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🇧🇩 Monitoring Israel and Lebanon War

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Israel ready for 'all-out war' in Lebanon
Say officials after Hezbollah releases threatening drone footage of the Israeli port city of Haifa

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Israel is ready for an "all-out war" in Lebanon and has plans approved for an offensive targeting Hezbollah, officials said.

The claims from Israel's foreign minister and military late on Tuesday followed Hezbollah's release of threatening drone footage. The climbing tension conflicts with United States efforts to avert an escalation amid months of low-level hostilities across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The nine-minute drone footage of the Israeli port city of Haifa filmed in daytime, showed civilian and military areas, including malls and residential quarters, in addition to a weapons manufacturing complex and missile defence batteries.

Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded vehemently in a post on X, calling out Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah for boasting about filming the ports of Haifa, which are operated by foreign companies from China and India.

"We are very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon. In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit," he wrote.

More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon over the past eight months, with 25 deaths in Israel.

Later, the Israeli military said in a statement that Ori Gordin, head of its Northern Command, which includes the front line with Hezbollah, has approved plans to mount a ground assault across Israel's northern border, reports Al Jazeera online.

"As part of the situational assessment, operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated, and decisions were taken on the continuation of increasing the readiness of troops in the field," it said.

Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in border fighting since the start of the offensive on Gaza on October 7. The confrontation is increasingly expanding, with both sides saying they are ready to go to war. Nasrallah has said in the past that Hezbollah will only stop its attacks if Israel halts its invasion of Gaza.

Hezbollah recently said that it has carried out more than 2,100 military operations against Israel since October 8 in what it says is an effort to support Palestinians.

More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon over the past eight months, with 25 deaths in Israel. At least 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon, and more than 60,000 have been forced from their homes in northern Israel.​
 

Iran warns Israel of obliterating war if Lebanon attacked
Agence France-Presse . Tehran 29 June, 2024, 23:56

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Supporters and activists of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba take part in a demonstration to express their solidarity with the Palestinians, in Karachi Saturday amid the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by Israel. | AFP photo

Iran on Saturday warned that 'all resistance fronts', a grouping of Iran and its regional allies, would confront Israel if it attacks Lebanon.

The comment from Iran's mission to New York comes with fears of a wider regional war involving Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.

Such exchanges have escalated this month, alongside bellicose rhetoric from both sides. Israel's military said plans for a Lebanon offensive had been 'approved and validated', prompting Hezbollah to respond that none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict.

In a post on social media platform X, the Iranian mission said it 'deems as psychological warfare the Zionist regime's propaganda about intending to attack Lebanon'.

But, it added, 'should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue. All options, incl. the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts, are on the table.'

The war in Gaza began in October when Hamas Palestinian militants attacked southern Israel.

Iran, which backs Hamas, has praised the attack as a success but has denied any involvement.

Alongside Hezbollah's attacks on northern

Israel, Iran-backed rebels in Yemen have repeatedly struck commercial ships in the Red Sea area in what they say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Iran also backs other groups in the region.

The Islamic republic has not recognised Israel since the 1979 revolution that toppled Iran's United States-backed shah.

Fears of regional war also soared in April, after an air strike that levelled Iran's consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

Iran hit back with an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13-14.

Iran's state media later reported explosions in the central province of Isfahan as US media quoted American officials saying Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes on its arch-rival.

Tehran downplayed the reported Israeli raid.​
 

10 Syrian refugees killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 17 August, 2024, 23:41

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Relatives mourn over the bodies of four members of the same family, including two children, killed in an Israeli strike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of the southern Lebanese Nabatiyeh district on Saturday. | AFP photo

Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli air strike on Saturday in southern Lebanon killed 10 Syrians, as the Israeli military reported hitting weapons stores of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

The toll from the strike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh is one of the largest in southern Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging near-daily fire over their border after war in the Gaza Strip began in October.

International mediators have been trying to reach a Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants, which diplomats say could help to avert a wider war in which Lebanon would be on the front line.

The death toll from the latest strike included ‘a woman and her two children’ while five other people were wounded, most of them also Syrian, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement.

The official Lebanese National News Agency reported that the casualties were Syrian refugees and workers.

Israel’s military, on its Telegram channel, said the air force had struck a weapons storage facility of Lebanon’s Hezbollah overnight ‘in the area of Nabatieh’, which is about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the nearest point of the Israeli border.

Following the deaths in Wadi al-Kafur, Hezbollah said it responded with a volley of Katyusha rockets on Ayelet HaShahar, a community in northern Israel.

None of the roughly 55 projectiles caused any reported injuries but they sparked ‘multiple fires’, Israel’s military said.

Earlier, around 20 kilometres to the north ‘a projectile that crossed from Lebanon’ wounded two soldiers, one of them severely, in the Misgav Am area, Israel’s military said.

The killings in quick succession in late July of Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, led to vows of vengeance from Hezbollah, Iran and other Tehran-backed groups in the region which blamed Israel.

The cross-border violence between Lebanon and Israel has killed 580 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006.​
 

Hezbollah claims attacks on north Israel
Says two of its fighters killed

Lebanese group Hezbollah said yesterday two of its fighters were killed and claimed attacks on northern Israel, including with drones, the latest cross-border violence amid fears of full-blown war.

The powerful Iran-backed group has exchanged regular cross-border fire with Israeli army in support of ally Hamas since the Israeli offensive in Gaza began on October 7.

Hezbollah said two of its fighters were "martyred on the road to Jerusalem", the phrase it has used to refer to members killed by Israeli fire since October.

The Israeli military said air forces struck "Hezbollah terrorists" in the Hula area and "Hezbollah military structures" elsewhere in south Lebanon.

Lebanon media reported Israeli shelling and raids on several southern areas.​
 

Israel strikes on Lebanon kill 7
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 23 August, 2024, 23:02

Lebanon’s health ministry said on Friday Israeli strikes killed seven people including a child in different parts of the south, with Hezbollah saying three of its fighters were among the dead.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has exchanged regular fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.

The health ministry said an ‘Israeli enemy drone strike’ killed two people including a ‘seven-year-old’ in Aita al-Shaab, and two other ‘Israeli’ strikes killed five people in three other locations in the south.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said a ‘hostile drone’ targeted a house in Aita al-Shaab with ‘two guided missiles’.

The health ministry said Israeli strikes included a raid ‘on the village of Tayr Harfa that killed three people’, with Hezbollah later mourning three fighters killed by Israeli fire, including a man from that same village.

A source close to the group said that the three fighters were killed in the Tayr Harfa strike.

Israel’s military said its aircraft ‘eliminated’ members of ‘a terrorist cell that was planning to fire projectiles from the area of Tayr Harfa’.

On Friday morning, Hezbollah said it had targeted the northern Israel base of Meron ‘in response to the enemy’s attacks on southern villages and homes’.

The threat of full-blown war grew after Iran and Hezbollah vowed to avenge the killings last month, blamed on Israel, of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in south Beirut.

Cross-border violence since the Gaza war started has killed 600 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 131 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

The Israeli authorities have announced the deaths of at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians since the escalation began.​
 

UN peacekeepers worried in south Lebanon crossfire
Agence France-Presse . Palestine 24 August, 2024, 23:10

On the deserted border between Lebanon and Israel, Spanish UN peacekeepers have for more than 10 months effectively been caught in a war zone.

Several Blue Helmets have been wounded in the crossfire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which has also left dozens of Lebanese civilians dead in fallout from the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

‘Sometimes we need to shelter because of the shelling... sometimes even inside the bunkers,’ said Alvaro Gonzalez Gavalda, a Blue Helmet at Base 964 of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

To reach the base, AFP journalists escorted in a UNIFIL convoy passed through virtually deserted villages. Only the occasional grocer or automotive repair shop were still open along the road where fields have been left charred by bombardment.

The base, surrounded by barbed wire and protected with heavy stone-filled berms, is not far from the town of Khiam, where dozens of houses have been destroyed or damaged, about five kilometres (three miles) from the border.

Over a wall that marks the frontier, the Israeli town of Metula is clearly visible. It has also been emptied of residents, as have other communities on both sides of the boundary.

From a watchtower, binoculars help the peacekeepers see further—into the Golan Heights annexed by Israel. The area has been a frequent target of Hezbollah fire.

Spanish Lieutenant Colonel Jose Irisarri said their mission, under Security Council Resolution 1701, is to ‘control the area’ and help the Lebanese government and armed forces establish control south of the Litani River, which is around 30 kilometres from the border with Israel.

The resolution ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

It called for all armed personnel to pull back north of the Litani, except for Lebanese state security forces and United Nations peacekeepers.

While Hezbollah has not had a visible military presence in the border area since then, the group still holds sway over large parts of the south.

When Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked Israel on October 7, triggering war with Israel, Hezbollah opened what it calls a ‘support front’ a day later, launching rockets and other fire from southern Lebanon against Israeli positions.

Israel has hit back with air strikes and artillery fire.

‘Some of these villages are completely empty. There is no one living there because of the risk and the constant attacks they are suffering,’ Irisarri said.

The Security Council first established UNIFIL in 1978 after Israel invaded south Lebanon. Its mission was expanded after the 2006 war.

Now, with fears of a wider regional war in which Lebanon would be on the front line, the UN’s Under Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said UNIFIL’s role is ‘more important than ever’.

Spain’s contingent of 650 soldiers, based at several positions, are among around 10,000 troops from 49 countries in the mission.

‘It’s the only liaison channel between the Israeli side and the Lebanese side in all its components, such as Hezbollah,’ Lacroix told AFP in early August.

UNIFIL’s mandate expires at the end of August and Lebanon has asked for its renewal.

Cross-border violence since the Gaza war started has killed 601 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 131 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

The Israeli authorities have announced the deaths of at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians since the fighting began, including in the annexed Golan Heights.

The Spaniards don’t just limit themselves to their core mission. They also give ‘support and some help’ to the local population, Irisarri said.

As an example, he said their psychological team assists students with special needs.

AFP was unable to visit the school during its tour on Friday, after the Spanish contingent raised the security level following exchanges of fire in the area.

Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s south on Friday killed seven Hezbollah fighters and a local child, according to Hezbollah and Lebanon’s health ministry. Israel said its military aircraft had hit ‘terrorist’ targets.

The peacekeepers have little time to rest, but have the company of two adopted dogs.

When they do have leisure time, ‘we go to the gym to keep fit and also we enjoy watching movies and talking to some friends’, said Gavalda.

He has been in Lebanon since May.

‘We miss our families,’ but internet enables them to stay in touch almost daily, Gavalda said.

Surrounded by death, the soldiers have set up on their grounds a small statue of the Virgin Mary inside a protective glass case.​
 

Israel strikes Lebanon
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 26 August, 2024, 00:38

Israel launched air strikes into Lebanon on Sunday, saying that it had thwarted a large-scale Hezbollah attack, while the Lebanese group announced its own cross-border raids to avenge a top commander’s killing.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets had destroyed ‘thousands’ of Hezbollah rocket launchers ‘aimed toward northern Israel and some were aimed toward central Israel’, far from the border.

Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, countered that Israel was making ‘empty claims’ of having thwarted a larger attack, and said its own operation for Sunday ‘was completed and accomplished’.

The office of the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the UNIFIL peacekeeping force urged ‘all to cease fire and refrain from further escalatory action’.

Hezbollah said its leader Hassan Nasrallah was due to speak on the ‘latest developments’ at 6:00pm (1500 GMT).

The group has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces throughout the Gaza war, in a campaign Hezbollah says is in support of Palestinian ally Hamas.

But fears of a wider regional conflagration soared after attacks in late July blamed on Israel killed Iran-aligned militant leaders, including Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, prompting vows of revenge.

Hezbollah, which last fought a major war against Israel in 2006, said its militants launched ‘a large number of drones’ and ‘more than 320’ Katyusha rockets targeting ‘enemy positions’ across the border.

The Lebanese movement said its attack was an ‘initial response’ to Shukr’s killing, adding that it had ‘ended with total success’, although the extent of the damage on the Israeli side was not immediately clear.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported at least three dead in Israeli strikes in the country’s south. No casualties were immediately reported in Israel.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said his country’s strikes were meant ‘to remove the threats aimed at the citizens of Israel’.

Another military spokesman, Nadav Shoshani, said Hezbollah’s strikes were ‘part of a larger attack that was planned and we were able to thwart a big part of it this morning’.

Israeli authorities declared a 48-hour state of emergency but later relaxed most of the restrictions.

By 7:00am (0400 GMT) flights had resumed at Israel’s main international airport after a brief suspension, the aviation authority said.

