URGENT – The Israeli army announced overnight that it had started “localized ground raids” in villages in southern Lebanon, targeting the Islamist movement Hezbollah

06:35: A Palestinian camp official told AFP that an Israeli strike there targeted the home of a prominent Palestinian activist in Sidon, southern Lebanon. “The Israeli raid targeted the house of Mounir Maqdah’s son,” in the Ain al-Helweh camp, said the official, who requested anonymity. It was not immediately clear whether Mounir Maqdah, whom Israel accuses of leading the Lebanese branch of Fatah’s armed wing, was in the house.

04:52: The Israeli army announced overnight that it had begun “localized ground raids” in villages in southern Lebanon, claiming to target the Islamist movement Hezbollah. “In accordance with the decision of the political level, the Civil Defense forces began a few hours ago limited, localized and targeted ground raids, based on precise intelligence, against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructures in the southern Lebanon,” the Israeli army said on Telegram around 11 p.m. GMT (2 a.m. local time).

“These targets are located in villages near the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel,” she said. The armed forces “operate according to a methodical plan established by the General Staff and the Northern Command, for which Civil Defense soldiers have trained and prepared in recent months,” explained the Israeli army.

The Israeli Air Force and Civil Defense artillery support ground forces with precise strikes, according to the same source. The army emphasizes continuing its operations “to achieve the war objectives” and doing “whatever is necessary to defend the citizens of Israel and return the citizens of northern Israel to their homes.”

03:02: Syrian state television reported that a journalist was killed early Tuesday morning in an Israeli strike in Damascus. Syrian television “mourns the presenter Safaa Ahmad, who died as a martyr in the Israeli aggression of the capital Damascus,” it announced in a press release. Earlier, the official SANA news agency reported that “air defense systems intercepted hostile targets for the third time this night in the Damascus region”, using an expression generally used to refer to Israeli strikes.