Israel carried out new strikes on Tuesday in eastern and southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue “mercilessly” hitting the pro-Iranian Lebanese movement, its archenemy. .
Early in the morning, the Israeli army launched several strikes in the Bekaa region, knocking out a hospital in the city, according to the official Lebanese National News Agency ANI. Raids also targeted villages in the south of the country.
Hezbollah, claiming to act in support of Hamas, opened a front against Israel from southern Lebanon on October 8, 2023, the day after the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel which triggered the war in Gaza.
After nearly a year of border clashes and having weakened Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli army shifted the front of the war to Lebanon in September, carrying out intensive aerial bombardments on Hezbollah strongholds followed by September 30 of a land offensive in the south of the country.
Objective: to distance Hezbollah from the border regions in southern Lebanon and to stop this movement’s rocket fire in order to allow the return to northern Israel of some 60,000 displaced inhabitants.
Despite the hard blows inflicted on Hezbollah, the movement has continued to fire on Israel and is engaged in fighting with Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.
Read also | Four Israeli soldiers killed in Hezbollah attack on military base
On Sunday, it carried out a drone attack on a military base in Binyamina, in northern Israel, which killed four soldiers and injured more than 60 according to rescuers, the movement’s deadliest attack on Israeli soil in almost a month of climbing.
“I want to be clear: we will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon, including in Beirut,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the base.
On Monday, an Israeli strike left 21 dead, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, in the Christian village of Aïto, in northern Lebanon. The targeted building was razed.
This is the first time that this village has been the target of Israeli bombings, most of which have been directed against the regions where Shiite Hezbollah is established, in the south and east of Lebanon as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Since the intensification of Israeli strikes in Lebanon on September 23, at least 1,315 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP count based on official figures. The UN has recorded nearly 700,000 displaced people.
After the start of the ground offensive in southern Lebanon, where the UN peace force (UNIFIL) is deployed, Mr. Netanyahu claimed that Hezbollah was using “UNIFIL installations and positions as cover to to carry out its attacks” against Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on UN boss Antonio Guterres to take the peacekeepers “to safety immediately”.
“It was decided that UNIFIL would maintain all its positions despite Israeli calls,” the head of the Blue Helmets, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, declared on Monday. This decision was approved by Mr. Guterres.
UNIFIL denounced “shocking violations” by Israel against its positions, reporting a “forceful” entry on Sunday of two tanks into one of them. The Israeli army said one of its tanks crashed into a UNIFIL post while evacuating wounded soldiers.
Read also | UN Force accuses Israel of shooting at its HQ in Lebanon, diplomatic outcry
The war between Israel and Hezbollah and that between Hamas and Israel in Gaza are coupled with an escalation between Iran and Israel, which threatens to retaliate against an Iranian missile attack on October 1st.
According to the Washington Post, Benjamin Netanyahu told his American ally that he was considering striking the Iranian army, and not Iran’s oil or nuclear infrastructure.
The United States announced on Sunday the deployment of a high-altitude anti-missile defense system in Israel, in the face of a possible attack from Iran.
In the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip, Civil Defense announced that an airstrike on the town of Deir al-Balah (center) left four dead in the compound of the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, which shelters displaced people. The Israeli army said it carried out a strike on a Hamas “command center”.
The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 42,289 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
Challenge (with AFP)