In Lebanon, Beirut airport did not close but some airlines, including Royal Jordanian and Etihad Airways, cancelled flights.

Air France said it was suspending flights to Tel Aviv and Beirut for at least 24 hours.

The United States, Israel’s top arms provider, said its military was ‘postured’ to support its ally.

The Israel-Hamas war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack, had already drawn in Iran-backed groups like Hezbollah and Yemen’s Huthi rebels.

The Huthis hailed the Hezbollah attack and declared that their own response for an Israeli strike on a key Yemeni port on July 20 was ‘definitely coming’.

The fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah has killed hundreds, mostly in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands of residents in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

Some 605 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, mostly Hezbollah fighters, but including at least 131 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities say 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet and vowed ‘to do everything to return the residents of the north safely to their homes’ after more than 10 months of violence.

Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati told an emergency cabinet meeting he was in contact with ‘Lebanon’s friends to stop the escalation’.

In a call with Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, his US counterpart Lloyd Austin reaffirmed ‘ironclad commitment to Israel’s defence against any attacks by Iran and its regional partners and proxies’, the Pentagon said.

Shukr’s death last month and an attack hours later that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran ratcheted up concerns that the Gaza war could spiral into a broader conflict.

Hamas said Hezbollah’s Sunday attack was ‘strong’, hailing it as ‘a slap in the face’ for Israel.

In recent weeks, Western and Arab diplomats have sought to head off a broader response to the killings, as mediators were making their latest push towards a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

An official from Netanyahu’s office said a decision would be made later about whether Israeli spy chiefs would attend planned talks in Cairo on Sunday.

Hamas has said a delegation would go to Cairo but only to meet Egyptian officials, rather than participate in the discussions.

On the ground in the besieged Palestinian territory, an AFP correspondent reported strikes and shelling in Gaza City, where rescuers said at least three people were killed.

Witnesses said battles raged in the area of Deir al-Balah, further south.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,405 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not break down civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants in their attack, 105 remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.​
 

Israel strikes Gaza after Lebanon flare-up
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 26 August, 2024, 23:52

Israel’s military struck the Gaza Strip on Monday a day after truce talks in Cairo coincided with a major but brief cross-border escalation involving Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, has drawn in Tehran-aligned armed groups across the Middle East, repeatedly heightening fears of a broader regional conflagration.

In the latest flare-up between Israel and Hamas-ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese group on Sunday launched rockets and drones in retaliation for a top commander’s killing as Israel carried out air raids the military said thwarted a larger attack.

Israel swiftly revoked a state of emergency declared early on Sunday, and Hezbollah said its operation was ‘completed’.

Intense diplomacy has sought to head off a broader retaliation for the late July killings of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike on Beirut, and of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Mediators held meetings in the Egyptian capital on Sunday but reported no breakthrough in months of protracted negotiations to end the Gaza war as the fighting raged on.

A key sticking point has been Israel’s insistence that it keep control of several strategic areas, including the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, to stop Hamas from re-arming, something the militant group has refused to countenance.

Cairo, which has been mediating the talks alongside Qatar and the United States, made clear on Monday it would not support continued Israeli control of the corridor, according to state-linked media.

Egypt ‘reiterated to all parties that it will not accept any Israeli presence’ along the corridor, Al-Qahera news reported, citing a high-level source.

On the ground, witnesses and AFP correspondents reported air strikes and shelling in Gaza City and other parts of the besieged Palestinian territory overnight and Israel’s military said it had struck militants in the south.

Medics said an air strike on a Gaza City house killed at least five people, with two rescuers telling AFP more victims may be buried in the ruins in Al-Rimal neighbourhood.

‘There are still martyrs and body parts under the rubble,’ ambulance driver Hussein Muhaysen said.

An Israeli military statement said troops had ‘eliminated’ dozens of militants over the past day in the southern areas of Khan Yunis and Rafah, and near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,435 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not break down civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants in their attack, 105 remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces throughout the war, in what the group says is support for its Palestinian ally Hamas.

After weeks of retaliation threats, Hezbollah early on Sunday launched what it said was part of its response to Shukr’s killing.

Speaking hours after Hezbollah announced its attacks on Israel with hundreds of rockets and drones, the group’s chief Hassan Nasrallah said the ‘main target’ was an intelligence base outside Tel Aviv, more than 100 kilometres from the Lebanese border.

Israel’s military said there were ‘no hits’ on the Glilot intelligence complex, which according to Israeli media is home to the headquarters of the Mossad spy agency.

Israeli air strikes at the same time hit more than 270 targets in Lebanon, ‘90 per cent’ of which were rockets ‘aimed at northern Israel’, the military said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet the strikes were ‘not the final word’ in the campaign against Hezbollah.

Nasrallah appeared to suggest Hezbollah’s retaliation for Shukr’s killing might be over, saying ‘if the result is satisfactory’ then its response ‘has been accomplished’.

Iranian foreign minister Nasser Kanani praised the Hezbollah attack, saying the ‘strategic balance has undergone fundamental changes’ to the detriment of Israel.

A Hamas official said that a delegation from the group met mediators in Egypt’s capital on Sunday. Israeli negotiators were also scheduled to go to Cairo.

The talks have been based on a framework laid out in late May by US president Joe Biden and a ‘bridging proposal’ Washington put forth earlier this month with support from Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

More than 10 months of war have left large parts of Gaza in ruins, ravaged its healthcare system and sparked a dire humanitarian crisis and warnings of famine.

A batch of polio vaccines entered Gaza on Sunday, Israeli authorities said. UN agencies have planned a mass inoculation drive after the first case there in 25 years was confirmed.

Successive Israeli evacuation orders have forced many Gazans, most of whom have already been displaced at least once by the war, to move again.

Speaking to AFP on Sunday from her hospital bed outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Tamam al-Raei said she did not know where to seek safety.

‘I have a war injury. I have broken bones and have had an amputation, and I have been receiving treatment for that,’ she said.

‘But now they’re telling us to evacuate Al-Aqsa. Where do we go? Where do I get treatment?’​
 

9 dead, 2,800 hurt as Hezbollah hit by pager blasts

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Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese village of Taybeh on September 16, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters. Photo: AFP

Hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon yesterday, killing at least nine people and wounding some 2,800 in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the wave of explosions, which came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon.

The sons of Hezbollah lawmakers Ali Ammar and Hassan Fadlallah were among the dead, a source close to the group told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The blasts "killed nine people, including a girl", Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said in a casualty update.

He added that some "2,800 people were injured, about 200 of them critically" with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands and stomach.

The 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley when his pager exploded, the family and a source close to the group said.

Tehran's ambassador to Beirut was also wounded in a pager explosion but his injuries were not serious, Iranian state media reported.

In neighbouring Syria, 14 people were wounded "after pagers used by Hezbollah exploded", said a Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for the blasts and warned it would be punished.

"We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression," the group said in a statement, adding that Israel "will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression".

The United States, Israel's top arms provider and close ally, was "not involved" and "not aware of this incident in advance", said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

The afternoon blasts hit Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon and dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, which already had concerns about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders to targeted air strikes in recent months.

Hezbollah had instructed its members to avoid mobile phones after the Gaza war began and to rely instead on the group's own telecommunications system to prevent Israeli breaches.

"Hundreds of Hezbollah members were injured by the simultaneous explosion of their pagers" in the group's strongholds in Beirut's southern suburbs, in south Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah source said, requesting anonymity.

AFP journalists saw dozens of wounded being taken to hospital in Beirut and in the south, where dozens of ambulances rushed between the cities of Tyre and Sidon in both directions.

Education Minister Abbas Halabi announced the closure of schools and universities on Wednesday "in condemnation of the criminal act committed by the Israeli enemy".

Israel expands war aims

Earlier Tuesday, Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by the Hamas attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon.

To date, Israel's objectives have been to crush Hamas and bring home the hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.

"The political-security cabinet updated the goals of the war this evening, so that they include the following section: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.

Not formally declared as a war by Israel, the exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens on the Israeli side.

On Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that failing a political solution, "military action" would be "the only way left to ensure the return of Israel's northern communities".

Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Israel's regional arch-foe Iran, claimed a dozen attacks on Israeli positions on Monday and three more on Tuesday.

Before the wave of pager explosions, Israel said it killed three Hezbollah members in a strike on Lebanon on Tuesday.

"The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas," Gallant's office quoted him as telling visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein.

Netanyahu later told Hochstein he was seeking a "fundamental change" in the security situation on Israel's northern border.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said at the weekend that his group had "no intention of going to war", but that "there will be large losses on both sides" in the event of all-out conflict.

Blinken headed back to region

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due back in the region to try to revive stalled ceasefire talks for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

After months of mediated negotiations failed to pin down a ceasefire, Washington said it was still pushing all sides to finalise an agreement.

US officials have expressed increasing frustration with Israel as Netanyahu has publicly rejected US assessments that a deal is nearly complete and has insisted on an Israeli military presence on the Egypt-Gaza border.

The October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,252 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.

On Tuesday, UN member states were debating a draft resolution demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian territories within 12 months.

General Assembly resolutions are not binding, but Israel has already denounced the new text as "disgraceful".

In Gaza, rescuers said several Israeli air strikes killed at least seven people overnight.​
 

Israel widens focus of war to include Lebanon front
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 17 September, 2024, 23:55

Israel announced the expansion of its war aims on Tuesday, widening its nearly year-long fight against Hamas in Gaza to focus on Hezbollah along its northern border with Lebanon.

The announcement came with US secretary of state Antony Blinken due back in the region this week to try to revive stalled ceasefire talks for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Until now, Israel’s objectives have been to crush Hamas and to bring home the hostages taken by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.

While the focus of the war has been on Gaza, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.

‘The political-security cabinet updated the goals of the war this evening, so that they include the following section: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,’ Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement early Tuesday.

Not formally declared as a war, the exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side.

On Monday, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said ‘military action’ was the ‘only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities’.

Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Israel’s regional arch-foe Iran, claimed a dozen attacks on Israeli positions on Monday and three more on Tuesday.

An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed three people in Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry, with Israel saying they were Hezbollah members.

‘The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas,’ Gallant was quoted as telling visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein in a statement from his office.

Netanyahu later told Hochstein he was seeking a ‘fundamental change’ in the security situation on Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said at the weekend that his group had ‘no intention of going to war’, but that ‘there will be large losses on both sides’ in the event of all-out conflict.

For now, it is unlikely Israel’s battle with Hezbollah will end.

‘Without a ceasefire in Gaza, there will be no agreement on the question of the border with Lebanon,’ said Michael Horowitz, of the Le Beck International security consultancy.

Israel’s aim in expanding the war would be to ‘create a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Lebanon’, Horowitz added.

Hamas, meanwhile, said it was readying for more war, with assistance from fighters and support from across the region.

In a letter to the group’s Yemeni allies, the Iran-backed Huthis, Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said: ‘We have prepared ourselves to fight a long war of attrition.’

‘Our combined efforts with you will break this enemy and inflict defeat on it’, Sinwar said.

While months of mediated negotiations have failed to pin down a ceasefire, the United States said it was still pushing all sides to finalise an agreement.

To bridge the remaining gaps, Washington was working ‘expeditiously’ on a new proposal, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

Miller said Blinken would discuss during a visit to Egypt this week ‘on-going efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza that secures the release of all hostages, alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people, and helps establish broader regional security’.

US officials have increasingly expressed their frustrations with Israel as Netanyahu has publicly rejected US assessments that the deal is nearly complete and has insisted on an Israeli military presence on the Egypt-Gaza border.

Mounting pressure has failed to sway him to agree to a hostage release deal that has wide support from the Israeli public.

The October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,252 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.

On Tuesday, UN member states will debate a draft resolution demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian territories within 12 months.

General Assembly resolutions are not binding, but Israel has already denounced the new text as ‘disgraceful’.

In Gaza, rescuers said several Israeli air strikes killed at least seven people overnight.

‘This war has left nothing untouched and has killed everything in us, our mental and physical health, our social fabric, our future and our dreams,’ Ola Halilo, a 32-year-old Gazan woman living in a makeshift displacement camp.

‘It has separated us from our loved ones, destroyed everything that was beautiful in our lives.’​
 

Initial probe shows Lebanon pagers booby-trapped: security source

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Photo: AFP

A preliminary investigation has found hundreds of pagers that exploded across Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding up to 2,800, had been booby-trapped, a security official said on Wednesday.

Lebanon opened a probe into the explosions on Tuesday, a judicial official said, adding security services were working to determine the cause of the blasts which have been blamed on Israel.

