Israel intensifies operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon

Photo: Ibrahim Amro Agence France-Presse Residents of the Jnah neighborhood, a southern suburb of Beirut, try to find survivors in the rubble of a building destroyed by the Israeli army.

Shaun Tandon – Agence France-Presse and Tony Gamal-Gabriel – Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem

Published at 11:16

• Middle East

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began talks with Israeli leaders on Tuesday at the start of a Middle East tour aimed at pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and containing regional military escalation, as Israel intensifies its operations in Lebanon against Iran-allied Hezbollah.

This is Blinken’s eleventh diplomatic mission since the start of the devastating war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the unprecedented attack on Israel by Palestinian Hamas on October 7, 2023, and comes nearly a month after the conflict expanded to Lebanon, with the start of massive Israeli strikes against the Islamist movement Hezbollah.

Shortly after beginning talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu early in the afternoon, the Israeli army carried out a new strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, following calls for evacuations, according to the Lebanese news agency NNA.

The army has stepped up its strikes since Monday evening near the capital and across the country, claiming to target Hezbollah “military installations.”

One of these bombings killed 13 people, including a child, and injured 57 near the country’s largest public hospital in Beirut, located outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

Children were playing outside and, “when the first missile is “One fell, followed by another, I saw them torn to pieces, and screaming,” says Ola Fahed Eid, an actress living in the neighborhood, who says she helped nine survivors get out of the rubble.

Rafic Hariri Hospital was slightly damaged, and four buildings in its vicinity were razed, according to an AFP correspondent.

Washington said Monday it was working to resolve the conflict in Lebanon “as quickly as possible,” and Mr. Blinken also intends to dissuade the Israelis, who are preparing a response to a missile attack by Iran on October 1, from any action likely to further inflame the region.

Photo: Jack Guez Agence France-Presse Israeli police officers collect debris after a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Kibbutz of Maagan Michael, south of Haifa.

“300 targets” hit

On Monday evening, the Israeli army announced that it had struck around 300 Hezbollah targets in 24 hours, after extending its attacks to the financial system of the powerful Shiite movement.

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It announced the death in Syria of a senior official in charge of “Hezbollah fund transfers” and claimed to have targeted a group bunker containing “tens of millions of dollars”, after having begun strikes on Sunday against the financial institution Al-Qard al-Hassan.

The Lebanese movement assured Tuesday that this company, part of its network of associations, schools and hospitals, would fulfill its commitments to its savers.

He also claimed responsibility for the drone attack that targeted Netanyahu's private residence in Caesarea, central Israel, on Saturday in his absence, to which Netanyahu vowed to retaliate.

Hezbollah also admitted to having fighters taken “prisoner” by Israel, without specifying their number.

It had earlier claimed rocket fire on several military positions in Israel.

At least 1,489 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, when Israel began pounding Hezbollah there, according to an AFP tally based on official data. In mid-October, the UN counted nearly 700,000 displaced people in the country.

The Israeli army has been conducting ground operations in the south since September 30 against Hezbollah to allow the return of approximately 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced by its incessant rocket fire for a year.

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Humanitarian aid in Gaza in question

To resolve this conflict, the United States says it wants to rely on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the previous war between the two belligerents in 2006, and stipulates that non-state armed forces must withdraw from southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has maintained its presence.

For his part, the head of Iranian diplomacy, Abbas Araghchi, warned again on Tuesday that “Iran will respond in an equivalent manner” in the event of an Israeli attack.

The Pentagon has meanwhile announced the “establishment” in Israel of a new American anti-missile defense system.

Antony Blinken is due to travel to Jordan on Wednesday to discuss, in particular, humanitarian aid in the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army has been continuing a deadly offensive against Hamas in the north of the Palestinian territory since October 6, which has been fled by tens of thousands of Gazans.

In Jabalia, where the army has again called on the population to evacuate, “many men” have been arrested, Nevin Al-Dawasah, an ambulance driver who took refuge in Gaza City after “16 days of siege without supplies” in a displaced persons center in the city, told AFP.

“During the evacuation, there was shelling in the center, and we had martyrs and wounded” who were not taken care of due to the lack of “safe passage for ambulances,” she said.

The Palestinian Islamist movement, in power since 2007 in Gaza, said it would continue to fight despite the death of its leader, Yahya Sinouar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 attack, killed on September 16 by the Israeli army.

Hamas will be temporarily led by a Qatar-based committee until a successor is elected, two sources within the group reported on Monday.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data, including hostages killed or who died in captivity.

Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.

At least 42,718 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government's health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.