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Five peacekeepers were injured and three civilians killed Thursday by an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon. Israel is intensifying its strikes against strongholds of Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas in the war-devastated Gaza Strip.
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07 November 2024 – 17:50
(Keystone-ATS) Violent Israeli strikes targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut, including one that caused “minor damage” to buildings at Beirut International Airport “but not in the terminal,” according to an airport official. Air traffic was not disrupted, authorities assured.
Since September 23, Israel has been carrying out a campaign of intense strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and since September 30 a ground offensive in the south of the country, with the objective of bringing home some 60,000 inhabitants of the north of Lebanon. Israel displaced by cross-border firefights.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israel since October 8, 2023, the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in support of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
A strike “by the Israeli enemy” which “targeted a car” at the entrance to Saida, the large city in southern Lebanon located about forty kilometers from Beirut, “caused the death of three passengers”, indicated Thursday the Lebanese army.
It occurred “as a convoy of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) passed through an army checkpoint”, which controls the northern entrance to Saida, she said, making status of three wounded Lebanese soldiers.
Wounded peacekeepers
UNIFIL said five peacekeepers were “slightly injured”. Questioned by AFP, Israel did not immediately comment.
According to the Lebanese army, the injured peacekeepers are part of the Malaysian contingent of the UN force deployed since 1978 in southern Lebanon to act as a buffer with Israel.
On Thursday, people were inspecting the damage at the site of the strike near Beirut airport, which caused an entire parking lot to “shake,” according to Abou Elie, a taxi driver on site at the time of the bombing.
An AFP photographer saw a hangar adjoining the airport, badly damaged, by the strike, which came after Hezbollah announced on Wednesday that it had targeted a military base near Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s main airport.
“Urgent need”
The Israeli army continues its airstrikes against the Shiite movement in southern and eastern Lebanon, where it said it had targeted dozens of targets and killed around sixty fighters in several strikes in Baalbeck (east) and the north. of the Litani River, located about thirty kilometers from the Israeli border.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported 40 deaths in Israeli strikes on Wednesday in eastern Lebanon, notably in the thousand-year-old city of Baalbeck, classified by UNESCO on its world heritage list.
More than 100 Lebanese MPs called on UNESCO on Thursday to protect the country’s historic sites.
In a letter to the organization’s general director, Audrey Azoulay, the deputies noted an “urgent need”: “the protection of the history of Lebanon, in Baalbeck, Tire (south), Saida and other invaluable sites currently under threat.”
More than 2,600 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, the majority of them civilians, according to the Lebanese Minister of Health, Firass Abiad.
Hezbollah, an Islamist movement allied with Iran, whose leadership has been largely weakened, ensures that its men repel Israeli incursions and announces daily shots on Israel.
The official Lebanese news agency Ani reported Thursday “violent fighting” after an “attempted incursion by the Israeli enemy” into Lebanese territory from northern Israel.
“Intolerable”
On its southern border, the Israeli army continues its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, besieged and in the grip of a humanitarian disaster.
The Israeli army once again called on residents of several areas of Gaza City (north) on Thursday to evacuate “dangerous combat zones” after rocket fire towards Israel.
Shortly before, it had announced an operation in the Beit Lahia sector, about nine kilometers from Gaza city.
The Palestinian Civil Defense reported at least 12 people killed Thursday in an Israeli strike on a school transformed into a shelter for displaced families near Gaza City.
“People are mentally exhausted. The situation in Gaza is (…) unbearable, intolerable,” Arwa Jalal, a Palestinian from Jabalia (north), lamented to AFPTV.
