Israel’s bombs flatten swaths of Lebanon village amid fears of wider war

Israel’s bombs flatten swaths of Lebanon village amid fears of wider war
A satellite image shows damage in the Lebanese village of Aita Al-Shaab near the Israeli border, following months of ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, on June 5, 2024. 2024. (Reuters)
Short Url
Updated 27 June 2024
Follow

Israel’s bombs flatten swaths of Lebanon village amid fears of wider war

Israel’s bombs flatten swaths of Lebanon village amid fears of wider war
  • The images from private satellite operator Planet Labs PBC, taken on June 5 and analyzed by Reuters, show at least 64 destroyed sites in Aita Al-Shaab
  • Aita Al-Shaab was a frontline in 2006 when Hezbollah fighters successfully repelled Israeli attacks during the full-scale, 34-day war

BEIRUT: Satellite images showing much of the Lebanese village of Aita Al-Shaab in ruins after months of Israeli air strikes offer a glimpse of the scale of damage in one of Hezbollah’s main bastions in south Lebanon.
The images from private satellite operator Planet Labs PBC, taken on June 5 and analyzed by Reuters, show at least 64 destroyed sites in Aita Al-Shaab. Several of the sites contain more than one building.
Located in southern Lebanon where Hezbollah enjoys strong backing from many Shiite Muslims, Aita Al-Shaab was a frontline in 2006 when its fighters successfully repelled Israeli attacks during the full-scale, 34-day war.
While the current fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Shiite Islamist movement is still relatively contained, it marks their worst confrontation in 18 years, with widespread damage to buildings and farmland in south Lebanon and northern Israel.
The sides have been trading fire since the Gaza war erupted in October. The hostilities have largely depopulated the border zone on both sides, with tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes.
The destruction in Aita Al-Shaab is comparable to the damage done in 2006, a dozen people familiar with the damage said, at a time when escalation has prompted growing concern of another all out war between the heavily-armed adversaries.
Reuters does not have satellite images from 2006 to compare the two periods.
Israel says fire from Lebanon has killed 18 soldiers and 10 civilians. Israeli attacks have killed more than 300 Hezbollah fighters and 87 civilians, according to Reuters tallies.
At least 10 of Hezbollah’s dead came from Aita Al-Shaab, and dozens more from the surrounding area, according to Hezbollah death notices reviewed by Reuters. Six civilians have been killed in the village, a security source said.
The village, just 1 km (0.6 miles) from the border, is among the most heavily bombarded by Israel, Hashem Haidar, the head of the government’s regional development agency the Council for South Lebanon told Reuters.
“There is a lot of destruction in the village center, not just the buildings they hit and destroyed, but those around them” which are beyond repair, said Aita Al-Shaab mayor Mohamed Srour.
Most of the village’s 13,500 residents fled in October, when Israel began striking buildings and woodland nearby, he added.
The bombing campaign has made a swath of the border area in Lebanon “unfit for living,” Haidar said.
The Israeli military has said it has hit Hezbollah targets in the Aita Al-Shaab area during the conflict.
In response to Reuters questions, Israeli military spokesperson Nir Dinar said Israel was acting in self-defense.
Hezbollah had made the area “unliveable” by hiding in civilian buildings and launching unprovoked attacks that made “ghost towns” of Israeli villages, Dinar said.
“Israel is striking military targets, the fact that they’re hiding inside civilian infrastructures is Hezbollah’s decision,” Dinar said.
The military did not give further details of the nature of its targets in the village. It said Hezbollah was escalating attacks, firing over 4,800 rockets into northern Israel, “killing civilians and displacing tens of thousands.”
Hezbollah’s media office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hezbollah has said that displacing so many Israelis has been an accomplishment of its campaign.

’CONTINUING THREAT’
The current conflict began a day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, when Hezbollah opened fire in solidarity with its Palestinian ally. Hezbollah has said it will stop when the Israeli assault on Gaza ends.
Aita Al-Shaab is perched on a hilltop looking into Israel and is one of many Shiite villages experts say are Hezbollah’s first line of defense against Israel.
The 2006 war started when Hezbollah fighters infiltrated Israel from an area near Aita Al-Shaab, capturing two Israeli soldiers.
A source familiar with Hezbollah’s operations said the village had played a strategic role in 2006 and would do so again in any new war. The source did not give more details of the group’s activities there.
Hezbollah fighters held out in the village for the entire 2006 war. An Israeli-government appointed inquiry found that Israeli forces failed to capture it as ordered, despite encircling the village and dealing a serious blow to Hezbollah. Anti-tank missiles were still being fired from the village five days before the war ended, it said.
Seth G. Jones, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the area was militarily important in several ways, allowing Hezbollah to fire its shorter-range rockets into Israel.
“If there was a ground incursion, these would be frontline locations for Hezbollah to defend, or to try to attrite” Israeli forces, he said.
Hezbollah, far stronger than in 2006, has announced attacks on targets directly across the border from Aita Al-Shaab during the current hostilities, including in the Israeli village of Shtula 1.9 km (1.18 miles) away and nearby areas.
Satellite images of Shtula and nearby Israeli villages taken on June 5 do not show visible damage to buildings. Israel’s Defense Ministry said 60 homes in Shutla had been damaged including 11 severely damaged, according to a May report by newspaper Calcalist. The ministry did not respond to Reuters requests for data.
Throughout northern Israel, around 2,000 buildings have been damaged, the country’s tax authority said. Across the border, some 2,700 homes have been completely destroyed and 22,000 more damaged, significantly below the 2006 conflict, the Council for South Lebanon said, though these numbers were preliminary.
Fires sparked by the fighting have affected hundreds of hectares of farmland and forest either side of the border, authorities said.

HEAVY ORDNANCE
Andreas Krieg of King’s College in London said the structural damage in Aita Al-Shaab was in keeping with wide-impact-area ordnance dropped by fighter jets or drones. Images of strikes indicated bombs of up to 2,000 lbs (900 kg) had been dropped, he said.
Hezbollah, which frequently announces its own strikes, has occasionally used the short-range Burkan, with a warhead of up to 500 kgs (1,100 pounds). Many of the attacks it has announced have used weapons with far smaller warheads, such as guided anti-tank rockets that typically carry warheads of less than 10 kg.
“Hezbollah does have much ... heavier warheads on their ballistic missiles that have not been used yet,” Krieg said.
Israel’s military and Hezbollah did not respond to questions about ordnance.
Hezbollah’s goal, Krieg said, was to drive out Israeli civilians.
“For that, Hezbollah doesn’t need to cause massive structural damage to civilian areas or civilian buildings.”


Hezbollah chief says response to Israeli strikes on Beirut will be on ‘central Tel Aviv’

Hezbollah chief says response to Israeli strikes on Beirut will be on ‘central Tel Aviv’
Updated 13 sec ago
Follow

Hezbollah chief says response to Israeli strikes on Beirut will be on ‘central Tel Aviv’

Hezbollah chief says response to Israeli strikes on Beirut will be on ‘central Tel Aviv’
BEIRYT: Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a speech broadcast Wednesday that the response to recent deadly Israeli strikes on Beirut would be on “central Tel Aviv.”
“The response must be expected on central Tel Aviv,” Qassem said, after deadly strikes on three central Beirut districts in recent days, one of which killed Hezbollah’s spokesman Mohammed Afif and four members of his media team.
More to follow...

Israel says not fighting Lebanese army, after soldiers killed

Israel says not fighting Lebanese army, after soldiers killed
Updated 51 min 4 sec ago
Follow

Israel says not fighting Lebanese army, after soldiers killed

Israel says not fighting Lebanese army, after soldiers killed
  • “We emphasize that the (Israeli army) is operating precisely against the Hezbollah terrorist organization,” the military said
  • “The (army) is looking into reports regarding soldiers of the Lebanon Armed Forces who were injured during the strike”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Wednesday it was fighting the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, not the Lebanese army, after the latter said four of its soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes.
“We emphasize that the (Israeli army) is operating precisely against the Hezbollah terrorist organization and is not operating against the Lebanon Armed Forces,” the military told AFP in a statement.
The Lebanese army said Israeli fire killed a soldier Wednesday, a day after it said three other personnel died in a strike on their position in the town of Sarafand, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the southern border.
South Lebanon has seen intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants whose group holds sway in the area.
Israel’s military said it struck “a terrorist infrastructure site in which a number of Hezbollah terrorists were operating in the area of Sarafand” on Tuesday night.
“The (army) is looking into reports regarding soldiers of the Lebanon Armed Forces who were injured during the strike,” it added, but did not refer to the other deadly incident mentioned by the Lebanese army.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its bombing campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.


Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting

Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting
Updated 20 November 2024
Follow

Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting

Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting
  • Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty
  • Hochstein told reporters the talks had made “additional progress”

