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October 9, 2024 – 9:14 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) The American president and the Israeli Prime Minister had a telephone conversation on Wednesday to discuss in particular the war between Israel and Hezbollah. This comes at a time when Israel is expanding its offensive against the pro-Iranian movement in southern Lebanon.
Rocket fire left two dead on Wednesday in northern Israel, bordering Lebanon, according to Israeli emergency services, while Hezbollah reported fighting and assured that it had twice repelled Israeli incursions at dawn. in southern Lebanon.
The interview between Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden, in which American Vice-President Kamala Harris, candidate for the White House, participated, is the first in almost two months between the two leaders, whose relations are difficult.
According to the American site Axios, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu were to discuss in particular Israel’s plan to strike Iran, in response to an Iranian missile attack launched on October 1 against its territory.
This attack was presented by Iran as a response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, killed on September 27 in an Israeli strike near Beirut, and of the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack blamed on Israel.
Casualties in Israel
On Wednesday, a man and a woman in their forties 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.
These are the first people killed in Israel by rockets from Lebanon since Israel shifted the war front to that country in mid-September. “Around 20 projectiles” were fired at Kiryat Shmona, according to the army.
After having weakened Hamas during its offensive on Gaza, Israel seeks to distance Hezbollah from the border areas of southern Lebanon and to stop its rocket attacks to allow the return to northern Israel of some 60,000 displaced inhabitants .
After a campaign of massive airstrikes launched on September 23 against Hezbollah, both a powerful political party and armed group, Israel has been leading a ground offensive in southern Lebanon since September 30, expanded this week to the coastal areas of the southwest. of the country.
Aerial bombardments continue in particular on the southern suburbs of Beirut, one of Hezbollah’s strongholds, where an AFP correspondent reported a new strike on Wednesday.
According to the Lebanese authorities, a bombing left four dead in the Chouf region, south of Beirut, which has so far been relatively spared.
On Wednesday, the army claimed to have destroyed “100 Hezbollah terrorist targets” in 24 hours.
“May Hezbollah have mercy”
Hezbollah, for its part, claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on towns and military targets in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday threatened Lebanon with the same “destruction and suffering” as the Gaza Strip.
“I don’t talk to Netanyahu because he is inhumane. We are in the 21st century. How can we commit genocide this way? », Reacted Ahmed, a 77-year-old man, in Beirut.
However, he appealed to the Shiite Islamist party: “May Hezbollah have pity on the people who sleep in the streets, so that we do not have the same fate as the population of Gaza who are undergoing genocide,” he said. implored.
“An endless hell”
In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has surrounded the Jabalia area in the north in recent days and called on its residents to evacuate, saying Hamas was seeking to rebuild its capabilities there.
Intense bombardments targeted Jabalia and its surroundings on Wednesday, according to Civil Defense.
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.
“Recent evacuation orders from Israeli authorities force people to flee again and again, especially from the Jabalia camp,” he added, stressing that “many people refuse to leave because they only know that too much that there is no safe place in Gaza.”
The war has reduced entire sectors of the small, besieged territory to rubble and displaced almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants.
