Photo: Hassan Ammar Associated Press A woman holds her cat in front of a building destroyed by an Israeli strike in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Dahiyeh in southern Beirut.
Laure Al Khoury – Agence France-Presse and Benoît Finck – Agence France-Presse respectively in Beirut and Jerusalem
Published at 7:23 AM Updated at 10:39 AM
- Middle East
Israeli troops engaged in combat against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Wednesday, where Israel announced the death of its first soldier since the start of its ground incursions, against a backdrop of exchanges of threats with Tehran following the major Iranian attack carried out the day before on Israeli territory.
The Israeli army, which also carried out new air strikes against the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement, announced that Captain Eitan Itzhak Oster, 22, had fallen in combat in Lebanon. The Lebanese army, which confirmed an Israeli “intrusion,” said an Israeli drone had injured a soldier in the south.
Hezbollah said it had activated a bomb against an Israeli unit near the border, after reporting clashes with “infiltrated” Israeli forces there, a day after Israel announced its first ground raids against the Islamist movement.
Meanwhile, Israel and Tehran have exchanged threats in the wake of the massive attack launched Tuesday by Iran to avenge the deaths of the leaders of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli raid Friday in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and of the Palestinian Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.
The latter was killed on July 31 in an attack in Tehran, attributed to Israel by Iran and Hamas.
“Iran has made a serious mistake […] and will pay the price,” warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after Iran fired about 180 missiles according to Israel, 200 according to Tehran.
Tehran claimed that “90% missiles” had reached their target.
Iran’s chief of staff, General Mohammad Bagheri, warned that Iran would strike “with greater intensity,” targeting “all infrastructure” in the country if Israel retaliated.
Iran used hypersonic missiles in the operation, a first, according to Iranian media.
A large number were intercepted by the anti-missile system, said the Israeli military, which had the support of American and British forces, according to the Pentagon and London.
The attack, the second since April, set off sirens across the country, wounding two people in Israel and killing a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, according to emergency services and an official Palestinian.
“It was crazy” and “extremely scary, nothing we could have predicted,” said Tel Aviv resident Ron Nori, 59.
Photo: Hassan Ammar Associated Press
'Heart of Israel' targeted
Iran's ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, claimed to have “targeted the heart” of Israel.
According to Iran's chief of staff, the missiles targeted five military air bases and the Mossad, Israel's secret service.
Iran exercised its “right to self-defense” after two months of “restraint” to “make way for a ceasefire in Gaza,” its foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, wrote on X.
The newspaper Pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar welcomed a “major setback” for Israel.
“This is not going to end well,” Netanyahu's “restraint is not his strong point,” political analyst Jordan Barkin told AFP.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called for a decisive strike to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.
In Tehran, Mansour Firouzabadi, a 45-year-old nurse, said he was “really worried” about an “expansion of the war,” hoping “that the United States will stop supporting Israel and that Israel will not retaliate.”
Photo: John Wessels Agence France-Presse
“Alarming” spiral
On April 13, in response to a deadly strike attributed to Israel on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Iran carried out its first major attack on Israel, which was mostly intercepted by Israel with the help of allies, especially the United States.
“The United States fully, fully, fully supports Israel,” US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday, noting “ongoing” discussions with Israel on how to respond.
Iran has warned Washington against any intervention, Mr. Araghchi said.
The attack has sparked a wave of calls for restraint, including from Moscow, which warned on Wednesday of an “alarming” spiral, and from Beijing.
Germany has called on its nationals to leave Iran and urged the country to “refrain from any further attacks, including through its allies.”
The UN Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday, and Rome has called a G7 meeting, according to an Italian government source.
This escalation comes after a year of war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and cross-border exchanges of fire with Hamas’ ally Hezbollah.
Before the missile salvos, an attack carried out Tuesday in Tel Aviv by Palestinians from the West Bank – one shot dead and another wounded, according to police – resulted in the death of seven civilians, including a Greek, according to Athens.
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Strikes in Lebanon and Gaza
According to the Lebanese news agency ANI, the Israeli air force carried out a strike on Tuesday morning on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, after a night of bombing.
AFP journalists have reported about 20 explosions overnight in the capital.
The Israeli army then called for the “immediate” evacuation of new localities in southern Lebanon.
According to an Israeli official, the ground operation carried out since Tuesday consists of “localized raids of a very limited scale,” intended, after more than a week of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah, to “remove threats” to northern Israel.
In Lebanon, more than a thousand people have been killed, according to the Health Ministry, since the explosions of Hezbollah's transmission devices on September 17 and 18, attributed to Israel, and the start of massive bombings targeting the Islamist movement's strongholds starting on September 23.
According to the Disaster Management Unit, 1,873 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of cross-border firefights a year ago. an.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army also announced that it had attacked two schools in the northern Gaza Strip and a third in the center, which it said were being used by Hamas as command centers.
UN Secretary-General ‘Persona Non Grata’ in Israel
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced Tuesday that he has declared UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “persona non grata in Israel,” criticizing him for failing to condemn Iran by name for its massive attack on Israel Tuesday night.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil. We are dealing with an anti-Israeli Secretary-General who supports terrorists, rapists and murderers,” Katz said in a statement.
After Iran fired nearly 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday night, Mr. Guterres condemned “the widening of the conflict in the Middle East,” deploring “escalation after escalation.”
“This has to stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he added, without elaborating.
Israel’s notoriously difficult relations with the United Nations have sunk to their lowest point since the unprecedented October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.