Israeli airstrike kills 9 Hezbollah militants in Lebanon

 

 

AN ISRAELI airstrike on an apartment in the Lebanese capital has killed nine Hezbollah militants. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a strong presence since late September. There was no warning before the strike late on Wednesday, which hit the building close to the UN Headquarters, the Prime Minister’s office and Parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defence unit said seven of its members were killed. Israel is also conducting a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah, while also conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children.The Israeli military said eight soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military on Thursday warned people to evacuate a city and other communities in southern Lebanon that are north of a UN-declared buffer zone, signalling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against the Hezbollah militant group. Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the UN Security Council after the 2006 war in a resolution that both sides accuse the other of violating.

 

The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah said its fighters detonated a roadside bomb when Israeli forces entered the Lebanese border village of Maroun el-Ras, kiling and wounding soldiers. It was not possible to independently confirm the claims made by either side. So far, ground clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been confined to a narrow strip along the border. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.

 

The Israeli army says its forces have rescued an Iraqi Yazidi woman held captive in Gaza. Fawzia Amin Sido, 21, arrived back in Iraq on Wednesday, Iraqi authorities said. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation says, 28 health workers in Lebanon have been killed in the past day, and it called for a ceasefire. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described a dire situation in treating casualties, with three dozen health facilities closed in southern Lebanon and five hospitals either partly or fully evacuated in Beirut Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani says, a charter flight was being organise to repatriate 180 Italians from Lebanon. President Joe Biden says, he doesn’t expect Israel to retaliate immediately against Iran and rejects the suggestion the US would grant permission for such an attack. Biden was speaking to reporters on Thursday, two days after Tehran bombarded Israel with almost 200 ballistic missiles. Iran said the barrage was in response to Israel’s recent assassination of Iranbacked Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. Lebanese Health Ministry Firas Abiad says Israeli strikes that hit health facilities and workers are in “violation of international law and treaties.”

 

“This is a war crime, there is no doubt about that,” Abiad told reporters on Thursday, after an overnight Israeli strike on an apartment building in Beirut hit a Hezbollah health center and killed several civilian first responders affiliated with the group. There was also a separate strike that wounded Red Cross paramedics evacuating wounded people in southern Lebanon. “The argument that some vehicles or hospitals had weapons or something else in them, these are old false arguments and lies we heard before in Gaza,” Abiad said. “International laws are clear in protecting these people, I mean, paramedics.Who gave Israel the right to be the judge and the executioner at the same time?” Under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the militants were to withdraw north of the Litani, and Lebanon’s armed forces were to patrol the border region along with UN peacekeepers. An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut southern suburb has struck the building housing the media office of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. The airstrike on Thursday destroyed the Hezbollah media relations office in the Mawad neighborhood. 

 

 

THE Israeli military said Thursday that it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago. It said that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders, Sameh Siraj and Sameh Oudeh. There was no immediate comment from Hamas. The military said the three commanders had taken refuge in a fortified underground compound in northern Gaza that served as a command and control center. It said Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the war.