Powerful Iraqi pro-Iran group says US troops must leave
“We also haven’t seen the necessary seriousness from the Iraqi government to remove them,” the spokesman, Abu Ali Al-Askari, added in a statement
Updated 08 May 2024
AFP
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s powerful Kataeb Hezbollah on Tuesday renewed its call for US troops to withdraw from Iraq, months after the Iran-backed armed group suspended attacks against American forces.
Washington and Baghdad have been engaged in talks over the presence of US troops in Iraq, who are stationed there as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition.
A spokesman for Kataeb Hezbollah said in a statement that the group “did not perceive the American enemy’s seriousness in withdrawing the troops and dismantling its spy bases in Iraq.”
“We also haven’t seen the necessary seriousness from the Iraqi government to remove them,” the spokesman, Abu Ali Al-Askari, added in a statement.
The United States considers Kataeb Hezbollah a “terrorist” group and has repeatedly targeted its operations in recent strikes.
During more than three months, as regional tensions soared over the devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, US troops were targeted more than 165 times in the Middle East, mainly in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-backed groups including Kataeb Hezbollah, had claimed the majority of the attacks.
But a deadly drone attack in late January triggered retaliation, with US forces launching dozens of strikes against Tehran-backed groups, including Kataeb Hezbollah.
Three US personnel were killed in the January 28 drone strike in Jordan, near the Syrian border.
Two days later, Kataeb Hezbollah said it was suspending its attacks on US forces.
In February the United States and Iraq resumed talks on the future of the US-led coalition’s presence in Iraq, following a request by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani who has been calling for an end to the coalition’s mission.
The United States has some 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group.
The coalition was deployed to Iraq at the government’s request in 2014 to help combat IS, which had taken over vast swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
Israel tells its troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon
Israel said Wednesday its air force had struck some 280 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon by early afternoon, including launchers used to fire rockets on the northern Israeli cities of Safed and Nahariya
Updated 26 September 2024
AP
TEL AVIV, Israel: Israel is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon, its army chief said Wednesday as Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets across the border and a missile aimed at Tel Aviv that was the militant group’s deepest strike yet.
Addressing troops on the northern border, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Israel’s punishing airstrikes this week were designed to ”prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
Israel says it targeted Hezbollah weapons and rocket launchers in attacks that have killed more than 600 people, at least a quarter of them women and children, according to Lebanese health officials.
In an apparent reference to the missile fired at Tel Aviv, Halevi told troops: “Today, Hezbollah expanded its range of fire, and later today, they will receive a very strong response. Prepare yourselves.”
It was not clear whether he was referring to a ground operation, airstrikes or some other form of retaliation against Hezbollah, which is Lebanon’s strongest political force and, with backing from Iran, is widely considered the top paramilitary group in the Arab world.
The Israeli military has said in recent days it had no immediate plans for a ground invasion, but Halevi’s comments were the strongest yet suggesting troops could move in. Israeli said Wednesday it would activate two reserve brigades for missions in the north — another sign that Israel plans tougher action.
In the southern Israeli city of Eilat, a building at the port was struck by a drone, an attack that injured two people and was claimed by an umbrella group for Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. A second drone was intercepted, the Israeli military said.
Footage aired on Israeli media showed a plume of smoke in the area and at least one damaged building. The army said the drones were identified “approaching from the East.”
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have steadily escalated since war broke out 11 months ago between Israel and Hamas, another Iran-backed militant group. Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas. Israel has responded with increasingly heavy airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.
Nearly a year of fighting had already displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border before the recent escalation.
Israel has vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure its citizens can return to their homes in the north, while Hezbollah has said it will keep up its rocket attacks until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, something that appears increasingly remote.
To allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes, “we are preparing the process of a maneuver,” Halevi told troops.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel and Hezbollah to step back, saying all-out war would be disastrous for the region and its people.
In New York for the annual UN General Assembly, Blinken said the US was working with other partners on a temporary ceasefire plan to reduce tensions and allow Israelis and Lebanese to return to their homes in border areas.