On Wednesday, a new wave of exploding hand-held devices, this time walkie-talkies, killed nine people and wounded more than 300 wounded across Lebanon, the health ministry said.

"Data indicates the devices were pre-programmed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery," the official said about Tuesday's blasts, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Some of the devices that exploded were being inspected, the security official said, but "most of them were destroyed and burned".

The official said it was unlikely the lithium batteries inside the devices had heated up and exploded.

"Exploding lithium batteries cause a fire-like incident... that may cause minor burns, but the blast from these devices resulted from highly explosive materials," he told AFP.​
 

Israel's attack in Lebanon: Can it lead to an all-out war?

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People gather outside American University of Beirut Medical Center as more than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were wounded when pagers exploded across Lebanon. PHOTO: REUTERS

For months, Israel and Lebanon—particularly Hezbollah, Iran's powerful proxy in the nation—have been engaging in tit-for-tat attacks. At some points, such as when Hezbollah's senior commander Fuad Shukr was killed in Beirut in late July, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran around the same time, it seemed as if a shadow war was on the brink of erupting into an expanded conflict. Since Tuesday, that fear is now closer, when hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria, killing more than a dozen people and injuring thousands. The next day, more explosions of electronic devices, including walkie talkies, laptops and radios, killed at least 20 people and injured hundreds, according to Al Jazeera. A Hezbollah official has referred to the ominous, action thriller movie-like attack tactics as the "biggest security breach" that the group has faced since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza post-October 7 attacks, after which cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have become near-daily occurrences.

The attacks, where objects used by civilians were rigged, has led experts to interpret a weakness of Hezbollah's defense apparatus to Israeli cyber warriors and Israeli infiltration. Videos have since emerged of Hezbollah fighters blown to the floor by their own communication equipment. It is probable that Israel strategically attacked to disrupt the command centre of Hezbollah. Targeting thousands of people, breaching security, without knowledge of who held the devices or where they were located violates international law, as United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said on Wednesday, but such is hardly ever a consideration for today's Israel.

Though Israel has not claimed responsibility, it does not simply need to spell it out. Beyond official statements, attacks of such sophistication in Lebanon would only be carried out by Israel's Mossad, to send a tough message to Hezbollah: we can invade your space. It's the kind of political warfare that Netanyahu—who recently faced the largest protests in the history of Israel with his citizens calling for a ceasefire and hostage deal—would wage, to start a wider military war. And to make it more obvious, Netanyahu announced the same day of the attacks, that Israel's war aims have expanded to include displaced Israelis. The statement and decision, also came a day after Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told the visiting US envoy that "military action" is the "only way left to ensure the return of Israeli northern communities." After almost a year, the northern Israeli residents have been added to an "updated" plan of the war. On Wednesday, Gallant said, "We are at the start of a new phase in the war...the center of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces."

First and foremost, the question is why now? Politically, Israel is continuing its operations in Gaza, while its climate in the home front is in ruins—Netanyahu's pressure to resign has been at an all-time high. The current cabinet's relationship with the Biden administration is on eggshells; despite all the pro-Israel rhetoric, Biden said earlier this month that Netanyahu has not done enough to bring the hostages back. On the other hand, the timing of attack could also be that the covert operation needed to happen before Hezbollah or Iran got wind of it. Whatever the reason, these attacks, just a grim three weeks shy of one year of Hamas' attacks and Israel's genocide in Gaza—can have grave implications which will be seen in the days to come.

Hezbollah has now promised to retaliate but this promise now holds more weight as chief Hassan Nasrallah now faces pressure within the group to respond to these attacks. There's an important context to such pressure. Nasrallah and Hezbollah have thrived with an image of invincibility after confronting Israel in 2006, when their commandos launched a cross-border raid on an Israeli armoured patrol, killing two IDF soldiers and taking two hostages. It spiralled into a costly war, especially for Lebanese citizens, 1,200 of whom were approximately killed. More than 100 IDF soldiers were killed, while 43 Israeli civilians died in rocket attacks carried out by Lebanon. Both sides had declared victory, but victory was not defined in the number of killings but rather that Israel failed to achieve its strategic objectives, including retrieving the two hostages alive. Since then, Hezbollah has only been emboldened in the region with its military prowess—with advanced weaponry, more armed personnel, and political legitimacy beyond Lebanon.

The attacks in fact do threaten a wider conflict, and it's the first of covert, sinister rather surprise attacks by Israelis infiltrating Hezbollah. They underscore the capabilities of the Israeli intelligence, and signal further to Hezbollah, that Netanyahu's Israel could also have more sadistic surprises planned. But as coordinated as they may be, Israel knows Hezbollah is, without question, one of the most well-trained and resourced non-state stores in global politics with an arsenal upwards of 150,000 rockets and precision-guided munitions. According to Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Israel is pushing the entire region towards the abyss of regional war, which would have "drastic ramifications not only for the region, but for the world."

It must also be noted that the attack happened on Tuesday as Blinken arrived in Egypt, yet again, to discuss another ceasefire deal in Gaza. Diplomatic talks have continued for nearly a year, and proved nothing but futile. These attacks have unquestionably put the ceasefire talks on ice, and if it wasn't clear before, Netanyahu has no interest in bringing back the hostages, over a wider war. Israel's objective to "defeat Hamas," as they say, still hangs in the air. Engaging in an existential fight with Hezbollah would not be the same as carpet bombing a strip, and killing civilians at historic pace. Hezbollah is no easy opponent, and a full scale war would also harm Israeli cities and Israeli civilians.

And the implications of an all-out war are far-reaching to the larger countries covertly or overtly involved in the conflict. In other words, once again, Israel is bringing Iran and the US closer to a confrontation. Ahead of a high-stakes US presidential election, a regional war with Iran no less, would likely hurt the prospects of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris who has been part of the Biden administration, which stands accused of complicity in the Gaza genocide. The Harris campaign has stressed on the need for a ceasefire, which, after these attacks will definitely not happen before the elections. The Biden administration will be in a more precarious position, as will the Harris campaign. They cannot sanction Israel were it to start a war with Hezbollah before November, as that would alienate Zionist voters. On the other hand, inaction and tepid diplomacy will show their continuous incompetency in foreign policy and the lack of a ceasefire will continue to alienate Arab and young pro-Palestinian voters. Domestically, Israel's war with Lebanon is far from US interest at the moment.

Some US experts on the other hand feel that Israel is falling into Khamenei and Nasrallah's trap. Since Haniyeh's death, Iran has vowed to retaliate but there has been no action yet. Iran has been restrained, yet ominous, in playing with fire. One of the reasons, which have been clear, is that they too don't want an all-out war which would also involve the US. But their desire to restrain from doing so now remains contested after the death of Haniyeh and Fuad Shukr. Iran and Hezbollah play the opposition with attrition. The opposition here, Netanyahu's Israeli cabinet, is driven with short-term impulsive strategies with no long-term goal that can be gleaned, from its actions in Gaza, its actions in the northern border with Lebanon, and recently, its attacks in the West Bank. Collectively, Israel is engaged in doing everything that would give Iran the political upper hand to justify a large retaliation, even if it may come late, and that would be disastrous for Israel itself and its allies as well.

As such, the onus is on the US, the "superpower" and the Arab states that have altogether failed to control the conflagrations in the Middle East, to make Israel stop and figure out a strategy to end the cycle of locking heads with Iran. Diplomacy efforts a little too late can be costly, as has been shown by the genocide in Gaza, which has left the world in tatters. Israel needs its most powerful ally to slam the brakes—whether it be internally—because as recent history has shown, stopping the train after it has left the station does not work with Netanyahu's government.

Ramisa Rob is in-charge of Geopolitical Insights at The Daily Star.​
 

Lebanon PAGER ATTACKS
Israel’s Unit 8200 in spotlight

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Lebanese army members prepare to carry out a controlled explosion of a battery of a communications device in the town of Qlayaa, southern Lebanon yesterday. Photo: REUTERS

The mass pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has turned the spotlight on Israel's secretive Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence unit, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation.

Israeli officials remained silent on the intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives. At least 20 people was killed on Wednesday when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency was responsible for a sophisticated operation to plant a small quantity of explosives inside 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah.

One Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military unit that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah which was over a year in the making.​
 

Israel kills top Hezbollah figure in Beirut strike
Lebanon’s health ministry says 11 more people killed, 66 hurt

Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander and other senior figures in the Lebanese movement in an airstrike on Beirut yesterday, vowing to press on with a new military campaign until it is able to secure the area around the Lebanese border.

The Israeli military and a security source in Lebanon said Ibrahim Aqil had been killed along with other senior members of an elite Hezbollah unit in the airstrike, sharply escalating the year-long conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group, reports Reuters.
  • Israeli strike, Hezbollah attack reported at Lebanon border​
  • UN peacekeepers call for immediate de-escalation​
  • 14 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza​

The Israeli military described Aqil as the acting commander of the Radwan special forces unit, and said it had killed him along with around 10 other senior commanders as they held a meeting. Aqil sat on Hezbollah's top military council, sources in Lebanon told Reuters.

The strike inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks on the group in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands. Those attacks were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.

Lebanon's health ministry said Friday's strike killed 12 people and wounded 66 others, nine of whom were in critical condition. Rescue teams were searching for people under the rubble of two buildings, the country's civil defence service said.

On Thursday night, Israeli fighter jets pounded Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, destroying 1,000 rocket launcher barrels that were set to be used to immediately fire toward Israeli territory, the military said.

UN peacekeepers in Lebanon urged immediate de-escalation.

Hezbollah said its fighters had fired a guided missile at Israeli troops in Metula, an Israeli town on the border targeted frequently by the Lebanese group over the last year.

Israeli radio reported that residents of several towns in northern Israel were instructed by the military's Homefront Command to stay close to their shelters.

Meanwhile, some Palestinians displaced by the Israeli assault on Gaza said they feared their temporary beachside camp would be inundated by high waves.

Palestinian health officials said shelling by Israeli tanks killed eight people and wounded several others in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central area of Gaza, and six others were killed in an airstrike on a house in Gaza City.

In the northern town of Beit Hanoun, an Israeli strike on a car killed and wounded several Palestinians, medics said. It was not clear how many of the casualties were combatants and how many were civilians.

In the southern city of Rafah, where the Israeli army has been operating since May, tanks advanced further to the northwest area backed by aircraft, residents said.

They also reported heavy fire and explosions echoing in the eastern areas of the city, where Israeli forces blew up several houses, according to residents and Hamas media.​
 

Lebanon's Hezbollah in disarray after second wave of deadly blasts
AFP
Beirut
Published: 19 Sep 2024, 17: 33

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Lebanese Hezbollah members carry the coffin of their killed comrade Hussein Amhaz during his funeral in Baalbek, in Lebanon's Bekaa valley, on 19 September, 2024. Hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon in unprecedented attacks that spanned two days, killing 32 people and wounding more than 3,000 others. AFP

Hezbollah was in disarray on Thursday after a second wave of deadly explosions swept through its strongholds across Lebanon, putting pressure on its leader to exact revenge for the operation it blames on Israel.

The attack killed 32 people in two days, including two children, and wounded more than 3,000 others, according to Lebanese health ministry figures.

Israel has not commented on the unprecedented operation that saw Hezbollah operatives' walkie-talkies and pagers exploding in supermarkets, at funerals and on streets.

But its defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday, in reference to Israel's border with Lebanon: "The centre of gravity is moving northward."

"We are at the start of a new phase in the war", he said.

Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has been fighting a war in Gaza since its 7 October attack on Israel.

For nearly a year, the focus of Israel's firepower has been on Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas.

But its troops have also been engaged in near-daily clashes with Hezbollah militants along its northern border, killing hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens more in Israel.

The exchanges of fire have also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.

Gallant said earlier this month that Hamas as a military formation "no longer exists".

Reeling from the operation that targeted its communication system, Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah said Israel was "fully responsible for this criminal aggression" and vowed revenge.

Hezbollah on Thursday said 20 of its members had been killed, with a source close to the group saying they had died when their walkie-talkies had exploded a day earlier.

At 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) on Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will give a previously unscheduled televised speech that will be watched closely by both his supporters and his enemies for any signals of what shape a response might take.

'Wider war'

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the "blatant assault on Lebanon's sovereignty and security" was a dangerous development that could "signal a wider war".

Iran's envoy to the UN said the country "reserves the right to take retaliatory measures" after its ambassador in Beirut was wounded in the blasts.

The White House, which is pressing to salvage efforts for an elusive ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza, warned all sides against "an escalation of any kind".

"We don't believe that the way to solve where we're at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

The 7 October attacks that sparked the war in Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

In Gaza on Wednesday, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.

