After the attack by Iran which fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening, Mr. Guterres condemned “the widening of the conflict in the Middle East”, deploring “escalation after escalation”. “This has to stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he added, without further details.