US officials say they are floating ideas but have not been specific. Some may be discussed at a special UN Security Council meeting on Lebanon that France called for later Wednesday.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 72 people were killed Wednesday in the continuing Israeli strikes, raising the death toll from the past three days to 636, with more than 2,000 wounded.
At Dar Al Amal hospital in the eastern city of Baalbek, Soumaya Moussawi lay in bed with her head bandaged and face bruised.
She had been sitting outside with relatives when warplanes started striking in the distance, she said.
“Then suddenly it hit next to us. We were all thrown in different directions,” she said. Two cousins and her father were killed, and another cousin was badly wounded.
This week has been the deadliest in Lebanon since the bruising 2006 monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said it fired a Qader 1 ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, which it blames for a recent string of targeted killings of its top commanders and for an attack last week in which explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies killed dozens of people and wounded thousands, including many Hezbollah members.
Israeli military officials said they intercepted a surface-to-surface missile that set off air-raid sirens in Tel Aviv and across central Israel. There were no reports of casualties or damage. The military said it struck the launch site in southern Lebanon.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said the missile fired Wednesday had a “heavy warhead” but declined to elaborate or confirm it was the type described by Hezbollah. He dismissed Hezbollah’s claim of targeting the Mossad headquarters just north of Tel Aviv as “psychological warfare.”
The Israeli military said it was the first time a projectile fired from Lebanon had reached central Israel. Hezbollah claimed to have targeted an intelligence base near Tel Aviv last month in an aerial attack, but there was no confirmation. Hamas repeatedly targeted Tel Aviv in the opening months of the war in Gaza.
The launch ratcheted up hostilities in a region that appeared to be teetering toward another all-out war, even as Israel continues to battle Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The Iranian-made Qader is a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile with multiple types and payloads. It can carry an explosive payload of up to 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds), according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iranian officials have described the liquid-fueled missile as having a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles).
Israel said Wednesday its air force had struck some 280 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon by early afternoon, including launchers used to fire rockets on the northern Israeli cities of Safed and Nahariya.
Fleeing families have flocked to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, sleeping in schools turned into shelters, as well as in cars, parks and along the beach. Some sought to leave the country, causing a traffic jam at the border with Syria.
The United Nations said more than 90,000 people have been displaced by five days of Israeli strikes. In all, 200,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel nearly a year ago, drawing Israeli retaliation, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Hezbollah’s latest strikes included dozens of rockets fired Wednesday into northern Israel, the military said.
Rocket fire over the past week has disrupted life for more than 1 million people across northern Israel, with schools closed and public gatherings restricted. Many restaurants and other businesses are shut in the coastal city of Haifa, and there are fewer people on the streets. Some who fled from communities near the border are coming under rocket fire again.
Israel has moved thousands of troops who had been serving in Gaza to the northern border. It says Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including some capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Cross-border fire began ramping up Sunday after pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah were attacked remotely, killing 39 people and wounded nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.
The next day, Israel said its warplanes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets, destroying cruise missiles, long- and short-range rockets and attack drones, including weapons concealed in private homes. The strikes racked up the highest one-day death toll in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006.
Saudi aid chief appeals for international assistance to Sudan
Abdullah Al-Rabeeah: It is a ‘collective responsibility’ to help conflict-ravaged country
Kingdom has allocated more than $3bn in aid to ‘brotherly’ Sudan
Updated 25 September 2024
Caspar Webb
NEW YORK CITY: Saudi Arabia’s aid chief on Wednesday issued an impassioned plea for assistance to Sudan at a high-level event in New York City on the sidelines of the 79th UN General Assembly.
Saudi Arabia has allocated more than $3 billion in aid to the conflict-ravaged country, where almost 26 million people are now facing crisis levels of food insecurity.
About 11 million Sudanese have fled the country following the outbreak of civil war, seeking refuge in neighboring states and beyond.
The Kingdom is employing a twin strategy of peacemaking and aid relief to bring an end to the crisis, but the international response to Sudan has consistently underwhelmed, threatening to condemn millions more to suffering, said Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, supervisor general of Saudi aid agency KSrelief. The UN’s own refugee appeal for Sudan is only 25 percent funded.
