Hezbollah threatens Israel with new attacks, after deadly one near Haifa

Lebanese Hezbollah on Monday threatened Israel with further attacks if its offensive in Lebanon continues, after a drone strike targeting a military position south of Haifa killed four Israeli soldiers and injured more than 60 people. It was the deadliest strike in Israel since the Lebanese armed Shiite movement and Israel entered into open war on September 23. Le Figaro takes stock of the situation.

Four Israeli soldiers killed and seven injured

In a statement, Hezbollah, supported by Iran and ally of Palestinian Hamas, “promise to the enemy” that the attack “south of Haifa is just a taste of what awaits him if he decides to continue his attacks against our people”. The Israeli army reported four soldiers killed and seven soldiers injured at a Golani brigade training camp in Binyamina, south of Haifa, a large city in northern Israel. According to United Hatzalah, a volunteer rescue organization, the attack injured more than 60 people to varying degrees.

Earlier, Hezbollah announced that its fighters had fired “a squadron of explosive drones” on this training camp, dedicating this attack to its leader Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated on September 27 in an Israeli strike near Beirut.

In another statement Monday, Hezbollah welcomed a “complex operation”. He explains having simultaneously launched dozens of missiles on various targets in the regions of Nahariya and Acre with the aim of “distract Israeli air defense systems”. Drones “managed to bypass the air defense radars and reach their target in (the) training camp”according to Hezbollah.

The pro-Iranian Lebanese formation also claimed to have targeted Israeli soldiers who had advanced into the border village of Maroun al-Ras, in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli army claims to be carrying out ground incursions. In its statement, Hezbollah said its fighters had “fired artillery shells at a gathering of enemy soldiers” in this village. Hezbollah had previously said it had opened fire on Israeli soldiers who were trying to infiltrate other areas of southern Lebanon.

A barracks located near Netanya, a coastal city north of Tel Aviv, would also have been targeted previously, as well as a naval base near Haifa. The pro-Iranian outfit said its fighters were “prepared to defend (their) country”.

Israel says it intercepted several projectiles

For its part, the Israeli army said it had intercepted several projectiles fired from Lebanon at central Israel, AFP journalists having heard explosions in the area of ​​a military base targeted the day before by the Hezbollah. “Sirens recently sounded in the Sharon, Menashe and Wadi Ara areas, and a number of projectiles were identified crossing into Israeli territory from Lebanon. The Air Force managed to intercept all the projectiles.details an army press release.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah says it bombed Israeli forces trying to “infiltrate”

Hezbollah said its fighters fired shells early Monday at Israeli troops attempting to «infiltration» in southern Lebanon, also targeting Israeli soldiers in another sector of the border between the two countries. “When an enemy infantry force attempted to infiltrate Lebanese territory” near the border village of Markaba, Hezbollah fighters targeted this force “with artillery shells”a statement from the Lebanese movement said, adding that fighters had targeted Israeli soldiers elsewhere with rockets, including in the Labbouneh region in the west.

“Face to face fights”

Sunday afternoon, the Shiite movement claimed to fight “automatic weapon” and with “rockets” Israeli soldiers in at least four villages bordering Israel, and having ambushed soldiers who were trying to infiltrate, the Israeli army for its part reporting “face to face fights”. The latter announced that it had captured a Hezbollah fighter in a tunnel in southern Lebanon, a first since it launched a ground offensive there on September 30.

Across the border, the Health Ministry announced Sunday that 51 people had been killed the day before in Israeli strikes in Lebanon, bringing the country’s death toll since September 23 to more than 1,300, according to an AFP count. The UN has recorded nearly 700,000 displaced people since that date.

According to the official Lebanese news agency ANI, Israeli aircraft intensified their strikes on villages in southern Lebanon on Sunday, after hitting a market in the town of Nabatiyeh on Saturday evening. “Everything was destroyed (…) as if an earthquake had ravaged the market”a resident, Tareq Sadaq, told AFP in the middle of the smoking rubble.

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Shots against UNIFIL

The UN peace force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, for its part denounced “shocking violations” Israeli forces against its positions, after criticizing Israeli fire on Friday “repeated” targeting them in southern Lebanon, causing a diplomatic outcry. She reported an entry “a force” Sunday morning of two Israeli tanks in one of its positions, before shots having “caused smoke” which triggered “skin irritations and gastrointestinal reactions in 15 peacekeepers”. The Israeli army said that one of its tanks “who was trying to evacuate wounded soldiers” a “hit a UNIFIL post”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously urged the UN to withdraw “right away» Termination of combat zones. Of the “attacks” against UN peacekeepers may constitute “war crimes”warned the spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Sunday.

Attacks again condemned by the EU this Monday. In Luxembourg, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, described them as “completely unacceptable”. “The 27 member states have agreed to ask the Israelis to stop its attacks against UNIFIL (…) It is completely unacceptable to attack UN troops”he declared shortly before the start of a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

Sunday evening, the 27 adopted, “after hours of discussion”a statement condemning these attacks, calling for them to stop “immediately”added Mr. Borrell. The 27 are deeply divided on the attitude to adopt towards Israel, with some member states insisting on its right to defend itself, others denouncing violations of international law by Israeli forces in Lebanon or Gaza.

Tensions with Iran

The war in Lebanon and that of Gaza, triggered by the unprecedented attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil, is coupled with an escalation between Iran and Israel, whose leaders are threatening to retaliate to a Iranian missile attack on October 1. The Pentagon announced on Sunday the deployment in Israel of an American high-altitude anti-missile defense system THAAD, in support against Tehran.

Iran is “totally ready to face a war situation”warned his head of diplomacy, Abbas Araghchi, on Sunday. Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian discussed by telephone with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Sunday how to ensure a “ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel” and of “put an end to the genocide (…) in Gaza and Lebanon”according to a press release from his services. Emmanuel Macron stressed to him “Iran’s responsibility to support a general de-escalation”according to the French presidency.

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Strike on Gaza school transformed into shelter

In the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip, local Civil Defense said Sunday evening that an Israeli bombardment on a school transformed into a shelter for displaced people had killed at least 15 people, “including children” et “entire families” in the Nuseirat camp (center). The attack also “50 injured”according to this organization. The Israeli army has declared that it “reviewed the information” about this. She regularly accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where thousands of Gazans have sought refuge, an accusation denied by the Palestinian Islamist movement.

Furthermore, the Israeli army announced early Monday that it had carried out a strike targeting a “command and control center, which was inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Shuhadah Al-Aqsa’ hospital”. The spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defense reported four dead and many injured, specifying that this was the seventh time that an attack had affected the “tents for internally displaced people” of this hospital.

Driver of humanitarian convoy injured after Israeli strike in Lebanon

On Monday, the driver of a humanitarian aid convoy was injured in eastern Lebanon when his truck was hit by blast from a nearby Israeli airstrike, an official and the official news agency reported. Lebanese. “An Israeli strike fell very close to a humanitarian convoy passing through the village of al-Aïn,” Bachir Khodr, governor of the Baalbek-Hermel region in the east bordering Syria, told X .

“An Israeli strike targeted a solar panel store as the convoy of three trucks was passing towards the village of Ras Baalbek,” reports the National News Agency (ANI). “The blast from the explosion damaged a truck and its driver was injured.” The convoy hit Monday “was carrying humanitarian aid from the Lebanese government and its passage had been coordinated with the Red Cross and the United Nations,” Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamié, who had attended the departure of the convoy, told AFP. convoy from Beirut in the morning.

This convoy was made up of five trucks in total, transporting aid notably from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.