In Lebanon, the influx of so many casualties following the blasts overwhelmed medics.

At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said "the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight."

A doctor at another hospital in the Lebanese capital said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were "out of this world -- never seen anything like it".

'Sabotaged at source'

Analysts said operatives had likely planted explosives on the pagers before they were delivered to Hezbollah.

The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said.

"Data indicates the devices were pre-programmed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery," the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were "recently imported" and appeared to have been "sabotaged at source".

After The New York Times reported that the pagers that exploded on Wednesday had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.

A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was "a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary".

Japanese firm Icom said that it had stopped producing the model of radios reportedly used in Wednesday's blasts in Lebanon around 10 years ago.​
 

Israeli jets pound Lebanon after deadly Beirut strike
Agence France-Presse. Beirut 22 September, 2024, 05:17

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Smoke billows at the site of an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Zawtar on September 21, 2024. | AFP Photo

Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon Saturday, raising fears of all-out war a day after an Israeli strike on Beirut left senior Hezbollah commanders among the 37 people Lebanese officials reported killed.

Dozens of Israeli warplanes were ‘widely’ striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon ‘to eliminate threats against the citizens of Israel,’ military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

For nearly a year, Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have traded cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of Palestinian ally Hamas, whose October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.

But the cross-border exchanges have escalated since late August.

Lebanon's official National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes had launched ‘a large-scale air attack’ Saturday evening over south Lebanon.

With heavy equipment still working beneath high-rise buildings at the site of the Beirut strike, Lebanon's health ministry reported six more dead, up from 31 earlier Saturday.

AFPTV footage showed mourners gathering in the Lebanese capital for funerals of three of the slain Hezbollah members.

‘We thought the war had started,’ said Zeinab, 35, a housewife who preferred to be identified only by her first name, recalling the noise that accompanied the strike.

Horrific massacres

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati decried ‘horrific massacres’ and said he had cancelled his trip to the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Germany said there was ‘an urgent need’ to defuse tensions. The UN has also voiced concern about ‘heightened escalation’ and called for ‘maximum restraint’ from all sides.

The US State Department meanwhile urged Americans in Lebanon to leave the country while commercial options remain available.

Earlier Saturday, an Israeli military statement said Israeli aircraft ‘struck thousands’ of rocket launchers ready to fire from southern Lebanon, as well as ‘approximately 180’ other, unspecified targets.

AFP correspondents reported intense Israeli strikes over a wide area of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it targeted at least seven military positions in northern Israel and the annexed Golan Heights with rockets on Saturday.

Israel's military said the militants had fired ‘about 90’ rockets by late afternoon.

Targeted strike

Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said three children and seven women were killed in Friday's strike on an underground meeting room in a densely populated neighbourhood of the capital's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Israel said the ‘targeted strike’ had killed the head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil, and several other commanders.

A source close to Hezbollah said a total of 16 Radwan Force members were killed during a meeting.

The Radwan Force has spearheaded Hezbollah's ground operations, and Israel has repeatedly called for its fighters to be pushed back from the border.

Confirming the death of Aqil, Hezbollah hailed him as ‘one of its great leaders’.

Washington had offered a $7 million reward for information on Aqil, calling him a ‘principal member’ of the organisation behind the 1983 Beirut US embassy bombing, which killed 63.

Penetrate and disrupt

Hezbollah said a second senior commander, Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi, had also been killed Friday. He headed the group's operations against Israel from the onset of the Gaza war in October until the start of this year, it said.

In July, another Israeli strike on Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah operations chief.

Friday's strike also followed sabotage attacks on pagers and two-way radios used by Hezbollah on Tuesday and Wednesday, which killed 39 people. Hezbollah blamed Israel, which has not commented.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged an ‘unprecedented’ blow, vowing that Israel would face retribution for what he called a possible ‘act of war’.

Months of near-daily exchanges have killed hundreds in Lebanon, mostly fighters, and dozens in Israel and the annexed Golan, forcing tens of thousands on both sides to flee their homes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday announced an expansion of the country's war goals to include the return of northern Israeli residents.

On Saturday, posting on X, formerly Twitter, he said: ‘Our objectives are clear and our actions speak for themselves.’

International mediators, including the United States, are trying to stop the Gaza war from becoming a regional conflict.

Netanyahu's critics in Israel have accused the prime minister of dragging out the war. Thousands again gathered in Tel Aviv Saturday night demanding a deal to free captives still held by Hamas.

Shahar Mor, nephew of slain hostage Avraham Munder, said he feared the fight against Hezbollah would again distract leaders who focus on the illusion of 'absolute victory'.

Gaza school strike

In Gaza on Saturday, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on Al-Zeitun School C, which had been turned into a displaced shelter, killed 21 people including 13 children and six women, one of them pregnant.

Israel's military said the strike targeted Hamas militants who were ‘embedded inside’ an adjacent school, and that it had taken steps ‘to mitigate the risk of harming civilians’.

An AFP reporter confirmed Al-Zeitun School C was hit.

In late August the United Nations said Israel had struck at least 23 school shelters since July 4.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of operating from such facilities in highly urbanised Gaza, a charge the militants deny.

The October 7 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,391 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has acknowledged the figures as reliable.​
 

Top Hezbollah commander among 14 killed in Israeli strike on Beirut
Reuters
Beirut/Jerusalem
Published: 21 Sep 2024, 08: 47

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Smoke rises from Beirut southern suburbs, Lebanon on 20 September 2024.Reuters

Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander and other senior figures in the Lebanese movement in an airstrike on Beirut on Friday, vowing to press on with a new military campaign until it is able to secure the area around the Lebanese border.

The Israeli military and a security source in Lebanon said Ibrahim Aqil had been killed with other senior members of an elite Hezbollah unit in the airstrike, sharply escalating the year-long conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group.

Hezbollah confirmed Aqil's death in a statement just after midnight that called him "one of its top leaders," without providing details of how he died.

In a later statement summarising Aqil's biography, Hezbollah said he was killed in Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh in what it called a "treacherous Israeli assassination".

Lebanon's health ministry said at least 14 people died in the strike and the toll was expected to climb as rescue teams worked through the night. It was not immediately known whether the toll included Aqil and other Hezbollah commanders.

Earlier, the ministry said at least 66 people were injured, nine of whom were in critical condition.

A second security source said at least six other Hezbollah commanders died when multiple missiles slammed into the opening of a building's garage. The explosion tore into the building's lower levels as Aqil met other commanders inside.

Witnesses reported hearing a loud whistling and several consecutive blasts at the time of the strike.

In a brief statement carried by Israeli media, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's goals were clear and its actions spoke for themselves.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who said this week that Israel is launching a new phase of war on the northern border, posted on X: "The sequence of actions in the new phase will continue until our goal is achieved: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes."

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border since Hezbollah began rocketing Israel in October in sympathy with Palestinians in the nearly year-old Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza.

Israel, which last fought an all-out war against Hezbollah 18 years ago, has said it will use force if necessary to ensure its citizens can return to northern Israel.

The Israeli military described Aqil as the acting commander of the Radwan special forces unit, and said it had killed him along with around 10 other senior commanders as they met. Aqil sat on Hezbollah's top military council, sources in Lebanon told Reuters.

The strike inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands. Those attacks were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Local broadcasters showed groups of people gathered near the site, and reported they were searching for missing people, most of them children. Drones were still flying over Beirut's southern suburbs hours after the strike.

"We are not afraid, but we want a solution. We cannot continue with the country like this," said Alain Feghali, a resident of Beirut who spoke to Reuters. "War? I don't know if it started or not, but nothing is reassuring. It is clear that the two sides will not stop."

The U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine-Hennis Plasschaert, said Friday's strike in a densely populated area of Beirut's southern suburbs was part of "an extremely dangerous cycle of violence with devastating consequences. This must stop now."

The strike marked the second time in less than two months that Israel has targeted a leading Hezbollah military commander in Beirut. In July, an Israeli airstrike killed Fuad Shukr, the group's top military commander.

Aqil had a $7-million bounty on his head from the United States over his link to the deadly bombing of Marines in Lebanon in 1983, according to the U.S. State Department website.

The Israeli military said Aqil had been head of Hezbollah operations since 2004 and was responsible for a plan to launch a raid on northern Israel, similar to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that triggered the war in Gaza.

"The Hezbollah commanders we eliminated today had been planning their ‘October 7th’ on the northern border for years," Israeli army chief General Herzi Halevi said.

"We reached them, and we will reach anyone who threatens the security of Israel's citizens."

Rubble and burnt-out cars

The Israeli military reported warning sirens in northern Israel following the Beirut strike, and Israeli media reported heavy rocket fire there.

Hezbollah said it twice fired Katyusha rockets at what it described as the main intelligence headquarters in northern Israel "which is responsible for assassinations".

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said he was not aware of any Israeli notification to the United States before the Beirut strike, adding Americans were strongly urged not to travel to Lebanon, or to leave if they were there.

However he added that, "war is not inevitable ... and we're going to continue to do everything we can to try to prevent it."

The current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited by the Gaza war, has intensified significantly this week.

On Thursday night, the Israeli military carried out its most intensive airstrikes in southern Lebanon since the conflict erupted almost a year ago.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is the worst since they fought a war in 2006. Tens of thousands of people have had to leave homes on both sides of the border.

While the conflict has largely been contained to areas at or near the frontier, this week's escalation has heightened concerns that it could widen and further intensify.​
 

Israel says ‘landed blows’ on Hezbollah as Lebanon violence intensifies
Agence France-Presse . Haifa, Israel 23 September, 2024, 00:15

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel has dealt serious blows to Lebanese group Hezbollah, as rapidly escalating cross-border exchanges raised fears of an all-out war.

Netanyahu’s remarks follow a night of intense rocket fire at northern Israel that had sent hundreds of thousands of people to bomb shelters, according to the military, and caused damage in the area of Haifa, a major city.

‘No country can tolerate attacks on its citizens’, Netanyahu said in a statement nearly a year into the Gaza war, which was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and has drawn in Iran-backed groups across the region, including Hezbollah.

In his first detailed remarks since a Friday air strike on Beirut that killed Hezbollah commanders, and deadly blasts of communication devices across Lebanon earlier in the week, the prime minister said: ‘In recent days, we have landed a series of blows on Hezbollah that it could have never imagined.’

He did not directly mention the specific incidents.

‘I assure you it will get the message’, added Netanyahu, vowing to restore safety to the country’s north and allow displaced residents to return to the border area.

The overnight rocket fire reached Kiryat Bialik on the edge of north Israel’s biggest city Haifa, leaving a building in flames, another pockmarked with shrapnel, and vehicles incinerated.

‘This is not pleasant. This is war,’ said Sharon Hacmishvili, a resident of the area.

Israel has signalled its intention to turn its focus to Iran-backed Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border fire that began in October in what Hezbollah calls support for Hamas Palestinian militants fighting Israel.

An Israeli air strike on Friday killed the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil, in a densely-populated Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut, an attack that the Lebanese health ministry left 45 dead.

Aqil’s funeral in Beirut on Sunday is expected to draw large crowds.

The Radwan Force has spearheaded Hezbollah’s ground operations, and Israel has repeatedly called for its fighters to be pushed back from the border.

‘With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,’ United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said on social media platform X.

The Israeli army said more than 150 rockets, missiles and drones had been fired at its territory during the night and early Sunday morning, most from Lebanon.

The military said it launched strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response to the rocket fire and, according to spokesman Nadav Shoshani, ‘to prevent a larger-scale attack’.

Lebanon’s health ministry said three people were killed in separate Israeli strikes on southern areas, while Hezbollah announced two fighters had been killed.

Israel’s civil defence agency ordered all schools in the country’s north closed following the rocket fire.

‘It reminds me of October 7 when everybody stayed home,’ Haifa resident Patrice Wolff said, referring to the day the Hamas attack started the Gaza war.

Hezbollah said it had targeted Israeli military production facilities and an air base in the Haifa area after the communication device blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed 39 and wounded almost 3,000.

‘In an initial response’ to the explosions of the pagers and two-way radios, which it blamed on Israel, Hezbollah ‘bombed the Rafael military industry complexes’ in northern Israel with ‘dozens’ of rockets, the group said.

It said it targeted Ramat David airbase with Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets. The site is among the deepest inside Israeli territory so far targeted, and this appeared to be the group’s first use of that rocket type during the Gaza war.

The US State Department urged Americans in Lebanon to leave the country, and Jordan on Sunday urged its nationals to do the same.

