LIVE – Lebanon: nearly 700 dead in Israeli bombings since the start of the week

Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week, including many civilians, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Israel has significantly intensified its strikes in recent days, saying it is targeting Hezbollah’s military capabilities and its senior leaders. Several of them were indeed killed.

In total, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since cross-border shootings began almost a year ago, according to authorities. Furthermore, the International Organization for Migration estimates the number of displaced people in Lebanon since October 2023 at more than 200,000.

Lebanese Hezbollah claims to have fired a salvo of rockets at Tiberias in northern Israel. Shortly before this announcement, the Israeli army indicated that drones and projectiles crossed its territory from Lebanon.

The Israeli army indicated Friday morning that four drones and projectiles had crossed its territory from Lebanon where the Islamist movement Hezbollah claimed to have fired a salvo of rockets at Tiberias, in the lower Galilee, in northern Israel.

Warning sirens sounded particularly in the lower Galilee, four drones entered Israeli territory in the Rosh Hanikra region, on the Lebanese border, and were intercepted, the army said in a statement, adding that several rockets had been fired and some intercepted.

Five Syrian soldiers were killed in an Israeli strike which targeted a position near the border with Lebanon, the official Sana agency reported. “The Israeli enemy carried out an aerial attack (…) on one of our military positions near Kfar Yabous on the Syrian-Lebanese border,” the agency said, citing a military source. She reported five killed and one wounded among Syrian soldiers.

On Thursday, for the fourth consecutive day, Israel carried out dozens of strikes on eastern and southern Lebanon. A French national has died. On site, witnesses speak of a “state of war”.

France is urging its more than 20,000 nationals to leave Lebanon as soon as possible due to the situation. Albert Abi-Saad, Franco-Lebanese on site, reports a “state of war” there. “It’s very complicated. The country is paralyzed. We are in a state of war. We don’t know what awaits us the next day, what will happen, what will be bombed, what target is going to be attacked,” he confides apologetically to TF1.

Israel has vowed to fight Lebanon’s Hezbollah “until victory”, rejecting a call from its allies for a ceasefire and continuing its massive airstrikes on eastern and southern Lebanon. At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to speak around 1:30 p.m. GMT before the UN General Assembly, an annual high mass bringing together the world’s heads of state and government.

For the fourth consecutive day, the Israeli army carried out dozens of strikes targeting Hezbollah, which opened a front against Israel in the wake of the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7, 2023 by Palestinian Hamas. The Lebanese movement vowed to continue its attacks “until the end of the aggression in Gaza.” According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, these latest Israeli strikes left 92 dead and 153 injured.

The head of Hezbollah’s drone unit, Mohammed Srour, was killed in an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Lebanese Shiite movement confirmed in a statement. “With great pride and honor, the Islamic Resistance announces the martyrdom of mujahid commander Mohammed Hussein Srour”, born in 1973 in the town of Aita al-Chaab, in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah said.

The Israeli army had announced a few hours earlier that it had killed the leader of Hezbollah’s drone unit. “Fighter planes targeted and eliminated (Mohammed Srour, Editor’s note), the commander of Hezbollah’s air unit, in Beirut,” the Israeli army assured in a press release. According to a source close to the Lebanese group, Mohammed Srour, a mathematician, was one of the senior commanders of the movement sent to Yemen to train the Houthi rebels, also supported by Iran.

The Israeli army announced that it had intercepted a missile fired overnight from Yemen. In several successive messages on Telegram, the Israeli Defense Forces first announced the triggering of sirens “in several areas of central Israel” before explaining that they had sounded due to “a missile fired from Yemen.” This missile “was successfully intercepted by the ‘Arrow’ air defense system,” the army said in a subsequent message, adding that “sirens and explosions were heard following (its) interception and falling shrapnel.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday urged Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah at the UN to seal an “immediate” ceasefire agreement as demanded by the great powers, in order to silence the weapons and let the room for diplomacy.

“I call on Israel and Hezbollah to stop the violence, to move away from the abyss. We must have an immediate ceasefire to leave room for a diplomatic settlement,” declared the head of the British Labor government for his first speech to the UN General Assembly in New York.

Hello everyone, find here all the latest news in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon.