Six Israeli soldiers killed in southern Lebanon

Photo: Hassan Ammar Associated Press Smoke rose Wednesday after an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, a suburb south of Beirut, Lebanon.

Michaël Blum – Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem

Published at 16:52 Updated at 19:51

• Middle East

Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah rose another notch on Wednesday with the announcement of the deaths of six Israeli soldiers and strikes against Lebanon, which left at least eight dead.

The Israeli army announced the deaths of six soldiers, killed in southern Lebanon, which brings to 47 the number of its soldiers killed in combat with Hezbollah since the start of its ground offensive in Lebanese territory on September 30.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published on the social network X a photo of the tree symbolizing the Golani unit, a brigade of these soldiers, with a broken heart in the comment.

This is the deadliest incident for the Israeli army in Lebanese territory since the beginning of the ground assault with another having cost the lives of six commandos in the first days.

Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had vowed to “not ease off” in the face of the Shiite Islamist movement Hezbollah, against which the Israeli military is also waging an intense campaign of aerial bombardments across Lebanon.

“We will not make any ceasefire, we will not ease off, and we will not allow any agreement that does not include the achievement of the war’s objectives, and in particular the right of Israel to act alone against any terrorist activity,” Katz said on his first visit to the Israeli military’s Northern Command base since taking office the previous week.

“Positions are hardening” on the Israeli side, said in Paris the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, whose country is the bearer of a ceasefire proposal that has remained a dead letter.

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“Capacity to strike”

“Today, we hear voices in Israel saying that the most important thing is that Israel, at any time, can maintain a capacity to strike in Lebanon,” he added.

In total on Wednesday, “around 60” projectiles or missiles were launched from Lebanon towards Israeli territory on Wednesday, the Israeli army said in the evening.

On the Lebanese side, air raids targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut on Wednesday, several times, while a separate strike against a densely populated locality south of the capital left eight dead, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

A few hours after the strikes targeting the suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah claimed to have launched explosive drones at the headquarters of the Israeli army in Tel Aviv, where the Ministry of Defense is located, in central Israel.

Asked by AFP, the office of the spokesperson of the Israeli army said: said “not to react to Hezbollah's allegations.”

A new strike targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut on the night of Wednesday to Thursday after a call to evacuate was published by the Israeli army, noted an AFPTV videographer, after three series of strikes on this stronghold of Hezbollah in less than 24 hours.

Hezbollah said for its part that it fired missiles on the night of Wednesday to Thursday at Israeli soldiers deployed on the outskirts of the city of Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, as well as Sa’sa, in northern Israel.

The Israeli army launched an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23, targeting Hezbollah strongholds in particular, and launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon on September 30. country.

More than 3,360 people, mostly civilians, have been killed according to Lebanese authorities since the start of clashes in October 2023 between Israel and the heavily armed group.

Two Israeli civilians were killed Tuesday by rocket fire, bringing to 45 the number of civilians killed in northern Israel by fire from Lebanon.

Hezbollah opened a front against Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

“Emergency of return »

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

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group allied with Hamas, published a video that was clearly recent of one of these hostages, Sacha Trupnaov, a 29-year-old Russian-Israeli, alive.

Its release comes a few days after Qatar, deploring a lack of will and seriousness on the part of both parties, announced that it was ceasing its mediation between the Israeli authorities and Hamas, with a view to obtaining a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages.

This “horrible video […] underlines the urgency of the return of the […] hostages”, who “no longer have time to lose”, after the ordeals they have endured and while they “face an increased risk of losing their lives after more than a year of detention”, reacted the Forum of Families, the main association of relatives of hostages, in a press release.

Of the 251 people taken hostage on October 7, 2023, 97 are still captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have been declared dead by the Israeli army.

Military reprisals for the October 7 attack have left 43,712 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest figures from the Hamas Health Ministry for the territory, deemed reliable by the UN.

Devastated by the fighting, the Gaza Strip is facing, according to the UN, an extremely serious humanitarian crisis, and famine threatens the north of the territory, which has been the scene of an intense Israeli military offensive for weeks.