On Saturday, an Israeli military statement said Israeli aircraft ‘struck thousands’ of rocket launchers ready to fire from southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah said it targeted at least seven military positions in northern Israel and the annexed Golan Heights with rockets.

Amin Shoumer, a local official in Saksakiyeh near south Lebanon’s Sidon city, said there was a ‘heavy night of Israeli strikes’ that ‘terrified the children’ and other residents.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged that the communication device attack was an ‘unprecedented’ blow. He vowed that Israel — which has not commented on the blasts — would face retribution.

Months of near-daily exchanges have killed hundreds in Lebanon, mostly fighters, and dozens in Israel and the annexed Golan, forcing tens of thousands on both sides to flee their homes.

Netanyahu on Tuesday announced an expansion of the country’s war goals to include the return of northern Israeli residents.

International mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have for months tried to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, which diplomats repeatedly said would help calm regional tensions.

Netanyahu’s critics in Israel have accused him of dragging out the war. Thousands again gathered in Tel Aviv Saturday night demanding a deal to free captives still held in Gaza.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages also seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has acknowledged the figures as reliable.

Civil defence rescuers in Gaza City said an Israeli strike Sunday on a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians killed at least seven people, the latest of numerous such incidents, with the Israeli military saying it had targeted Hamas militants.​
 

Israeli airstrikes kill 356 in Lebanon
1,246 wounded; tens of thousands fleeing for safety

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Smokes rise, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon September 23, 2024. Photo: Reuters/Aziz Taher

Israel launched airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah targets yesterday, killing 356 people and sending tens of thousands fleeing for safety on Lebanon's deadliest day in decades, according to authorities.

After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since the hostilities flared last October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to evacuate areas where it said the armed movement was storing weapons.

Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89 temporary shelters in schools and the like had been activated, with capacity for more than 26,000 people as civilians fled "Israeli atrocities".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a short video statement addressed to the Lebanese people.

"Israel's war is not with you; it's with Hezbollah. For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields," he said.

After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to the northern frontier, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, also supported by Iran.

Israel's military said it had struck Hezbollah in Lebanon's south, east and north.

Lebanon's health ministry said 356 people had been killed, including 24 children and 42 women, and 1,246 wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon's highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The Israeli air force said on X it had carried out about 650 strike missions in the past 24 hours, attacking more than 1,100 targets using more than 1,400 munitions, hitting buildings vehicles and other places where it said weapons were stored.

Hezbollah has not commented on Israeli claims that it hid weapons in houses, which Reuters could not independently verify, but it has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.

In response to the strikes, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern Israel.

In New York, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel wanted to drag the Middle East into a full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

"It is Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict," he told journalists after his arrival in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, saying the consequences of such instability would be irreversible.​
 

274 killed in Israeli strikes on Hezbollah
Agence France-Presse . Beirut, Lebanon 23 September, 2024, 23:31

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A plume of flame and smoke from an Israeli air strike on the Marjayoun area in south Lebanon near the border. | AFP photo

Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on Monday killed 274 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry, in by far the deadliest cross-border escalation since war erupted in Gaza on October 7.

The toll was ‘274 dead including 21 children and 39 women — that’s who we know about until now,’ Lebanese health minister Firass Abiad told a news conference, adding that ‘thousands of families from the targeted areas have been displaced’.

About 5,000 people had been wounded ‘in less than a week’ of Israeli attacks, he said, after Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded and an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

War began when Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out the worst-ever attack on Israel, with Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups around the region drawn into the violence.

On Monday, Israel said it had hit more than 300 Hezbollah sites with dozens of strikes, while Hezbollah said it had targeted three sites in northern Israel.

World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply in recent days from Israel’s southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.

‘We sleep and wake up to bombardment that’s what our life has become,’ said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the southern Lebanese village of Zawtar.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hezbollah as strikes would ‘go on for the near future’.

Hagari said Israel’s military ‘will engage in more extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon’.

He told civilians to ‘immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety’.

The strikes sent hundreds of people fleeing their homes, according to Bilal Kachmar, an official in Tyre.

‘Hundreds of displaced people rushed’ to a school-turned-shelter in the southern city, he said, with many others ‘camping out in the streets’.

AFP correspondents saw rows of cars leaving the nearby city of Sidon.

The Israeli military also warned people living in the Bekaa valley, in eastern Lebanon, to flee their homes, as it announced it was ‘broadening’ the scope of its strikes.

Explosions around the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon triggered flashes of fire and sent smoke billowing into the sky.

In divided Lebanon, large parts of the south and east of the country, as well as the southern suburbs of capital city Beirut, are seen as strongholds of Hezbollah, where the group has historically wielded influence and built up services for its Shiite Muslim support base.

The education minister said schools in targeted areas would close for two days.

The official National News Agency said Lebanese had received phone messages from Israel telling them to ‘quickly evacuate’.

Hezbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, says it is acting in its near-daily battle with Israeli troops along Lebanon’s border in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel was not waiting threats to emerge but was preempting them and was acting to change the ‘security balance’ in the north.

Hezbollah’s deputy chief, Naim Qassem, said the group was in a ‘new phase, namely an open reckoning’ with Israel, and ready for ‘all military possibilities’.

They spoke after Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel caused damage in the area of Haifa, a major city on Israel’s north coast.

On Sunday morning, hundreds of thousands of people in northern Israel fled to their bomb shelters as Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets across the border.

The attack came after an Israeli air strike in Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold on Friday killed its elite Radwan Force commander, Ibrahim Aqil, along with other commanders and civilians.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, coordinated communications device blasts that Hezbollah blamed on Israel killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000.

On Sunday, Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli military production facilities and an air base in the Haifa area with rockets as ‘an initial response’.

On Monday the group said it had again fired rockets at military sites near Haifa.

‘No country can live like this,’ said Ofer Levy, 56, a customs officer, who lives on the edge of Haifa.

Since the cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah began in October, tens of thousands of people on both sides have fled their homes.

An Israeli military official, who cannot be further identified under military rules, on Monday outlined the goals of the military operation.

It seeks to ‘degrade threats’ from Hezbollah, push them back from the border, and then to destroy infrastructure built near the frontier by Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, the official said.

Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati urged the United Nation and world powers to deter what he called Israel’s ‘plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns’.

US president Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier, said his administration was ‘going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out’.

Ahead of the annual General Assembly in New York, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned of Lebanon becoming ‘another Gaza’ and said it was ‘clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire’ there.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages also seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.​
 

182 killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon
AFP
Beirut, Lebanon
Published: 23 Sep 2024, 20: 05

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Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Tyre, southern Lebanon 23 September, 2024 Reuters

Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south killed 182 people and wounded more than 700 Monday, in the worst toll by far in nearly a year of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.

"Israeli enemy strikes on southern towns and villages since this morning" have killed "182 people and wounded 727 others", the health ministry said, with casualties including "children, women and paramedics".

War began when Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out the worst-ever attack on Israel, with Iran-backed groups around the region, chiefly Hezbollah, increasingly drawn into the violence.

On Monday, Israel said it had hit more than 300 Hezbollah sites with dozens of strikes, while Hezbollah said that it had targeted three sites in northern Israel.

The strikes on Lebanon, which also wounded more than 400 people according to the health ministry, were the deadliest in nearly a year of violence along the border with Israel.

"Enemy raids on southern towns and villages since this morning... killed 100 and injured more than 400," the health ministry said in a statement, adding that "children, women and paramedics" were among the dead and wounded.

World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply from Israel's southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon in recent days.

"We sleep and wake up to bombardment... That's what our life has become," said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the south Lebanon village of Zawtar.

More to come

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hezbollah as strikes would "go on for the near future".

Hagari said Israel's military "will engage in (more) extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon".

He told civilians "to immediately move out of harm's way for their own safety".

Hezbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, says it is acting in its fight along Lebanon's southern border with Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.

In divided Lebanon, large parts of the south and east of the country, as well as the southern suburbs of capital city Beirut, are seen as strongholds of Hezbollah, where the group has historically wielded influence and built up services for its Shiite Muslim support base.

'Quickly evacuate'
Residents and local media said strikes also hit the outskirts of the coastal city Tyre.

NNA said Lebanese had received phone messages from Israel telling them "to quickly evacuate".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel has dealt "a series of blows on Hezbollah that it could have never imagined", but Israeli leaders say they want their residents to return safely to border areas.

Hezbollah's deputy chief, Naim Qassem, said the group was in a "new phase, namely an open reckoning" with Israel, and ready for "all military possibilities".

Both were speaking after Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel caused damage in the area of Haifa, a major city on Israel's north coast.

Since the cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah began in October, tens of thousands of people on both sides have fled their homes.

An Israeli military official, who cannot be further identified under military rules, on Monday outlined the goals of the military operation.

It seeks to "degrade threats" from Hezbollah, push them back from the border, and then to destroy infrastructure built near the frontier by Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, the official said.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the UN and world powers to deter what he called Israel's "plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns".

'Wider war'
US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel's main ally and weapons supplier, said his administration was "going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out".

An Israeli air strike in Hezbollah's southern Beirut stronghold on Friday killed the Radwan Force commander, Ibrahim Aqil, along with other commanders and civilians.

That followed coordinated communications device blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000. Hezbollah blamed Israel.

Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli military production facilities and an air base in the Haifa area with rockets as "an initial response" on Sunday.

On Monday the group said it had again rocketed the "Rafael defence industry complexes" near Haifa, as well as two military positions.

"No country can live like this," said Ofer Levy, 56, a customs officer, who lives on the edge of Haifa.

Hamas's 7-October attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages also seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.​
 

UN chief warns Lebanon on ‘brink’ as world leaders gather
Agence France-Presse . United Nations 24 September, 2024, 23:46

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Antonio Guterres | AFP file photo

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres warned world leaders on Tuesday that Lebanon was on ‘the brink’ as clashes escalated between Israel and Hezbollah.

US president Joe Biden urged Israel and Hamas to finalise a months-old ceasefire proposal, telling the United Nations he was committed to ending the Gaza war.

‘Now is the time for the parties to finalise its terms,’ he said of the deal brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

The deal will ‘bring the hostages home and secure security for Israel and Gaza free from Hamas’s grip, ease the suffering in Gaza and end this war,’ Biden told the UN General Assembly.


The gathering of dozens of world leaders, the high point of the diplomatic calendar, comes as Lebanese authorities say Israeli strikes killed 558 people — 50 of them children.

‘We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,’ Guterres said.

The annual flurry of speeches and face-to-face diplomacy kicked off as Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati headed to New York after UN Security Council member France called for an emergency meeting on the crisis.

As the toll in Lebanon climbed and focus shifted away from the situation in Gaza, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian condemned ‘senseless and incomprehensible’ inaction by the UN against Israel.

The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell warned ‘we are almost in a full-fledged war.’

The United States, Israel’s closest ally, again warned against a full-blown ground invasion of Lebanon, with a senior US official promising to bring ‘concrete’ ideas for de-escalation to the UN this week.

It is unclear what progress can be made to defuse the situation in Lebanon as efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel has relentlessly pounded since October 2023, have come to nothing.

Guterres cautioned against ‘the possibility of transforming Lebanon (into) another Gaza,’ calling the situation in the embattled Palestinian territory a ‘non-stop nightmare.’

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon hit back at the UN chief, calling the General Assembly debate an ‘annual charade of hypocrisy.’

‘When the UN secretary general speaks about the release of our hostages, the UN assembly is silent, but when he speaks about the suffering in Gaza, he receives thunderous applause,’ Danon said.

Since last year’s annual gathering, when Sudan’s civil war and Russia’s Ukraine invasion dominated, the world has faced an explosion of crises.

The October 7 attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Israel and the ensuing violence in the Middle East has exposed deep divisions in the global body.

Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group think tank said he expected many leaders to ‘warn that the UN will become irrelevant globally if it cannot help make peace.’

With Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas expected to address the General Assembly this week, there could be combustible moments.

Abbas took his seat alongside the Palestinian delegation in alphabetical order for the first time after the delegation received upgraded privileges in the assembly in May.

On Tuesday, representatives of Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Iran and Algeria are slated to take the podium to press for a Gaza ceasefire after nearly one year of war.

‘The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable,’ Guterres said in his speech to the General Assembly, adding that ‘a growing number of governments and others feel entitled to a ‘get out of jail free’ card.’

Ukraine will also be on the agenda Tuesday when president Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a UN Security Council meeting on Russia’s war on Ukraine.

‘I invite all leaders and nations to continue supporting our joint efforts for a just and peaceful future,’ Zelensky told the UN on Monday.

‘Putin has stolen much already, but he will never steal the world’s future.’

