Israel says 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers hit in Lebanon

Israel has carried out extensive air strikes on southern Lebanon, saying its warplanes have hit more than 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers and other “terrorist sites” including a weapons storage facility.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the launchers were ready to be fired against Israel. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel carried out at least 52 strikes in the south of the country on Thursday evening, and that Lebanon had also launched strikes on military sites in northern Israel.

Earlier, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said deadly explosions earlier in the week “crossed all red lines”, accusing Israel of what he said represented a declaration of war.

Israel has not said it was behind the attacks – which saw pagers and walkie-talkies explode simultaneously across the country – on Tuesday and Wednesday, and which Lebanese authorities said killed 37 people and wounded 3,000.

But Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has said Israel is embarking on a “new phase of the war”, concentrating more of its efforts on the north.

The previously sporadic cross-border fighting escalated on 8 October 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from Gaza – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Since then hundreds of people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in the cross-border fighting, and tens of thousands have also been displaced on both sides of the border.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian armed group Hamas. Both are backed by Iran and proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.

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In a statement late on Thursday, the IDF said its warplanes “struck approximately 100 launchers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites, consisting of approximately 1,000 barrels that were ready to be used in the immediate future to fire toward Israeli territory”.

“The IDF will continue to operate to degrade the Hezbollah terrorist organisation’s infrastructure and capabilities in order to defend the state of Israel”.

Lebanese security sources cited by Reuters news agency and the New York Times said the Israeli strikes were one of the most intense since the war in Gaza began in October last year.

The IDF also urged residents in northern Israel close to the Lebanese border to avoid large gatherings, guard their neighbourhoods and stay close to bomb shelters.

On Thursday morning, Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon fired two anti-tank missiles across the border, followed by drones.

The IDF said two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third seriously wounded.

In his televised address on Thursday, Hassan Nasrallah said of Tuesday and Wednesday’s attacks: “The enemy crossed all rules, laws and red lines. It didn’t care about anything at all, not morally, not humanely, not legally.”

“This is massacre, a major aggression against Lebanon, its people, its resistance, its sovereignty, and its security. It can be called war crimes or a declaration of war – whatever you choose to name it, it is deserving and fits the description. This was the enemy’s intention,” he added.

As Nasrallah spoke, Israeli warplanes caused sonic booms over Beirut, scaring an already-exhausted population, and others struck targets in southern Lebanon.

The Hezbollah leader acknowledged that this was a massive and unprecedented blow for his group, but he insisted that its ability to command and communicate remained intact.

Nasrallah’s tone was defiant and he vowed a harsh punishment. But, again, he indicated that Hezbollah was not interested in an escalation of its current conflict with Israel.

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The group’s cross-border attacks, he said, were going to continue unless there was a ceasefire in Gaza, and that no killings or assassinations would return residents to northern Israel.

The IDF said on Thursday that its chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, had “recently completed approval of plans for the northern arena”.

Gallant later said that “in the new phase of the war there are significant opportunities but also significant risks”.

“Hezbollah feels that it is being persecuted and the sequence of military actions will continue,” he added.

“Our goal is to ensure the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes. As time goes by, Hezbollah will pay an increasing price.”

It is not clear how Israel intends to achieve this goal. But reports earlier this week suggested that the general in charge of the IDF’s Northern Command favoured the creation of an Israeli-controlled buffer zone inside southern Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for restraint on all sides.

“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would make the goal of achieving a ceasefire in Gaza more difficult, he said as he joined European foreign ministers in Paris to discuss the widening crisis.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who was also at the talks in Paris, called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

“We are all very, very clear that we want to see a negotiated political settlement so that Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel and indeed Lebanese to return to their homes,” he said.

Israel says 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers hit in Lebanon

BBC

Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term, WSJ reports

WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza is unlikely before President Joe Biden leaves office in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them. Those bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday before the report was published.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said two weeks ago that 90 percent of a ceasefire deal had been agreed upon.

The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.

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Two obstacles have been especially difficult: Israel’s demand to keep forces in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

The United States has said a Gaza ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears the conflict could widen.

Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire proposal on May 31 that he said at the time Israel agreed to. As the talks hit obstacles, officials have for weeks said a new proposal would soon be presented.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.

Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term, WSJ reports

ARAB NEWS

Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel bombed southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had thwarted an Iranian-led assassination plot after explosions in booby-trapped radios and pagers in the past two days caused bloody havoc in the ranks of its arch-foe Hezbollah.

Air strikes hit “hundreds of rocket launcher barrels” ready to be fired toward Israel as well as “approximately 100 launchers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites,” the Israeli army said in a statement.

The attacks on Hezbollah’s communications equipment killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000, raising fears that a full-blown war was imminent. The action also sowed disarray across Lebanon as panicked residents abandoned their mobile phones.

“This isn’t a small matter, it’s war. Who can even secure their phone now? When I heard about what happened yesterday, I left my phone on my motorcycle and walked away,” said Mustafa Sibal on a street in Beirut.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being behind the attacks but multiple security sources have said they were carried out by its spy agency Mossad.

The Lebanese army said on Thursday it was blowing up pagers and suspicious telecom devices in controlled blasts in different areas. It called on citizens to report any suspicious devices.

Lebanese authorities banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport until further notice, the National News Agency reported. Such devices were also banned from being shipped by air.

In Beirut on Thursday, a distant roar in the skies could be heard from what state media said was Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier — a noise that has become common in recent months.

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Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on the day after the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas which triggered the Gaza war, and since then constant exchanges of fire have occurred, although neither side has allowed this to escalate into a full-scale war.

Israel said its warplanes struck villages in southern Lebanon overnight, and a security source and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported airstrikes near the border began again on Thursday just after midday.

Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south.

The previous day, hundreds of pagers — used by Hezbollah to evade mobile phone surveillance — exploded at once, killing 12 people including two children, and injuring more than 2,300.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on the United Nations Security Council to take a firm stand to stop what he called Israel’s “aggression” and “technological war” against his country.

Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like its war in Gaza against Hamas, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran, which sponsors both groups as well as armed movements in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Assassination plot

Also on Thursday, Israeli security forces said that an Israeli businessman had been arrested last month after attending at least two meetings in Iran where he discussed assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister or the head of the Shin Bet spy agency.

Last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Israel has been accused of assassinations including a blast in Tehran that killed the leader of Hamas and another in a Beirut suburb that killed a senior Hezbollah commander within hours of each other in July.

Despite the events of the past few days, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said the situation along the frontier had “not changed much in terms of exchanges of fire between the parties.”

“There was an intensification last week. This week it is more or less the same. There are still exchanges of fire. It is still worrying, still concerning, and the rhetoric is high,” the spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, said.

Tens of thousands of people have had to flee the Israel-Lebanon border area on both sides since the hostilities began in October.

Shifting focus

The Israeli military said its overnight air strikes hit Hezbollah targets in Chihine, Tayibe, Blida, Meiss El Jabal, Aitaroun and Kfarkela in southern Lebanon, as well as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Khiam.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the war was moving into a new phase, with more resources and military units being shifted to the northern border.

According to Israeli officials, the forces being deployed there include the 98th Division, an elite formation including commando and paratrooper elements that has been fighting in Gaza.

Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts

ARAB NEWS