The event, “The Cost of Inaction,” was hosted by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the US, the EU, the African Union and the UN in a bid to draw global attention to the scale of suffering in Sudan and rally support for a worldwide humanitarian appeal.
In his address, Al-Rabeeah said it is a “collective responsibility” to assist Sudan, a “brotherly country whose people are facing great challenges that they’re attempting to overcome, and they deserve our full support.”
Saudi Arabia is “fully aware” of its duty toward Sudan, he added, highlighting the “great efforts” made by the Kingdom to address the crisis since the beginning of the civil war.
These efforts were carried out “in order to find means to bring hope back to Sudan, and this includes the Jeddah Declaration for the protection of civilians as well as humanitarian access,” he said.
“However, the escalation of violence that has recently been seen in a number of regions has caused even further damage, pushing millions of people to flee their homes, leaving behind their families and their possessions.”
Despite Saudi Arabia allocating $3 billion in assistance to Sudan and carrying out a number of relief missions earlier this year, “the worsening of the security situation has impacted the progress that had been made,” Al-Rabeeah said, adding that in response, the Kingdom has “redoubled its efforts” and stepped up its contributions.
“Since April 2023, we’ve launched a number of projects. Together with the UN and other humanitarian organizations, we’ve brought in assistance through land and sea routes. We’re providing support to the government and also carrying out a campaign to assist the Sudanese people with contributions above $125 million,” Al-Rabeeah said.
“However, despite all of these efforts made by our country, challenges remain, and the crisis requires coordinated efforts in order to bring unhindered humanitarian access to the country and provide a sustainable and coordinated response, as well as safe unhindered access to areas affected by conflict.”
Al-Rabeeah urged the international community to look past “political considerations” to formulate a powerful response to the crisis in Sudan.
“This is a humanitarian tragedy that requires us to overcome existing divisions. We must ensure genuine change that will allow the entirety of the Sudanese people to restore their normal lives,” he said, adding that Saudi Arabia “is making significant efforts to make sure that this necessary assistance is delivered to the Sudanese people, who deserve a dignified life.”
Al-Rabeeah’s address was followed by Dr. Obaida El-Dandarawy, Egypt’s deputy assistant foreign minister for UN affairs.
El-Dandarawy highlighted his country’s hosting of more than 1.5 million Sudanese refugees, in addition to the 5 million who already reside in Egypt.
“We’ve opened our doors widely to host our brothers and sisters from Sudan,” he said. “However, Egypt and neighboring countries on their own can’t continue carrying this burden, and that’s why we need to make sure that various countries, organizations and donors need to shoulder their humanitarian responsibility, and they have to help Egypt and the neighboring countries so that we can carry out this task, a heavy one, both in terms of the social and economic dimensions.”
He added: “We need to send a clear message to the sons and daughters of Sudan, and say that the international community is aware of their suffering and will spare no effort.”
The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the chamber: “I feel, as I know all of you must, a sense of shame and embarrassment that this is happening on our watch.”
Filippo Grandi, UN high commissioner for refugees, echoed Al-Rabeeah’s appeal, painting a stark picture of the reality on the ground.
“I went to Sudan twice this year, and as many of you have said, and I want to reiterate, conditions are apocalyptic,” he said.
“If people don’t die because of bullets, they starve to death. If they manage to survive, they must face disease, or floods, or the threat of sexual violence and other horrifying abuse, which if perpetrated in other places would make daily headlines.”
Grandi said humanitarian convoys in Sudan face being held up by closed roads due to flooding, or fired on and shelled by fighters.
“The solution to this crisis lies inside Sudan, but I can assure you its consequences won’t be contained to the region,” he warned.
“Let me just join everybody else on this panel in saying that more than anything else we need a political solution, because this is a crisis that can be solved, and it must be solved now.”
