Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on Friday in retaliation for heavy Israeli airstrikes on targets of the Lebanese Islamist movement. Its leader vowed a “terrible” response to the attack that targeted its communications equipment.
Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on Friday in retaliation for intense bombardment by the Israeli army on targets of the Lebanese Islamist movement, whose leader promised a “terrible” response to the spectacular attack which targeted its transmission devices.
Israel has not commented on the deadly attack but vowed Thursday to continue its military operations against Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and allied with the Palestinian Hamas that the Israeli army has been fighting for nearly a year in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army announced on Friday that about 60 rockets had been fired from Lebanon towards Israel. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for rocket fire on six Israeli military sites.
In southern Lebanon, residents of border towns described shelling the night before “of an intensity never seen before” in the past year.
“Terrible punishment”
Following the wave of explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that Israel would receive “a terrible punishment.”
The leader of the armed movement, all-powerful in Lebanon, accused Israel of having “crossed all the red lines”, denouncing a “massacre” which could constitute an “act of war” or even a “declaration of war”.
The attack, which took place in Hezbollah strongholds in the southern suburbs of Beirut, as well as in the south and east of Lebanon, left 37 dead and 2,931 injured in two days.
The UN and Washington have warned against an “escalation” after this unprecedented operation which has further revived fears of a conflagration in the Middle East.
The UN Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting on Friday following the attack, which UN-appointed human rights experts have called a “terrifying” violation of humanitarian law that could amount to “war crimes”. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that civilian “objects” should not be “turned into weapons”.
French President Emmanuel Macron sent a video message to the Lebanese on Thursday, assuring them that a “diplomatic path exists.”
A “terrifying” scene
But on Thursday evening, Israel stepped up its air raids in southern Lebanon, saying it had targeted Hezbollah rocket launchers and struck “around 100 launchers” and other infrastructure “representing around 1,000 cannons.”
According to the Lebanese news agency Ani, the Israeli air force has struck the region at least 52 times.
“I counted more than 50 raids,” said Elie Rmeih, a 45-year-old trader from the town of Marjayoun, whose house is located in an exposed area.
“I took my children and went to a friend’s house” to shelter them, he said, describing “a terrifying scene that had nothing to do with what we have seen” since the start of cross-border firefights between Hezbollah and the Israeli army in October 2023.
“The bombings last night were very strange, in their density, the colours and the smoke they gave off,” recalls Zeina Harb, a teacher in Zawatar El Sharqiya. She describes the “panic” that has gripped residents since the beepers exploded, but still hopes “that the war will not spread.”
The first wave of pager blasts came Tuesday shortly after Israel announced it was expanding its war aims to the northern front, the border with Lebanon, to allow tens of thousands of residents displaced by the violence to return home.
The main objectives stated so far have been the destruction of Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and the return of the hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
“You will not be able to bring the people of the north” back home, Hassan Nasrallah retorted. “Lebanon’s front with Israel will remain open until the end of the aggression in Gaza,” he said.
Military operations against Hezbollah “will continue,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant assured on Thursday.
“Programmed to explode”
According to a Lebanese security official, the transmission devices used by Hezbollah members “were pre-programmed to explode.”
A preliminary investigation by Lebanese authorities shows that the devices were booby-trapped before entering the country, according to a letter from the Lebanese mission to the UN seen by AFP on Thursday.
The head of Lebanese diplomacy, Abdallah Bou Habib, announced the filing of a complaint with the Security Council following “the Israeli cyberterrorist aggression which constitutes a war crime”.
The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, have vowed “a crushing response from the resistance front,” the name Iran gives to armed groups in the region hostile to Israel.
Meanwhile, bombings continue in the besieged Gaza Strip, where two Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people on Friday morning, according to the Civil Defense.
One of them targeted a house in the Nusseirat camp in the center of the territory, killing eight people, while six people, including children, were killed in the bombing of a building in Gaza City in the north, according to the source.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
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