It is unclear if the grand diplomatic gathering can achieve anything for the millions mired in conflict, poverty and climate crisis globally.

‘Any real diplomacy to reduce tensions will take place behind the scenes,’ Gowan said.

‘This may be an opportunity for Western and Arab diplomats to have some quiet conversations with the Iranians about the need to stop the regional situation spinning out of control.’

Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has called for an urgent meeting of Arab leaders on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly over the crisis in Lebanon.​
 

Lebanese take refuge in shelters after long trips fleeing Israeli bombing
AFP
Beirut, Lebanon
Published: 24 Sep 2024, 22: 52

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Rescuers rush to the scene of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Abbasiyeh on 24 September, 2024 AFP

Ali Berri never imagined it would take almost 14 hours to reach Beirut from his home in south Lebanon after he and his family decided to flee heavy Israeli air strikes.

It took "from 10:00 am until midnight -- the traffic was totally jammed", said Berri, 55, who fled with his wife, son and elderly neighbour from the Tyre area on Monday.

The trip would normally take a couple of hours at most.

"We hope that the war will ease so we can return to our homes because what me and my family went through yesterday is really war," he told AFP.

Hundreds of families woke up Tuesday morning in a hospitality training institute turned shelter in the Bir Hassan area of Beirut's southern suburbs after arduous journeys from the country's south the day before.

Israeli airstrikes began pounding south Lebanon on Monday morning, sending tens of thousands fleeing their homes, according to the United Nations, while Lebanese authorities said the death toll had soared to 558, including 50 children.

An AFP photographer saw hundreds of vehicles crawling along the highway that links southern Lebanon with the capital Beirut. Many carried families with children and the elderly, along with whatever belongings they could take.

Berri, a farmer and garbage truck driver, expressed hope that "associations, the state and anyone else" would help.

"There is real suffering," he said, putting aside a bag of bread and canned food for the family.

'A year of war'

Some people "spent the night on the streets, like my sisters and my wife's sisters", he added.

It was not the first he and his family have fled their homes, but this time was different, he said.

"I was displaced for around 20 days" in 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah last went to war, he said, "but that war was short, while now it is long."

Hezbollah has been trading near daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war, but the violence has spiralled dramatically in the past week.

"We've had a year of war and we don't know now when it will end," Berri said.

The Bir Hassan institute is the largest of a number of educational facilities that have opened their doors in Beirut and its surroundings to receive the displaced.

AFP saw families spread across three floors of one of the institute's buildings, with people resting in some rooms, while one woman was busy cleaning dust off the ground.

Others sat near windows looking out over the building's courtyard, or in the corners of long dark corridors.

Many appeared exhausted and refused to speak to journalists.

"The bombing intensified on Monday... everyone was leaving," said Abbas Mohammed, a football coach from the southern village of Harouf, as his young daughter played nearby.

Hopes to return

"After they bombed a place nearby we decided to do the same thing and we had no choice except to get on the motorbike with my wife and daughter," he told AFP, adding that the trip took seven hours.

Dozens of meals and bottles of water began to arrive, with scouts and volunteers from the Amal movement, a Hezbollah ally, handing them out to families.

Rami Najem, an Amal media official who is also with the group's emergency committee, was watching as people registered the names and needs of the displaced.

"Around 6,000 people came to this centre between 6:00 pm last night and 6:00 am this morning," he told AFP.

The displaced, some of whom had simply gathered in the streets or squares, were being distributed across several centres and given mattresses, said Najem, adding that the needs were enormous.

He described "basic needs just so people can sit down and sleep -- like pillows, blankets, medicine, babies' milk, nappies, food and water".

Zeinab Diab, 32, from the Nabatiyeh area, said she fled with her husband and four children, the youngest of whom is under a year old, from the village of Ebba "for the children's sake".

"Almost all the village was damaged, we didn't know where the bombing was coming from. We feel as if they are more brutal this time," she said, referring to the Israeli military.

"I hope at this moment to return to my village even if my home is flattened. I'll live in a tent, it's better than being displaced," she said.

"When you leave your home, you feel as if you are leaving your soul."​
 

Israeli airstrikes kill nearly 500 in Lebanon
Reuters
Jerusalem/Beirut
Published: 24 Sep 2024, 08: 59

1727227912700.png

Smokes rise, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon on 23 September 2024. Reuters

Israel's military said it launched airstrikes against Hezbollah sites in Lebanon on Monday, which Lebanese authorities said had killed 492 people and sent tens of thousands fleeing for safety in the country's deadliest day in decades.

After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since hostilities flared in October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to evacuate areas where it said the armed movement was storing weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a short video statement addressed to the Lebanese people.

"Israel's war is not with you, it's with Hezbollah. For too long Hezbollah has been using you as human shields," he said.

Families from south Lebanon loaded cars, vans and trucks with belongings and people, sometimes multiple generations in one vehicle. As bombs rained down, children crammed onto parents' laps and suitcases were tied to car roofs.

Highways north were gridlocked. "I grabbed all the important papers and we got out. Strikes all around us. It was terrifying," said Abed Afou, who was with his family, including three sons aged 6 to 13 and several other relatives. They sat in traffic as it crawled north.

They did not know where they would stay, he said, but just wanted to reach Beirut.

Some people escaped on foot. People carrying small bundles of belongings trekked northward on the beach near the Lebanese town of Tyre.

Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89 temporary shelters in schools and other facilities had been activated, with capacity for more than 26,000 people as civilians fled "Israeli atrocities".

After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to the northern frontier, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, also backed by Iran.

Israel's military said it struck Hezbollah in Lebanon's south, east and north, including "launchers, command posts and terrorist infrastructure." The Israeli Air Force struck approximately 1,600 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, it said.

Lebanon's health ministry said at least 492 people had been killed, including 35 children, and 1,645 wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon's highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The fighting has raised fears that the U.S., Israel's close ally, and Iran will be sucked into a wider war.

Saudi Arabia expressed deep concern on Monday and urged all parties to exercise restraint, state news agency SPA reported.

A senior U.S. State Department official said the United States does not support a cross-border escalation between Israel and Hezbollah and that Washington was going to discuss "concrete ideas" with allies and partners to prevent the war from broadening.

Israeli officials have said the recent uptick in airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon is designed to force the Iran-aligned group to agree to a diplomatic solution.

The U.S. official, briefing reporters in New York on condition of anonymity, pushed back on the Israeli position, saying the Biden administration was focused on "reducing tensions ... and breaking the cycle of strike-counterstrike."

Conflict 'peak'

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday marked a "significant peak" in the nearly year-long conflict.

"On this day we have taken out of order tens of thousands of rockets and precise munition. What Hezbollah has built over a period of 20 years since the second Lebanon War is in fact being destroyed by the IDF," he said in a statement, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

On Monday evening Israel launched a strike on Beirut's southern suburbs aimed at senior Hezbollah leader Ali Karaki, the head of the southern front. Hezbollah later said he was safe and had moved to a secure location.

But Hamas' armed wing said its field commander in southern Lebanon, Mahmoud al Nader, was killed in an Israeli air strike.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement that Israeli strikes had hit long-range cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets, short-range rockets and explosive drones.

In response, Hezbollah said it launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern Israel.

Sirens warning of Hezbollah rocket fire sounded across northern Israel, including in the port city of Haifa, and in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, the military said.

About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of the cross-border fighting. Gallant said the campaign would continue until the residents had returned to their homes. Hezbollah for its part has vowed to fight until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hagari said Hezbollah put weaponry "inside Lebanese villages and civilian homes, and intended to fire them toward civilians in Israel while endangering the Lebanese civilian population."

Hezbollah has not commented on the assertion that it has hidden weapons in houses, which Reuters could not independently verify, but it has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.

The strikes have redoubled the pressure on the group, which last week suffered heavy losses when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.

The operation was widely blamed on Israel, which has not confirmed nor denied responsibility.

In New York, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel wanted to drag the Middle East into a full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

"It is Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict," he told journalists after his arrival in New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly, saying the consequences of such instability would be irreversible.​
 
Gents, Gaza is gone and now Israel is being demolished by Iran. If the US don't pull Iran onto its side by shoving trillions down their throat, Israel's history!

Barely 7 million Israeli's pitted against 200 million Shia's. US has no leadership nor diplomacy to try to resolve this situation.

You all know the outcome here. Iran's already told all the 200k Persian Jews in Israel to come back home ASAP.

What to do now?

@Vsdoc
 
Gents, Gaza is gone and now Israel is being demolished by Iran. If the US don't pull Iran onto its side by shoving trillions down their throat, Israel's history!

Barely 7 million Israeli's pitted against 200 million Shia's. US has no leadership nor diplomacy to try to resolve this situation.

You all know the outcome here. Iran's already told all the 200k Persian Jews in Israel to come back home ASAP.

What to do now?

@Vsdoc

I think my reply on the other thread fits this one as well.

Issue is 200 million Shia still are outnumbered heavily by Sunni military powers in the ME itself. And I am not counting Pakistan here.

The Iranians know that the war against the Jews is just the precursor of the real war to come.

Payback for Al Qadisiya. Its hardwired into our DNA.
 
I think my reply on the other thread fits this one as well.

Issue is 200 million Shia still are outnumbered heavily by Sunni military powers in the ME itself. And I am not counting Pakistan here.

The Iranians know that the war against the Jews is just the precursor of the real war to come.

Payback for Al Qadisiya. Its hardwired into our DNA.
What Qadisiya doc? The poor sunni are already decimated. They can’t breathe in da Sy-Raaq nor Lebanon nor Yemen. Sawdi Judea or the GCC can’t hold a candle to the power of Iran. Now these cunning irani’s have absolutely fukked Israel up big time just by moving their puppets.

This is becoming a joke. Pakistan bichara ghareeb is isolated. Turkey is bankrupt.

There ain’t nothing nor anybody left in front of Iran to control them.

US don’t wanna do jack shiit either and I totally understand their position. No American wanna die for jhoottay Semitic causes.

I hope Iran moderates itself and does not dismantle any more countries vurna bohot bura ho ga.

Millions of ghareeb will die for nothing. 90% irani’s are totally secular and they should moderate Irans imperialism ASAP.

That guy Immortal is in Tehran right now and he said it that nobody wearing hijab in Tehran or Isfahan or Shiraz or Tabriz…..morality police totally disbanded by this Pezeshkian implant.

Irani’s not religious at all bhai. These guys are all extreme Persian nationalists.

Chuunu munnu Israel they’re messing up just outta one upmanship/ arrogance.

The US has no leadership left to be able to pull Iran aside and award them the title of king of Middle East, annd put Israel under their protection, otherwise it’s pretty much already official.
 

Refrain from full-scale war
World leaders call on Israel at UN General Assembly

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World leaders lined up at the United Nations on Tuesday to call on Israel to refrain from a full-scale war in Lebanon, with the organization's chief warning the situation was on the "brink."

The UN General Assembly, the high point of the international diplomatic calendar, comes after Lebanese authorities said Israeli strikes had killed 558 people -- 50 of them children.

"Full-scale war is not in anyone's interest. Even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible," US President Joe Biden said in his farewell address to the global body.

Biden's remarks drew disappointment from Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib who said they were "not promising" and "would not solve the Lebanese problem," as he estimated that the number of people displaced by Israel's strikes has likely soared to reach half a million.

"We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said when he opened the gathering.

Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said his country was "not eager" for a ground invasion of Lebanon. "We don't want to send our boys to fight in a foreign country," he said.

It is unclear what progress can be made to defuse the situation in Lebanon, with efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza -- which Israel has relentlessly pounded since October 2023 -- coming to nothing.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of dragging the entire region "into war."

"Not only children but also the UN system is dying in Gaza," Erdogan said in a scathing speech.

European Council President Charles Michel said that Israel had the right to exist and defend itself but without inflicting "collective punishment" on civilians living in areas targeted by its military.

President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran -- which backs Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza -- condemned "senseless and incomprehensible" inaction by the UN against Israel.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy also sounded the alarm over the escalating violence in Lebanon.

"I am very worried about the risk of escalation, and this breaking into a wider regional conflict," he told AFP as Britain announced it was deploying military units to Cyprus to assist with any evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon.

Responding to criticism of Israel, Danon called the General Assembly debate an "annual charade of hypocrisy."

Since last year's annual gathering, when Sudan's civil war and Russia's Ukraine invasion dominated, the world has faced an explosion of crises.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas took his seat alongside the Palestinian delegation, placed in alphabetical order in the General Assembly for the first time on Tuesday after the delegation received upgraded privileges in May.

