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October 5, 2024 – 6:20 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) Israel is preparing a response to the missile attack launched on its territory by Iran, a military official announced on Saturday, at a time when the Israeli army is carrying out new strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, allies of Tehran.
Tuesday’s Iranian attack, the second since April, and the threat of an Israeli response, have stoked fears of a conflagration in the Middle East.
Israel is “preparing a response,” an Israeli military official told AFP on condition of anonymity, two days before the first anniversary of the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil, on October 7, 2023. which started the war in the Gaza Strip.
After weakening Hamas during a devastating retaliatory offensive still underway in the besieged Palestinian territory, Israel shifted most of its operations in mid-September to the Lebanese front, opened by Hezbollah in support of Hamas at the start of the war in Gaza.
Its forces began a ground operation on Monday against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a stronghold of the Lebanese movement and bordering northern Israel. Nine soldiers died there.
The army, which claimed to be carrying out “limited, localized and targeted” raids there, said it had killed Hezbollah fighters and located weapons warehouses and underground tunnels.
The Lebanese movement reported clashes with soldiers in this region on Saturday.
He also announced the firing of rockets at an air base near Haifa, in northern Israel, about 45 km from the border. The Israeli army reports regular shooting targeting its territory.
“Growing stronger and stronger”
New Israeli strikes also shook the southern suburbs of Beirut after nighttime raids, according to the Lebanese news agency ANI.
The Israeli army, which launched massive bombings on September 23 mainly against Hezbollah strongholds in east and south Lebanon as well as in the Lebanese suburbs, called on residents to evacuate certain areas.
In the morning, flames escaped from affected buildings, some of which collapsed in the southern suburbs, where residents hurriedly came to gather some belongings, noted an AFP photographer.
In a neighboring district, Abou Abbas, a 62-year-old restaurateur, says he is determined to stay at home despite the strikes “increasingly stronger every night and the noise of the raids”.
The army also indicated that it had bombed Hezbollah fighters “inside a mosque” in southern Lebanon during the night.
According to Hamas, one of its commanders and three members of his family were killed in an Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli in northern Lebanon, the first in that region in a year.
The day before, the Israeli army shelled the southern suburbs of the capital, targeting, according to the Israeli news site Ynet, Hachem Safieddine, potential successor at the head of the movement of Hassan Nasrallah, killed on September 27 in an Israeli raid on this sector.
« Crise terrible »
According to Tehran, the approximately 200 missiles fired Tuesday towards Israel constituted a “legitimate” response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and the death on July 31 of Ismaïl Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, killed in an explosion in Tehran blamed on Israel .
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned on Friday that his allies would continue the fight against Israel.
US President Joe Biden has advised Israel against attacking Iranian oil sites, with his predecessor and Republican candidate to succeed him, Donald Trump, suggesting strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In Lebanon, the escalation comes after twelve months of cross-border firefights that have displaced tens of thousands of residents on both sides of the border.
According to the authorities, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, including more than a thousand since September 23. Around 1.2 million people have been displaced.
At least four hospitals in Lebanon have suspended operations due to the strikes.
“Lebanon is going through a terrible crisis,” declared the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, visiting Beirut.
Deadly strikes in Gaza
In the Gaza Strip, hungry and ravaged by 12 months of war and where the vast majority of some 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced, 12 people, including children, were killed by Israeli strikes, according to reports. medical sources and Civil Defense.
The Israeli army on Saturday launched a call to evacuate residents of part of the center of the territory, indicating that it was preparing to act there “with force” against Hamas.
Since the start of the war, 41,825 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the latest report from the Hamas government’s Ministry of Health, whose data is considered reliable by the UN.
On these two fronts, “we are winning,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently claimed.
He is due to deliver a speech to the nation on Monday to commemorate the Hamas attack, the death toll of which rose to 1,205, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 97 are still hostages in Gaza, including 33 declared dead by the army.
