The United States warned Israel on Wednesday against any offensive in Lebanon that “resembles” what happened in the Gaza Strip, at a time when the Israeli army promised to fight “without respite” Hezbollah.
The day before, Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that the country could suffer the same “destruction and suffering” as Gaza, and called on the Lebanese to “liberate their country” from Hezbollah, an Islamist movement allied with Iran.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been leading a devastating offensive in the Palestinian territory, in response to the attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil. The war has recently spread to Lebanon and is accompanied by an escalation between Israel and Iran, which supports Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas.
“I say very clearly that there should not be any military action in Lebanon that looks like Gaza and has an outcome that looks like Gaza,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
While Israel announced it was expanding its ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by telephone on Wednesday with American President Joe Biden, to discuss in particular Israel’s plan to strike Iran, in response to the missile attack launched by Tehran on October 1.
The interview, attended by American Vice President Kamala Harris, candidate for the White House, is the first in almost two months between the two leaders, whose relations are tense.
According to the report published by the White House, Joe Biden asked Benjamin Netanyahu to “minimize the impact on civilians” in Lebanon, particularly in Beirut, while “affirming Israel’s right to protect its citizens of Hezbollah.
This press release does not give details on the expected response to the Iranian missile attack but emphasizes that the American president and the Israeli Prime Minister agreed to “remain in close contact in the coming days, directly and through their teams of advisers at the national security.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant promised his country’s response would be “deadly, precise and surprising.”
“Hit intensely”
After weakening Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has moved the front of the war towards Lebanon since mid-September.
Israel seeks to distance Hezbollah from the border areas of southern Lebanon and to stop its rocket fire to allow the return to northern Israel of some 60,000 displaced residents.
After a campaign of massive airstrikes launched on September 23 against Hezbollah strongholds, Israel has been leading a ground offensive in southern Lebanon since September 30, expanded this week to coastal areas in the southwest of the country.
“We will continue to strike Hezbollah intensely, without giving them the slightest respite or the slightest opportunity to recover”, after the “significant damage” it suffered, declared Wednesday the Israeli chief of staff, the General Herzi Halevi.
On Wednesday, a man and a woman were killed by rocket fire in Kiryat Shmona, a town in northern Israel located two kilometers from the Lebanese border, according to Israeli emergency services.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on towns and military targets in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, and claimed to have twice repelled Israeli incursions at dawn.
Aerial bombardments continue in particular on the southern suburbs of Beirut, one of Hezbollah’s strongholds, targeted Wednesday evening by a new strike.
According to the Lebanese authorities, a bombing left four dead in the Chouf region, south of Beirut, which had so far been relatively spared, while the army claimed to have destroyed “100 Hezbollah terrorist targets” in 24 hours.
Since October 2023 and the start of cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including nearly 1,200 since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures.
The coordinator of the humanitarian branch of the UN, assigned to Lebanon, Imran Riza, indicated in New York that the country was facing “one of the deadliest periods” in its history. He estimated the number of internally displaced people in Lebanon at 600,000, more than half of whom are children.
The official Syrian agency also reported Israeli air raids early Thursday on an automobile factory and on a “military position” in the center of the country, which according to it did not cause any casualties. On Wednesday, the Israeli army announced that it had killed a member of Hezbollah in a previous strike in Syria.
“An endless hell”
In the Gaza Strip, intense bombings targeted the Jabalia sector in the north on Wednesday, according to Civil Defense, surrounded for several days by the army which called on its inhabitants to evacuate, claiming that Hamas was seeking to rebuild your abilities.
According to the head of Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, “at least 400,000 people are trapped in this sector”. “Northern Gaza: endless hell,” he said on X.
Unanimously, the UN Security Council, including the United States, on Wednesday warned Israel against passing a law that would ban this vital agency for the deployment of humanitarian aid to Gaza, but which Israel accuses of employing “terrorists”.
The war has reduced entire sectors of the small, besieged territory to rubble and displaced almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants.
At least 42,010 Palestinians were killed, the majority civilians, in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
On the Israeli side, the attack of October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
Related News :