At the rostrum, Jordan's King Abdullah II on Tuesday ruled out the forced displacement by Israel of Palestinians to his country, which he said would be a "war crime."​
 

Israeli warplanes hit Lebanon again as Hezbollah takes aim at Tel Aviv
REUTERS
Published :
Sep 25, 2024 22:02
Updated :
Sep 25, 2024 22:02

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Firefighter plane dropping fire retardant on burning trees as it flies through smoke, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in northern Israel, on Wednesday -Reuters photo

Israel widened its airstrikes in Lebanon on Wednesday and shot down a missile that the armed group Hezbollah said it had fired at the Mossad spy agency near Tel Aviv, ratcheting up the conflict between the two arch-foes.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed to have targeted the Mossad headquarters with what it described as a ballistic missile - the first time in nearly a year of warfare that Tel Aviv, in central Israel, has been so threatened.

World leaders meanwhile expressed concern that the conflict - running in parallel to Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas - was rapidly intensifying as the death toll in Lebanon rose and thousands of people fled their homes.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington and its allies were working tirelessly to avoid a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah.

"Risk of escalation in the region is acute..The best answer is diplomacy, and our coordinated efforts are vital to preventing further escalation," Blinken said at a meeting with Gulf Arab state officials and ministers in New York.

Israeli airstrikes this week have targeted Hezbollah leaders and hit hundreds of sites deep inside Lebanon while the group has fired barrages of rockets into Israel.

Wednesday morning's Hezbollah strike was the first time since the war broke out last October that one of its missiles had been sighted above Tel Aviv - Israel's commercial hub and seen as a target with the potential to trigger an escalation in Israeli action.

The head of Israel's northern command, Major General Ori Gordin, had told troops on Tuesday their country had entered a new phase of its campaign and must be prepared for action, though it was not clear if his remarks were a reference to a possible ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it was calling up two additional reserve brigades to the northern border to carry out operational activities.

"This will enable the continuation of combat against the Hezbollah terrorist organization, the defence of the State of Israel, and create the conditions to enable the residents of northern Israel to return to their homes," it said in a statement.

DEADLIEST DAY

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have fled their homes and hospitals have filled with the wounded since an intensification of bombing on Monday, when more than 550 people were killed in Lebanon's deadliest day since the end of a 1975-1990 civil war.

There was no let up on Wednesday. Israel said its warplanes were carrying out extensive strikes in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold further north.

Hezbollah said in a statement it had fired a ballistic missile targeting Mossad headquarters "in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip...and in defence of Lebanon and its people".

Reuters could not independently confirm the type of rocket fired.

Israeli spokesman Nadav Shoshani said he could not confirm what Hezbollah's target was when it fired the missile from a village in Lebanon.

"The result was a heavy missile, going towards Tel Aviv, towards civilian areas in Tel Aviv. The Mossad headquarters is not in that area," he said.

Israeli officials said the missile fired at Tel Aviv was shot down with a David's Sling missile, a surface-to-air missile designed to destroy tactical ballistic missiles at low altitude.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the United States was deeply concerned by the reports of a rocket attack aimed at Mossad, but it still believed a diplomatic solution could be found to ease the violence.

Hezbollah blamed Mossad for assassinations of its leaders.

It has also accused the spy agency of carrying out an operation last week in which booby-trapped pagers and radios of Hezbollah members exploded, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.

At least 51 people were killed and at least 223 wounded in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Wednesday at five different locations, the Lebanese health minister said.

EXPANDED TARGETS

Israel has expanded the zones it has been striking since Tuesday night, with attacks for the first time on the beach resort town of Jiyyeh just south of Beirut and Maaysrah.

The strikes also took place in Bint Jbeil, Tebnin and Ain Qana in the south, the village of Joun in the Chouf district near the southern city of Sidon, and Maaysrah in northern Keserwan district.

As many as half a million people may have been displaced in Lebanon, its foreign minister said. In Beirut, thousands of displaced people who fled from southern Lebanon were sheltering in schools and other buildings.

More than 60 people were evacuated by the Lebanese Army early on Wednesday from the Christian town of Alma Chaab, along the border with Israel, following strikes overnight.

"At least two houses were completely destroyed but thankfully they were empty and we had no deaths," said Milad Eid, a resident.

Israeli authorities said the Galilee region of northern Israel was hit by heavy Hezbollah barrages on Wednesday morning.

In the Israeli town of Safed, an assisted living facility was hit but no injuries were reported, the authorities said.

SOLIDARITY WITH HAMAS

Near-daily exchanges of fire in the Israel-Lebanon border area started after war broke out last October between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Israel's southern border, with Hezbollah saying it was acting in solidarity with its ally Hamas.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been evacuated from their homes near the border, and the government has made their safe return an aim of the war, setting the stage for a long conflict. Hezbollah has said it will not back down until the Gaza war ends.​
 

Israel rejects truce proposal from US
Vows to keep fighting Hezbollah ‘until victory’; 28 more killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon

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Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following an Israeli strike amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Tyre, Lebanon yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Israel yesterday rejected global calls for a ceasefire with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, defying its biggest ally the US and pressing ahead with strikes that have killed hundreds in Lebanon and heightened fears of an all-out regional war.

An Israeli warplane struck the edges of the capital Beirut, killing two people and wounding 15, including a woman in critical condition, Lebanon's health ministry said. That took deaths from hits overnight and during yesterday to 28.

The strike killed the head of one of Hezbollah's air force units, Mohammad Surur, two security sources said.

Smoke was seen rising after the hit near an area where several Hezbollah facilities are located and many civilians also live and work. Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV broadcast images of a damaged upper floor of a building.

On the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon, the army staged an exercise simulating a ground invasion - a potential next stage after relentless airstrikes and explosions of communications devices.

Israel has vowed to secure its north and return thousands of citizens to communities there who have evacuated since Hezbollah launched a campaign of cross-border strikes last year in solidarity with Palestinian groups fighting in Gaza.

"There will be no ceasefire in the north," Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X. "We will continue to fight against the Hezbollah terrorist organization with all our strength until victory and the safe return of the residents."

Those comments dashed hopes for a swift settlement after Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, whose government includes Hezbollah elements, had expressed hope for a ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, heading to New York to address the United Nations, said he had not yet given his response to the truce proposal but had instructed the army to fight on. Hardliners in his government said Israel should reject any truce and keep hitting Hezbollah.

Israeli airstrikes overnight hit around 75 Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and ready-to-fire launchers.

The Israeli military said dozens of Hezbollah targets were attacked, including terrorists, military buildings and weapons depots, in several areas yesterday morning.

Around 45 projectiles were fired from Lebanon towards the western Galilee area, some of which were intercepted with the rest falling on open ground, said the Israeli military.

The relentless fighting has led some neighbouring countries to worry about the safety of their citizens living in Lebanon. Turkey is making preparations for the possible evacuation of its citizens and foreign nationals from Lebanon, a Turkish defence ministry source said yesterday.​
 
Iran can keep up the pressure on Israel till the cows come home. The issue now is that since Irans brought the war inside Israel, sitting comfortably 1200 kms away, the west will try to bribe Iran by shoving money down their gob!

This is inevitable as a ruse to try to convince Iran to drop the hatchet.

All other Muslim countries just watching the show and commenting like strangers to the situation.

Most of these guys are bewildered and disturbed by the events as evident from the comments of our migrants on the other forum.

Pakistani bicharon ko to kuchh ne samajh aa ra on what to even say….😝

I bet money most of the Muslim countries are worried about their own futures now on what might happen to all the toady put into power by the west and totally dependent on western life support.

Irans a serious threat to the global order. Small time puppu China is observing and learning.

To me and my observation there’s not one weapon in the Chinese arsenal that will work against the western juggernaut. Not one! And worse yet Russian military industrial complex has been humiliated big time in Ukraine. Russians have used and spent everything they had on Ukraine and barely have the edge. Russian arsenals are empty. Putin has used everything he had, except his worthless nukes.

@Vsdoc
 
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Israel vows to keep fighting Hezbollah ‘until victory’
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 27 September, 2024, 01:05

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People check the destruction in an area targeted overnight by Israeli airstrikes in el-Karak in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, on Thursday. | AFP photo

Israel flatly rejected on Thursday a push led by key backer the United States for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, as it vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah militants ‘until victory’.

Israeli aerial bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon has killed hundreds of people this week, while the militant group has hit back with barrages of rockets.

‘There will be no ceasefire in the north. We will continue to fight against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation with all our strength until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,’ Katz said in a post on social media platform X.

Moments earlier, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying he had ‘not even responded’ to the truce proposal, and that he had ordered the military ‘to continue the fighting with full force’.

The United States, France and other allies issued a joint statement calling for a 21-day halt in the fighting, with president Joe Biden, his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and other allies meeting on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The situation in Lebanon has become ‘intolerable’ and ‘is in nobody’s interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon,’ the statement said.

On the ground, there was no let-up in the violence.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had struck ‘approximately 75 terror targets’ in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon and the south, both Hezbollah bastions that have seen a huge exodus people fleeing their homes in recent days.

One strike near the ancient city of Baalbek killed at least nine people, Lebanon’s health ministry said, as the official National News Agency described the overnight bombing of the area as ‘the most violent’ of recent days.

‘It was indescribable, it was one of the worst nights we’ve lived through. You think there’s just a second between life and death,’ said Fadia Rafic Yaghi, 70, who owns a shop in Baalbek.

The Israeli military also said around 45 rockets had been fired from Lebanon, adding that some had been intercepted while others had landed in unpopulated areas.

Hezbollah said that it had targeted defence industry complexes near the city of Haifa in northern Israel, saying it was ‘defending Lebanon and its people’, after rocketing the same complex previously this week.

Israel earlier this month said it was shifting its focus from Gaza, where it has been fighting a war with Hamas since the October 7 attack, to securing its border with Lebanon.

Hamas ally Hezbollah has been fighting Israeli troops across the Lebanon border since October, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee their homes.

Netanyahu announced earlier this month that ensuring the safe return of Israelis to their homes in the north was a priority.

He delayed his departure for New York until Thursday, where he is due to address the General Assembly.

On Wednesday, Israel’s army chief told soldiers to prepare for a possible ground offensive against Hezbollah, as two reserve brigades were called up ‘for operational missions in the northern arena’.

‘We are attacking all day, both to prepare the ground for the possibility of your entry, but also to continue striking Hezbollah,’ Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said.

For many on both sides of the border, the violence has sparked bitter memories of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel that killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

According to the UN, Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has forced 90,000 people to flee their homes in traditional Hezbollah strongholds to safer areas elsewhere in the tiny Mediterranean country.

Hezbollah had on Wednesday said it targeted Israel’s Mossad spy agency headquarters on Tel Aviv’s outskirts — the first time it has claimed a ballistic missile firing in almost a year of cross-border clashes sparked by the Gaza war.

Tel Aviv resident Hedva Fadlon, 61, said: ‘The situation is difficult. We feel the pressure and the tension. I don’t think anyone in the world would like to live like this.’

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the Middle East was facing a ‘full-scale catastrophe’ and warned Tehran would back Lebanon by ‘all means’ if Israel escalated its offensive.

The Israeli military said Wednesday it had hit more than 2,000 Hezbollah targets over the previous three days, including 60 Hezbollah intelligence sites.

Israeli strikes killed at least 558 people on Monday — by far the deadliest day of violence in Lebanon not just in the latest escalation, but since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Israel’s bombardment on Wednesday killed another 72 people and wounded 400 more, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Prior to the current escalation, diplomats had said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to calming regional tensions, including in Lebanon.

But Qatar, a key broker in the stalled talks to end the Gaza war, said it was unaware of a ‘direct link’ between the two.

‘I’m not aware of a direct link, but obviously both mediations are hugely overlapping when you are talking about the same parties, for the most part, that are taking part,’ foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.​
 
Look at this pathetic display of Indian sucking up. This has sweet fukk all to do with religion or indoctrination nor rhetoric. Hard to believe how brainwashed Indian intellectuals are? If anybody here observes this Indian fella's toady behavior, it gives us all an insight on how Indians just accept the status quo and refuse to stand up for themselves no? is this colonial legacy? It also tells us that India is not a nation. It's a colonized continent with a million different nationalities living over there with no coherence other than capitalism. 0.0000001% multi billionaires running the narrative and their economy. Pakistani elite also same same:

 
Hopefully the Arab countries will be united against Israel because of Israhell's transgressions.

Saudi and UAE's relations are flourishing with Israel. Which other countries will ally against Israel which can make impact. After assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Iran is also gone on Back foot. No Islamic country has guts to mess with Israel.
 

