< /ul>
Lebanese Hezbollah said Monday it had targeted a naval base and a barracks in Israel, a day after the deadliest attack carried out by the pro-Iranian movement on Israeli soil in nearly a month of military escalation between the two belligerents.
After months of border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, the Israeli army intensified its air raids on Lebanon on September 23 and then launched ground operations there on September 30.
Hezbollah announced Monday morning that it had targeted an Israeli naval base near Haifa, the major city in northern Israel, then a barracks near Netanya, a coastal town north of Tel Aviv, with the Israeli army saying it had intercepted projectiles fired from Lebanon in central Israel, as well as two drones coming from Syria.
AFP journalists heard a warning siren and explosions above the military base hit Sunday evening by a Hezbollah drone south of Haifa.
“Painful attack”
The Israeli army reported four soldiers killed and seven wounded in this strike on a training camp in Binyamina. Israeli army chief of staff Herzi Halevi called the attack “painful.”
A military source told AFP that the strike, which also injured more than 60 people according to rescue workers, hit the military base's dining hall.
“The attack on the base obviously makes Israel think. The Israelis realize that they are still vulnerable, that their defense systems are not watertight. And they have a long battle ahead of them,” said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director at the International Crisis Group.
Hezbollah, which warned that the attack was a “foretaste” of what awaits Israel if its army continues its raids in Lebanon, said Monday that it had targeted Israeli soldiers in a border village and fired shells at Israeli troops attempting to “infiltrate” Lebanese soil.
In eastern Lebanon, a driver of a humanitarian aid convoy was injured Monday when his truck was hit by an Israeli airstrike, according to the official Lebanese news agency.
After weakening Hamas in Gaza, Israel has shifted the front line of the war to Lebanon, saying it wants to allow the return to the north of the country of some 60,000 residents displaced by border violence.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000 More than 1,300 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally. The UN has recorded nearly 700,000 displaced people since that date.
“No withdrawal of UNIFIL”
Deployed in southern Lebanon, the UN peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) has denounced “shocking violations” by Israel against its positions, reporting in particular a “forced” entry on Sunday of two Israeli tanks into one of its positions.
The Israeli army said that one of its tanks had hit a UNIFIL post while it was evacuating wounded soldiers.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose country has peacekeepers in Lebanon, assured on Monday that there would be “no withdrawal” of UNIFIL troops, after his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu called for them to be “sheltered immediately”. The EU condemned “unacceptable” attacks on the UN force.
The war in Lebanon and Gaza, triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 on Israeli soil, are coupled with an escalation between Iran and Israel, which threatens to retaliate to an Iranian missile attack on 1 October.
“Totally ready”
The United States announced on Sunday the deployment of a high-altitude anti-missile defense system in Israel, in support of its ally. Iran said it was “fully prepared” to face a war, and that there was “no point” in indirect talks with the United States because of regional tensions.
In the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli raids have not let up.
In the city of Deir el-Balah (center), the Civil Defense spokesman reported four dead and many wounded in the compound of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, specifying that it was the seventh strike of its kind to hit “tents for displaced persons.”
The Israeli army said it had carried out a strike on a “command and control center (of fighters) Palestinians), which was located in a compound previously serving as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.”
Despite the strikes, a new polio vaccination campaign was officially launched Monday in the center of the small territory plunged into a catastrophic humanitarian situation.
The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages killed or killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 42,289 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
18 dead in an Israeli strike on a village in the north of Lebanon
Eighteen people have been killed in an Israeli strike on a village in northern Lebanon, the local Red Cross said, while the Health Ministry reported that “relief efforts are continuing.”
This is the first time that Aito, a village in a mountainous, predominantly Christian region, has been targeted since the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement and Israel went into open warfare on September 23. The strike targeted an apartment, according to the Lebanese national news agency ANI.
According to an AFP photographer, human remains were visible in front of the building located at the entrance to the village that was flattened by the strike, amid the comings and goings of ambulances.
The Lebanese army had imposed a security cordon around the site, where a fire had broken out, he added.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike against a Shiite village north of Beirut, also located outside Hezbollah strongholds, left at least 16 dead, according to the Ministry of Health.
Six other people were killed outside the areas usually considered to be strongholds of the pro-Iranian group, including two in a house in Deir Bella “where there were displaced people from the south” of the country, a Hezbollah stronghold, according to ANI.
Agence France-Presse