‘We feel their pain’: Gazans stunned by strikes on Lebanon
Filled with empathy, fear, Palestinians worry how the widening war might affect them
Updated 25 September 2024
AFP
GAZA STRIP: As Israeli bombs flattened buildings and sent smoke billowing skywards over Lebanon this week, Gazans looked on with both empathy and fear over how the widening war might affect them.
Israel carried out a third day of airstrikes against Lebanon on Wednesday.
In a dramatic escalation after nearly a year of cross-border violence, Israeli air raids on Monday killed at least 558 people in Lebanon in the country’s deadliest day since the 1975-1990 civil war.
After the unprecedented Oct. 7 attack by militants against southern Israel, Hezbollah said it began striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-backed group.
The Oct. 7 attack sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, marked by relentless Israeli bombardment that has devastated much of the Palestinian territory.
Chadi Nawfal, a 24-year-old resident of Gaza City who said he lost his home in an Israeli strike, said footage from Lebanon was hard to watch.
“The bloody scenes from Lebanon that we see on our television screens are very harsh images,” he said.
“We people in the Gaza Strip are the only ones who can currently feel the pain that the Lebanese people are experiencing.”
The sustained Israeli aerial assault on Lebanon is the latest in a series of attacks that began last week with coordinated blasts of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.
The explosions killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000, and were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil among the dead.
Another strike on the Lebanese capital on Tuesday killed Hezbollah rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi.
Taken together, Israel’s onslaught confirmed its Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s claim a week ago that the war’s “center of gravity” was moving northward.
Ayman Al-Amreiti, another displaced resident of Gaza City, said he was worried the fighting in Lebanon would mean the ongoing war in Gaza gets less global attention.
“The military weight is now shifting to Lebanon, so even the media attention on the Gaza Strip has become secondary,” the 42-year-old said.
“This encourages the appetite of the occupation (Israel) to commit more crimes.”
Hamas’s attack on Israel nearly a year ago resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least nearly 41,500 people in Gaza, mostly civilians.
There are obvious differences in time frame and scale, but Umm Munzir Naim, 52, said she could not help but see similarities between the fighting in Lebanon and in Gaza.
“The war against Lebanon and Hezbollah is a war like in Gaza. The victims are the people,” she said.
“The small, the big, the properties, everything is targeted — humans, trees ... they say it’s against Hamas and Hezbollah, but on the ground it’s people who die.”
Amreiti said he hoped the fighting would end soon in both places, and that their fates could even be linked given Hezbollah’s past pledges to stop fighting once a Gaza ceasefire comes about.
“The outcome, the hope is that any settlement with Hezbollah will also involve Gaza,” he said.
“Right now, that is the hope that the children of the Palestinian people are turning to.”
Macron urges Israel, Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions
French president calls for creation of Palestinian state with ‘security guarantees for Israel’
‘Israel can’t, without consequence, just expand its operations to Lebanon. We can’t have a war in Lebanon’
Updated 25 September 2024
Zaira Lakhpatwala
NEW YORK CITY: French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for Israel and Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions.
“Israel can’t, without consequence, just expand its operations to Lebanon,” he told the UN General Assembly. “We can’t have a war in Lebanon.”
Macron said France would act to “ensure a diplomatic voice can be heard,” adding: “We should look for peace everywhere and not accept any differences at a time when human lives are at stake.”
Regarding Gaza, he said Israel “has a legitimate right to protect their own people and to deny Hamas the means of attacking them again.”
However, he added that Israel’s invasion of Gaza has gone on for “too long,” and there is no justification for the deaths of Palestinians.
He called for the release of hostages held by Hamas, including several French citizens, along with a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
Macron offered France’s participation in “any initiatives that will save lives and will allow for everyone’s safety to be protected” because “it’s imperative that a new page is turned in Gaza, for the guns to be silent, for humanitarian workers to return, (and) for civilians to finally be protected.”
France is committed to the creation of a Palestinian state with “security guarantees for Israel,” he said, reiterating his country’s commitment to working with Israelis, Palestinians and other partners to create the conditions for a just and lasting peace.
What will become of the Lebanese displaced by intensifying Israel-Hezbollah conflict?