Israel strikes Hezbollah bastion in Beirut
Agence France-Presse. Beirut, Lebanon 28 September, 2024, 04:50

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Rescuers stand on the rubble of a builiding destroyed in an Israeli air strike in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood of Beirut's southern suburbs on September 27, 2024. | AFP Photo

Israel conducted a wave of air strikes on the south of Lebanon's capital Beirut on Friday that it said targeted Hezbollah's headquarters, warning of more to come as it told civilians to leave the densely populated neighbourhood.

Friday's strikes sent huge clouds of smoke soaring above the area and were heard across the Mediterranean city, sparking panic in the residential area that has been the Iran-backed movement's main bastion for decades.

They were by far the fiercest strikes to hit Beirut since Israel shifted its focus from the war in Gaza to Lebanon this week, pounding Hezbollah strongholds around the country and killing hundreds of people.

Hezbollah started fighting Israeli troops along the Lebanon border a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed in an address to world leaders on Friday that there would be no-let up in the battle against Hezbollah until Israel's northern border was secured.

‘Oh my God, what strikes. I felt like the building was going to collapse on top of me,’ said Abir Hammoud, a teacher in her 40s who lives in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Ahmad Ahmad, in his 60s, said he fled his house in the southern suburbs after the strikes, which he said felt ‘like an earthquake’.

Nasrallah 'fine'

A source close to Hezbollah said the strikes levelled six buildings, and according to a preliminary toll, six people were killed and 91 wounded.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the strike targeted ‘the central headquarters’ of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of the city.

Israeli television networks reported that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was the target of the strike, though the source close to Hezbollah said he was ‘fine’.

Nasrallah enjoys cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters, is equipped with a formidable arsenal far bigger and more modern than the national army's, and holds sway over Lebanon's institutions.

He has rarely been seen in public since his movement fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel, living in hiding to avoid assassination.

After the Beirut strikes, Hezbollah said it had fired more rockets into Israel ‘in defence of Lebanon and its people’.

The Israeli military said a Hezbollah rocket had hit a house and a car in the northern city of Safed but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Rear Admiral Hagari warned Israel would not allow Hezbollah backer Iran to use Beirut airport to transfer weapons to its ally.

He also said the military would attack ‘in a short while’ three buildings Hezbollah was using to store weapons, calling on residents to evacuate them.

‘The force of the explosions as a result of the missiles which are under the buildings may cause damage to the buildings and even their collapse,’ Hagari said.

Deadliest in a generation

The UN has repeatedly condemned the sharp escalation of violence in Lebanon.

‘We are witnessing the deadliest period in Lebanon in a generation, and many express their fear that this is just the beginning,’ the UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, said.

In Israel, too, many were weary of the violence.

‘It is incredibly exhausting to be in this situation. We don't really know what's going to happen, there’s talk of a ground offensive or a major operation,’ said Lital Shmuelovich, a physiotherapy student.

In New York, Netanyahu also addressed the war in Gaza, saying that Israel's military would continue to fight Hamas until it achieved ‘total victory’.

Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink of all-out war.

But despite months of mediation efforts, a Gaza ceasefire remains elusive.

Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,534 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

Change the rules

The Lebanon violence has raised fears of wider turmoil in the Middle East, with Iran-backed militants across the region vowing to keep up their fight with Israel.

Netanyahu took aim at Iran in his UN General Assembly address, saying: ‘I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran. If you strike us, we will strike you.’

He added: ‘There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that's true of the entire Middle East.’

Analysts have said Iran would try to resist being dragged into the conflict.

But following the Beirut strikes, Iran's embassy in Lebanon said: ‘This reprehensible crime... represents a dangerous escalation that changes the rules of the game.’

Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, later condemned the strikes, branding them a ‘flagrant war crime’.​
 

Israeli strikes kill 92 in Lebanon in past 24 hours: ministry
AFP
Published: 27 Sep 2024, 12: 39

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This picture shows the destruction in a area targeted overnight by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon's town of Saksakiyeh, on 26 September, 2024. AFP

Israeli strikes have killed 92 people in Lebanon over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said late Thursday.

The ministry said in a series of statements that Israeli raids killed 40 people in towns and villages in the south, 48 in two eastern regions and four in the east of central Mount Lebanon Governorate.

Overall it said 153 people were injured.​
 

Israel kills Hezbollah chief in Beirut
Agence France-Presse . Beirut 28 September, 2024, 15:51


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Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addresses a ceremony on the eve of the tenth day of the mourning period of Muharram, which marks the day of Ashura, in a southern suburb of the capital Beirut on October 11, 2016. | AFP file photo.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been killed, the Lebanese movement said Saturday, dealing a seismic blow to the Iran-backed group that has been engaged in a year of cross-border hostilities with Israel.

Hezbollah’s statement came after Israel’s military said it had killed Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, in a move that could destabilise Lebanon as a whole.

Iran, which arms and finances Hezbollah, said a senior member of its Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed in the same strike.

‘Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, has joined his great, immortal martyr comrades whom he led for about 30 years,’ Hezbollah said in a statement.

It said he was killed with other group members ‘following the treacherous Zionist strike on the southern suburbs’ of Beirut.

AFP journalists heard a passer-by scream ‘Oh my God!’, and women weeping in the streets after Hezbollah announced the news.

Rarely seen in public, Nasrallah had enjoyed cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters, and was the only man in Lebanon with the power to wage war or make peace.

‘Hassan Nasrallah is dead,’ Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani announced earlier on X.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, in a televised briefing, called Nasrallah ‘one of the greatest enemies of the State of Israel of all time’ and added: ‘His elimination makes the world a safer place.’

In Tehran, posters of Nasrallah were erected bearing the slogan ‘Hezbollah is alive’.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani posted on X that Nasrallah’s ‘sacred goal will be realised in the liberation of Quds (Jerusalem), God willing’.

Earlier, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned what he called Israel’s ‘short-sighted and stupid policy’, without referring to Nasrallah’s fate.

Hezbollah in Lebanon began low-intensity cross-border attacks a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas on Saturday condemned Nasrallah’s killing as a ‘cowardly terrorist act’.

Israel has shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing has killed more than 700 people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, as cross-border exchanges escalated over the past week.

Most of those Lebanese deaths came on Monday, the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

The United Nations said around 118,000 people have been displaced.

Israel’s military said ‘most of the senior leaders of Hezbollah have been eliminated’, and added that it had hit more than 140 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since Friday night.

The military continued to pound Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold into Saturday, sending panicked families fleeing.

An AFP photographer said dozens of buildings have been destroyed.

The blasts that rocked southern Beirut late Friday were the fiercest there since Israel and Hezbollah last went to war in 2006.

In the Haret Hreik neighbourhood, an AFP photographer saw craters up to five metres (16 feet) wide.

Middle East expert James Dorsey described Friday’s attack as ‘very sophisticated’, adding it ‘demonstrates not only significant technological capacity but just how deeply Israel has penetrated Hezbollah’.

Shoshani said Saturday there was ‘still a way to go’ in Israel’s fight against Hezbollah, adding that it was believed to have ‘tens of thousands of rockets’.

Some Israelis hailed the reports of Nasrallah’s death.

‘Absolutely fantastic news, it should have been done a long time ago,’ said David Shalev in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv.

He said it sent a clear message to Israel’s foes: ‘Don’t screw with us.’

After Friday’s heavy strikes, Israel issued fresh warnings for people to leave part of the densely populated southern Dahiyeh suburbs before dawn.

Hundreds of families spent the night outside, in central Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square or along the seaside boardwalk.

‘I didn’t even pack any clothes, I never thought we would leave like this and suddenly find ourselves on the streets,’ south Beirut resident Rihab Naseef, 56, told AFP.

Israel’s military also announced strikes Saturday on the Bekaa area in eastern Lebanon and on the south.

It said a surface-to-surface missile from Lebanon fell in an open area in central Israel and another was intercepted in the north.

Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on Kabri in northern Israel, and later said it launched ‘a salvo of Fadi-3 rockets’ towards the Ramat David airbase in northern Israel, which it has targeted before.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah until the northern border with Lebanon is secured.

‘Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safe,’ he said.

Israel has raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.

‘We must avoid a regional war at all costs,’ UN chief Antonio Guterres told world leaders, again appealing for a ceasefire.

Diplomats have said efforts to end the war in Gaza were key to halting the fighting in Lebanon and bringing the region back from the brink.

The Lebanon violence has raised fears of a wider spillover, with Iran-backed militants across the Middle East vowing to keep fighting Israel.

Netanyahu addressed Iran in his UN General Assembly speech, saying: ‘If you strike us, we will strike you.’

He added: ‘There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.’

Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported General Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of the Guards’ operations, died in the strike that killed Nasrallah.​
 
Nasrallahs successor has already taken command.

Iran will move a chess piece forward soon, toward a checkmate move.

There’s no way in hell Iran will accept anything else.

It’s all or nothing! Killing leaders of the resistance willy nilly is not going to save Israel.

This is just Israeli desperation
 
Saudi and UAE's relations are flourishing with Israel. Which other countries will ally against Israel which can make impact. After assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Iran is also gone on Back foot. No Islamic country has guts to mess with Israel.
Iran has taken a step back/ time out and is analyzing the evolving chess board. Fresh eyes and younger minds in the IRGC are giving it a good look over, a new war plan being formulated.

Iran could pull yet another Oct 7th any moment.......but a much bigger/ far more sinister event this time around.

This is not a religious war bhai.......This is just Iran doing what it always does. Fukks with anyone standing in its way. Doesn't matter who or why or how.
 
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Nasrallahs successor has already taken command.

Iran will move a chess piece forward soon, toward a checkmate move.

There’s no way in hell Iran will accept anything else.

It’s all or nothing! Killing leaders of the resistance willy nilly is not going to save Israel.

This is just Israeli desperation
The brutal killing of Hezbollah chief is just the beginning of the end for Israel. I am sure the Iranians and Yemenis will put an end to the pathetic shitty life of Israel.
 
Iran has taken a step back/ time out and is analyzing the evolving chess board. Fresh eyes and younger minds in the IRGC are giving it a good look over, a new war plan being formulated.

Iran could pull yet another Oct 7th any moment.......but a much bigger/ far more sinister event this time around.

This is not a religious war bhai.......This is just Iran doing what it always does. Fukks with anyone standing in its way. Doesn't matter who or why or how.

What you say is very correct but verses from Holi books are invoked for political purpose whenever it is required. Islamic brotherhood is one such Fraud . They fight among themselves and unite on the name of Islamic brotherhood and opposes Israel and India by invoking the verses from Holi book.
 

NASRALLAH’S KILLING IN ISRAELI STRIKES
What will Israel, Iran, Hezbollah do next?

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The last 72 hours in the Middle East – in which Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and continued to bombard the Iran-backed group across Lebanon – have once more ratcheted up fears that this long-running conflict could spiral into a wider regional war. Here's what we know so far and where things might go next.

ESCALATING CONFLICT

Israel has pounded what it says are Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and elsewhere in the country on Friday, Saturday and yesterday, including the attack on the capital's southern suburbs that killed Nasrallah and another top figure Nabil Kaouk.

Lebanese civilians say they cannot heed warnings from Israel's military to avoid places where Hezbollah is operating, because the group is highly secretive.

The US sees the possibility of a limited ground incursion into Lebanon as Israel moves forces to its northern border, CNN reported earlier. But the US officials stressed that Israel does not appear to have made a decision on whether to carry out a ground incursion.

WHAT WILL HEZBOLLAH OR IRAN DO?

In the wake of Nasrallah's killing – and the attack on pagers and walkie-talkies – Hezbollah's remaining leaders are likely to be assessing how to meet, communicate and respond. But analysts say the setbacks faced by the group are unlikely to leave it completely weakened.

"Hezbollah has taken the biggest blow to its military infrastructure since its inception," said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and author of "Hezbollahland."

The group, however, still retains skilled commanders, as well as many of its most powerful assets – including precision-guided missiles and long-range missiles that could inflict significant damage to Israel's military and civilian infrastructure, said Ghaddar.

But the latest development raises the potential for a shift. Hezbollah will almost certainly respond, according to Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official.

Another key question is the extent to which Iran could get involved.

Iran's embassy in Lebanon in a social media post Friday called Nasrallah's killing a "serious escalation that changes the rules of the game," and said its perpetrator "will be punished and disciplined appropriately."

The Iranian envoy to the UN on Saturday also requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council to "condemn Israel's actions in the strongest possible terms."

Pointing to the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah, and Israel and Iran, former US State Department Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller told CNN: "None of these wars of attrition are going to end any time soon… there are no transformative, diplomatic Hollywood endings."​
 
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