Photo: Menahem Kahana Agence France-Presse Rescuers and residents check the damage after rockets were fired from Lebanon, in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, on November 24, 2024.
Michaël Blum – Agence France-Presse and Aya Iskandarani – Agence France-Presse In Jerusalem
Published at 10:51 a.m. Updated at 2:10 p.m.
- Middle East
The head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, called on Sunday in Beirut for an “immediate ceasefire” in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, at a time when the Lebanese movement fired 250 projectiles towards Israeli territory.
The day after a particularly deadly day of Israeli bombings in Lebanon, Hezbollah announced on Sunday several drone and missile attacks against targets and military bases in the Tel Aviv region (center) and in southern Israel.
In Israel, alert sirens sounded, particularly in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the army said, reporting 250 projectiles fired from neighboring Lebanon. A part was intercepted but damage was noted in Petah Tikva.
Shortly after, the Lebanese National News Agency (ANI) reported two Israeli strikes hitting the southern suburbs of Beirut.
“It is from buildings [in the southern suburbs] that Hezbollah […] directs its terrorist activities to harm the citizens of Israel,” the Israeli army said, accusing the Lebanese Islamist movement of “intentionally” placing its installations among civilians.
ANI also reported intense fighting in several southern areas, where Hezbollah claimed to have destroyed six Israeli Merkava tanks on Sunday.
For its part, the Lebanese army, which is not involved in the war, announced that one of its soldiers had been killed and 18 others wounded in an Israeli attack on their position in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold bordering northern Israel.
“We see only one possible path: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” Borrell said after talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
“On the brink of collapse”
Resolution 1701, which ended the previous war in 2006, between Israel and Hezbollah, stipulates that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers be deployed on the southern border of Lebanon. This implies a withdrawal of Hezbollah, but also that of the Israeli soldiers who have been leading a ground offensive there since September 30.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Israel says it wants to disable Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, allies of its enemy Iran. It vowed to destroy Hamas after the Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on its soil on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, and is seeking to halt Hezbollah’s rocket fire on its territory.
On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah opened a “support front” for its Palestinian ally, the target of an Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza.
After a year of cross-border violence and weakening Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted the focus of its operations to Lebanon, launching an intense bombing campaign on Hezbollah strongholds starting September 23.
“We need to put pressure on the Israeli government and keep up the pressure on Hezbollah to accept the US ceasefire proposal,” Borrell said, stressing that the EU was ready to provide €200 million to help strengthen the Lebanese army.
The 13-point proposal, which includes a 60-day truce and the deployment of the army in southern Lebanon, was discussed by US envoy Amos Hochstein, who visited Lebanon and Israel this week.
But no results have been announced and the pace of Israeli strikes, mainly against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, has even accelerated.
“In September, I am “I came and I still hoped that we could prevent an open war by Israel against Lebanon. Two months later, Lebanon is on the verge of collapse,” Borrell added.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry estimates that at least 3,754 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them since September this year.
It said Sunday that 84 people had been killed in Israeli strikes in different parts of the country the previous day, including 29 in a raid targeting a working-class neighborhood in central Beirut.
On the Israeli side, 82 military personnel and 47 civilians have been killed in 13 months.
Eleven dead in Gaza
In the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, eleven Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes, according to the Civil Defense locale.
The director of Kamel Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abou Safiyeh, was seriously injured in a nighttime drone attack on the facility in the north of the Palestinian territory, according to the same source.
This hospital is one of the last to still be partially functioning in the Palestinian territory, which is in the grip of a humanitarian disaster.
In response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israel launched a devastating military offensive in Gaza that left at least 44,211 dead, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
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The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or who died in captivity. That day, 251 people were kidnapped, 97 of whom remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
Raz Ben Ami, a former hostage whose husband is still being held in Gaza, said Sunday that “it was time to bring them back and as soon as possible because no one knows who will survive the winter in the tunnels.”