Israeli forces have struck multiple Hezbollah targets in recent days, forcing civilians in the south to flee northward
Hobbled by political deadlock and economic meltdown, Lebanon’s government is in no position to mount a significant relief effort
Updated 25 September 2024
ANAN TELLO Robert Edwards
LONDON: Nearly half a million Lebanese civilians have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley since Israel intensified its air campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia this week, raising the prospect of a major humanitarian emergency.
In a country already grappling with a profound economic crisis, the exodus of thousands of civilians from towns and villages bordering Israel is stretching Lebanon’s limited resources and further destabilizing its fragile society.
The most pressing question on the minds of those fleeing, however, is whether their displacement will be temporary or permanent.
Areas such as Tyre, Sidon and Nabatiyeh have experienced a mass exodus. (AFP)
Indeed, villages closest to the border have been the most heavily damaged, with entire areas reduced to rubble. Israeli forces have been accused of creating a “dead zone” as a buffer between the two countries.
“We don’t think this is going to last only for a short duration,” Tania Baban, Lebanon country director of the US-based charity MedGlobal, told Arab News. “Some people may not be able to go home if their home is no longer standing.”
Since Hezbollah began rocketing northern Israel in solidarity with its Hamas allies following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, southern Lebanon has been transformed into a battleground, with Israel mounting retaliatory strikes.
The region, a stronghold for Hezbollah, has faced near daily bombardment, leaving towns and villages in ruins and devastating forests and farmland.
Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, has said that about 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced since Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah ramped up, with more than 110,000 fleeing prior to the recent escalation.
Areas such as Tyre, Sidon and Nabatiyeh have experienced a mass exodus. Some 70 percent of Tyre’s population has evacuated, according to the city’s mayor, Hassan Dbouk. “People could not tolerate it anymore,” he told the Washington Post.
Baban believes the official number of displaced is an underestimate. “We started distributing some much-needed basic items to the shelters on Tuesday, such as mattresses, towels, pillows, water and personal hygiene kits,” she said.
“We went to several schools to get their information and do our assessment, and there were displaced people flooding in, and this is only in Beirut.
“They’re mostly from the south. I’m sure Bekaa as well, but we don’t have those types of details yet, because people are still flooding in.”
The exodus of thousands of civilians from towns and villages bordering Israel is stretching Lebanon’s limited resources. (AFP)
Safa Kosaibani, 21, who fled from Nabatiyeh to the coastal city of Sidon with her daughters and sisters-in-law, said that she heard Israel was telling civilians to leave southern Lebanon, but did not trust the warnings.
“We thought it was just psychological warfare,” she told the Washington Post. “That they were just trying to push us to leave our land, because we pushed them away from their land in the north. They want to do the same to us.”
An estimated 60,000 or so Israelis are internally displaced from the other side. On Sept. 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu updated his government’s war goals to include returning those people home.
Nour Hamad, a 22-year-old student in the Lebanese city of Baalbek, described living “in a state of terror” all week. “We spent four or five days without sleep, not knowing if we will wake up in the morning,” she told the AFP news agency.
“The sound of the bombardment is very frightening, everyone’s afraid. The children are afraid, and the grown-ups are afraid too.”
Israeli forces have struck multiple targets across Lebanon, leading to the death of almost 600 people, many of them civilians. (Reuters)
As civilians tried to escape the conflict zones this week, they found highways from the south clogged with traffic. Roads to safety were so busy that many spent 12 hours or more on a journey that previously took just one or two.
While some have found refuge with friends or relatives, the sheer volume of displaced people is overwhelming Lebanon’s capacity to provide accommodation, with schools, community centers and unfinished buildings quickly being converted into temporary shelters.
Lebanon’s government is in no position to mount a significant relief effort. In recent years, it has been paralyzed by political deadlock and financial collapse, with its currency losing more than 90 percent of its value.
“Lebanon has been dealing with multiple crises and has still not recovered from the devastating of the Aug. 4, 2020, Beirut port explosion, as well as the economic crisis that engulfed the country starting in late 2019,” Hovig Atamian, director of programs at CARE International in Lebanon, told Arab News.
