Lebanese Hezbollah threatens to attack 'everywhere' in Israel

Photo: Hussein Malla Associated Press The United Nations has called for an investigation into an Israeli strike Monday in the Christian village of Aito in northern Lebanon that it said left 22 people dead, including 12 women and two children.

Layal Abou Rahal – Agence France-Presse and Chloé Rouveyrolles – Libération respectively in Beirut and Jerusalem

Published at 10:29 Updated at 13:58

• Middle East

Hezbollah on Tuesday defied Israel despite the hard blows it has received, threatening to attack it “everywhere” on its territory, at a time when the Israeli army is intensifying its strikes in Lebanon on the strongholds of the pro-Iranian movement and beyond.

In a speech, Hezbollah's number two, Naim Qassem, said that “the solution” to end the war in Lebanon was “a ceasefire,” assuring that his movement would “not be defeated.”

“As the Israeli enemy is bombing all of Lebanon, we have the right, in a defensive position, to attack anywhere in the Israeli enemy entity, in the center, in the north and in the south,” Qassem said.

On Tuesday, the Lebanese armed movement announced that it had targeted “three Israeli bulldozers and a Merkava tank” in a border village in southern Lebanon and reported “close combat” in the region. He also claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on several areas in northern Israel, including Haifa and Safed.

After nearly a year of exchanges of fire with Hezbollah on the Israeli-Lebanese border and after having weakened Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army moved the front of the war to Lebanon in mid-September.

On September 23, it launched a campaign of massive air strikes against the strongholds of the Shiite movement, then on the 30th a ground offensive in the south of the country.

The Lebanese authorities announced on Tuesday that 41 people had died the previous day across the country. At least 1,356 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures, which could actually be higher.

The UN has counted nearly 700,000 displaced people.

Israel says it wants to push Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, out of southern Lebanon's border regions and halt its rocket attacks, in order to allow some 60,000 displaced residents to return to northern Israel.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP on Tuesday that Israel was conducting “brief incursions” into the south and added that his country was ready to increase the number of troops in the region “in the event of a ceasefire.”

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he opposed a “unilateral ceasefire that would not change the security situation in Lebanon” in a telephone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron.

“Violent Night”

On Tuesday, the Israeli army bombarded the Bekaa region in the east, putting a hospital in Baalbeck out of service, and southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese news agency ANI.

“It was a violent night in Baalbeck, we haven't seen anything like it since the 2006 war” between Israel and Hezbollah, said Nidal al-Solh, 50, as the rubble still smoldered in the city.

In addition, the UN has called for an investigation into an Israeli strike on Monday in the Christian village of Aito in northern Lebanon, which it said left 22 dead, including 12 women and two children.

In the south, the UN peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, has decided to maintain “all its positions” after five peacekeepers were injured in Israeli operations and Israel's calls to withdraw.

As Israel continues its offensives against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both allies of Tehran, its leaders say they are preparing to respond to the Iranian missile attack on October 1.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that his country would decide alone, based on its “national interest,” on the possible targets to strike in Iran, after calls from US President Joe Biden to spare oil and nuclear sites.

In Tehran, where the funeral of Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan, killed in an Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27, took place on Tuesday, the head of the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guards, Esmail Qaani, reappeared in public, while media reports had claimed that he had also been the target of an Israeli attack.

«Permanent emergency»

After more than a year of war in the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have been conducting an offensive since October 6 in the north of the Palestinian territory, particularly in Jabalia, where, according to them, Hamas is trying to rebuild its forces.

On Tuesday, an AFP journalist saw men, women and children leaving their neighborhood with the belongings they could carry, by car, on donkey carts, by bicycle or on foot.

“The whole area was reduced to ashes,” said Rana Abdel Majid, 38, from al-Falouja, on the edge of Jabalia. “If the siege continues for two more days, we will starve to death,” she added.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, warned on Tuesday that the situation for children in the territory was becoming “worse every day than the day before” because of restrictions on aid to the population.

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The director of the United Nations World Food Programme for Palestinian Territories, Antoine Renard, warned of “a permanent emergency situation”, particularly in the north where the inhabitants “depend exclusively on humanitarian aid”.

The war was triggered on October 7, 2023, by the unprecedented attack by Hamas, which 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 42,344 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, in the Israeli offensive carried out in retaliation in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government's Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.