BEIRUT :
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.
‘Senior Hamas leader killed in
Gaza strike 3 months ago’
JERUSALEM :
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.