BEIRUT: Israel’s defense minister says his country insists on the right to act militarily against Hezbollah in any agreement to end the fighting in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty, complicating efforts to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that erupted into all-out war in September.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Wednesday that “the condition for any political settlement in Lebanon is the preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the (Israeli military’s) right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah.”
Lebanese officials mediating between Israel and Hezbollah have called for a return to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between the sides.
It calls for Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces to withdraw from a buffer zone in southern Lebanon patrolled by UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops.
US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has spent months trying to broker a ceasefire, held a second round of talks on Wednesday with Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah who has been mediating on their behalf.
Hochstein told reporters the talks had made “additional progress,” and that he would be heading to Israel “to try to bring this to a close, if we can.” He declined to say what the sticking points are.
Israeli strikes and combat in Lebanon have killed more than 3,500 people and wounded 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The war has displaced nearly 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
On the Israeli side, 87 soldiers and 50 civilians, including some foreign farmworkers, have been killed by attacks involving rockets, drones and missiles. Hezbollah began firing on Israel the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza.
That attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and another 250 were abducted. Around 100 hostages remain inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Lebanese army said in a statement a soldier was killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit his vehicle on the road linking Burj Al-Muluk and Qalaa in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports.
The night before, three soldiers were killed by an airstrike that targeted an army post in the town of Sarafand, near the coastal city of Saida.
Wissam Khalifa, a resident of Sarafand who lives next to the army post and was injured in the strike, said he was shocked that it was targeted.
“It’s a safe residential neighborhood. There is nothing here at all” that would present a target, he said. “Regarding the martyred soldiers, I don’t even know if there was a gun in the center. Why did this strike happen? We have no idea.”
The Lebanese army has not been an active participant in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah over the past 13 months, but more than 40 soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
Altogether, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since Oct. 8, 2023, the vast majority of them in the past two months.


US envoy to travel to Israel in bid to seal Hezbollah ceasefire

US special envoy Amos Hochstein talks to reporters in Beirut on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
US special envoy Amos Hochstein talks to reporters in Beirut on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
Updated 51 min 42 sec ago
Follow

US envoy to travel to Israel in bid to seal Hezbollah ceasefire

US special envoy Amos Hochstein talks to reporters in Beirut on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
  • “So I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can,” Hochstein said in Beirut

BEIRUT: US envoy Amos Hochstein said he will travel to Israel on Wednesday to try to secure a ceasefire ending the war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group after declaring additional progress in talks in Beirut.
Hochstein, who arrived a day earlier in Beirut, said he saw a “real opportunity” to end the conflict after the Lebanese government and Hezbollah agreed to a US ceasefire proposal, although with some comments.
“The meeting today built on the meeting yesterday, and made additional progress,” Hochstein said after his second meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, endorsed by the Iran-backed Hezbollah to negotiate.
“So I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can,” Hochstein said.
The diplomacy aims to end a conflict that has inflicted massive devastation in Lebanon since Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah in September, mounting airstrikes across wide parts of the country and sending in troops.
Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Hezbollah, still reeling from the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah and other commanders, has kept up rocket fire into Israel, including targeting Tel Aviv this week. Its fighters are battling Israeli troops on the ground in the south.

Although diplomacy to end the Gaza war has largely stalled, the Biden administration aims to seal a ceasefire in the parallel conflict in Lebanon before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
“We are going to work with the incoming administration. We’re already going to be discussing this with them. They will be fully aware of what we’re doing,” Hochstein said.


Lebanese army says soldier killed by Israeli fire

Lebanese army says soldier killed by Israeli fire
Updated 20 November 2024
Follow

Lebanese army says soldier killed by Israeli fire

Lebanese army says soldier killed by Israeli fire
  • South Lebanon and the capital have seen heavy strikes in recent days

BEIRUT: The Lebanese army said Israeli fire killed a soldier on Wednesday, a day after it said three other personnel died in a strike on their position in south Lebanon.
South Lebanon has seen intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants whose group holds sway in the area.
A soldier “died of his wounds sustained due to the Israel army targeting of an army vehicle” in south Lebanon, a statement on X said, after reporting two personnel wounded in the incident near Qlayaa in south Lebanon.
On Tuesday, the military said three soldiers were killed when “the Israeli enemy targeted an army position in the town of Sarafand,” where the health ministry said eight people were wounded.
AFP images showed destruction at the site in Sarafand on the Mediterranean coast, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the southern border, with a concrete structure destroyed and a vehicle among the debris.

Israel army says hit over 100 ‘terror targets’ in past day

The Israeli military on Wednesday said it struck more than 100 “terror targets” in Lebanon over the past day and had “eliminated” two Hezbollah commanders at the weekend.
The targets included “launchers, weapons storage facilities, command centers, and military structures,” the army said in a statement.
The announcement came as US envoy Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon, seeking to hammer out a truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
The military also said “on Sunday, the (air force) eliminated the commanders of Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile and operations unit in the coastal sector” who were “responsible for terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”
The army added that its troops continued to conduct “limited, localized, targeted raids” in southern Lebanon.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its bombing campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.
South Lebanon and the capital have seen heavy strikes in recent days, though the situation was calmer in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, with US envoy Amos Hochstein visiting for truce talks.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Israeli shelling and air strikes in south Lebanon overnight and on Wednesday, saying Israeli troops were seeking to advance further near the town of Khiam.
Hezbollah on Tuesday said it had attacked Israeli troops near the flashpoint border town.
The NNA also said that Israel forces were “attempting to advance from the Kfarshuba hills... to open up a new front under the cover of fire and artillery shells and air strikes.”
“Violent clashes are taking place” between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, it added.
Hezbollah said it carried out several attacks on Israeli troops near the border Wednesday.