About 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced since Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah ramped up, with more than 110,000 fleeing prior to the recent escalation. (Reuters)
“Humanitarian organizations have been preparing for the worst case scenario of a very significant escalation for months now, but the reality on the ground, including access constraints due to the security risks will always remain a challenge.
“We call on the parties to the conflict to uphold the provisions of international humanitarian law, including taking measures to avoid and minimize loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects as well as protecting all humanitarian personnel and operations.”
With international funding already stretched due to crises in Gaza, Ukraine and other conflict zones, there is a fear that Lebanon could be overlooked in terms of humanitarian assistance.
Imran Riza, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, has allocated a $24 million emergency aid package from the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund to address the urgent needs of those impacted by the hostilities. Those needs are now likely to grow rapidly, however.
Lebanon is “grappling with multiple crises, which have overwhelmed the country’s capacity to cope,” Riza said in a statement.
“As the escalation of hostilities in south Lebanon drags on longer than we had hoped, it has led to further displacement and deepened the already critical needs.”
The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it had hit 1,500 “terrorist infrastructure targets in southern Lebanon and deep inside Lebanese territory.” (AFP)
Charities such as MedGlobal are now mobilizing to deliver essential items to the temporary shelters.
“We are going to distribute food that is pre-prepared, because they don’t have cooking supplies, but also mattresses, winterization kits, blankets — because winter is on the doorstep, so they need to be prepared,” Baban said.
“The people who are coming into the shelters, a lot of them are elderly people who left their medications, who left their money, who need to get their medicine for their chronic illnesses as well.
“We’re talking about diabetes, heart problems, hypertension, and some patients are on dialysis. Some patients are maybe on chemotherapy, and we haven’t even begun to speak about the risk of communicable diseases.
“These are going to be overcrowded school turned shelters and winters coming, and we haven’t even discussed flu, COVID-19 and all of that. So it’s a very grim situation.”
Synchronized Israeli attacks last week on Hezbollah’s communication devices, which killed 39 people and injured more than 3,000. (AP)
Israeli forces have struck multiple targets across Lebanon, leading to the death of almost 600 people, many of them civilians. The strikes followed a synchronized attack last week on Hezbollah’s communication devices, which killed 39 people and injured more than 3,000.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it had hit 1,500 “terrorist infrastructure targets in southern Lebanon and deep inside Lebanese territory.”
“Hezbollah today is not the same Hezbollah we knew a week ago,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, claiming that the group “has suffered a sequence of blows to its command and control, its fighters, and the means to fight.”
INNUMBERS
• 500,000 People displaced across Lebanon. • 600 Fatalities, including 50 children and 94 women.
• 1,700 People injured by strikes across Lebanon.
• 60,000 Israelis evacuated from border areas since October.
The violence escalated on Wednesday when Hezbollah said it had launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv. Although Israel intercepted the missile, it represents an unprecedented move and a dangerous new phase in the conflict.
Early on Wednesday, Hezbollah confirmed that the commander of its missile unit, Ibrahim Muhammad Qubaisi, had been killed, hours after the Israeli military said that he had been “eliminated” in an airstrike on Ghobeiri in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
An estimated 60,000 or so Israelis are internally displaced from the other side. (AFP)
The escalation comes nearly a year after Hezbollah began launching attacks shortly after the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 240 taken hostage.
Israel responded by invading the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, leading to a conflict that has claimed more than 41,000 lives, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict have so far failed. US President Joe Biden, addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, warned of the dangers of full-scale war in Lebanon, urging for restraint from all sides.
Since Hezbollah began rocketing northern Israel in solidarity with its Hamas allies following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, southern Lebanon has been transformed into a battleground, with Israel mounting retaliatory strikes. (Reuters)
“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” Biden said. “Even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible.”
For Baban of MedGlobal, the unfolding humanitarian emergency could have serious implications for the wider region.
“Something needs to be done to stop this, to prevent this catastrophe from not only hitting Lebanon but becoming a regional catastrophe.”
