BEIRUT: The Israeli army intensified its hostilities on Saturday against border villages in southern Lebanon, destroying and flattening several neighborhoods.
The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Israel’s “disregard for international law and humanitarian standards” in a statement on Saturday.
It said that “the deliberate killing of large numbers of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the attack against the Al-Taba’een school in the Gaza Strip is clear evidence of Israel’s intention to prolong the war and expand its scope, especially as international mediators intensify efforts to reach a ceasefire.”
The ministry said that the Israeli “occupation army’s systematic and indiscriminate shelling, and the killing of children and civilians, clearly demonstrate the Israeli government’s disregard for international law and humanitarian standards.”
It urged “the international community and relevant countries to take a unified, serious and effective stance to protect the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and put an end to this humanitarian catastrophe.
“The first step to avoiding de-escalation and a wider conflict in the region is to halt the aggression on Gaza and adopt a peaceful diplomatic path by taking serious steps to obligate Israel to accept a two-state solution in line with relevant international resolutions,” the ministry added.
It circulated a document from the Lebanese government to its diplomatic missions abroad, containing “the principles aimed at achieving long-term stability in southern Lebanon.”
The ministry requested its missions to “conduct the necessary communications in their respective countries, both bilaterally and within the councils of Arab ambassadors, to present the Lebanese stance outlined in the document.”
The document stated that “the Lebanese government believes that a full-scale war can still be avoided, and it is committed to protecting the safety and security of its citizens, retaining its right to self-defense under international law.
“At the same time, the government believes that de-escalation is the most appropriate path to avoid a destructive cycle of violence, which would be more challenging to contain.”
The document said that “the government cannot act alone. The international community must play a decisive and immediate role in calming tensions and curbing the ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanon.”
The text added: “To achieve de-escalation, the Lebanese government proposes a systematic and organized approach that would provide an alternative to the current chaos. This approach would be purposeful, with the primary goal of restoring stability.”
The government statement also demanded the “full and equitable implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. There is a need for immediate de-escalation and cessation of provocative actions to reduce risks and protect civilians.
“Any activity within this framework should not obstruct the full re-commitment to Resolution 1701 or increase the risk of a full-scale conflict,” it said.
The document also said that “the Lebanese government believes that a ceasefire in Gaza would immediately calm tensions in southern Lebanon, paving the way for long-term sustainable stability. In this context, the Lebanese government supports President Biden’s agreement to ceasefire in Gaza and calls for its immediate implementation following Resolution 2735.”
The Lebanese reaction came as a local TV team survived an Israeli raid on the Majdal Selm village this morning.
Israeli artillery shelling targeted Houla, while Israeli warplanes raided several houses in Tayr Harfa, Tyre.
The Health Ministry emergency operations center said that “the Israeli artillery shelling with phosphorus shells on Kfarkila has resulted in a severe case of asphyxiation for one resident, who required hospitalization.”
The destructive artillery shelling flattened several houses in Aitaroun, while Israeli warplanes hit Aita Al-Shaab.
Hezbollah separately said in a statement that it destroyed “spy equipment in the Israeli military Ramia site with an attack drone.”
Hezbollah released footage of its operation targeting “a newly established Israeli military position in Khirbet Manot.”
It also announced targeting “a gathering of Israeli soldiers in Tel Sha’ar with rocket weapons.”
Israeli warplanes continued to fly at medium altitude over southern villages, extending to Sidon and Beirut.
Lebanese government accuses Israel of intending to prolong war, expand its scope
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Lebanese government accuses Israel of intending to prolong war, expand its scope
- Israeli airstrikes, shelling target towns in southern Lebanon
- Hezbollah targets Israeli military gatherings
UN to add nutrients to second round of Gaza polio vaccinations
- The first round of the polio vaccination campaign, which began on Sept. 1, reached its target of 90 percent of children under 10 years of age
UNITED NATIONS: The second round of a vaccination campaign to protect 640,000 children in Gaza against polio will also deliver micronutrients — essential vitamins and minerals — and conduct nutritional screening, a senior UN Children’s Fund official said.
Discussions are also underway about the feasibility of adding further vaccinations to the campaign, including a measles immunization, said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations.
“There are over 44,000 children born in the last year and who haven’t received their basic immunization,” he said on Thursday.
The first round of the polio vaccination campaign, which began on Sept. 1, reached its target of 90 percent of children under 10 years of age, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Monday.
It was carried out in phases over two weeks during humanitarian pauses in the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas. A second round of the polio vaccinations has to be carried out within four weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed last month that a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
A high risk of famine persists across Gaza as long as the war continues and humanitarian access is restricted, according to an assessment by a global hunger monitor published in June.
“In the same way that we’ve been able to reach all children with polio vaccines, we need to move and use the same modality to reach children with their basic vaccines, with some of the nutrition and hygiene interventions that are essential to save their lives,” Chaiban told reporters after visiting Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
“Those are lifesaving interventions and the parties have shown that they can line up when necessary. It needs to happen again,” he said.
Blinken urges against ‘escalatory actions’ in Mideast
- France, US are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular: Blinken
PARIS: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday urged against “escalatory actions by any party” in the Middle East, following the explosions of devices of Lebanese group Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
“France and the United States are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to the Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular,” Blinken said after talks in Paris with his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne.
Blinken said this was especially important at a time when the international community was continuing work to agree a ceasefire in Gaza to end the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“We continue to work to get a ceasefire for Gaza over the finish line... We believe that remains both possible and necessary. But meanwhile we don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party that makes that more difficult,” Blinken said.
Sejourne, making one of his final public appearances ahead of a cabinet reshuffle that will see him sent to Brussels as France’s new EU commissioner, said both France and the United States were “very worried about the situation” in the Middle East.
He said both the United States and France were coordinating to “send messages of de-escalation” to the parties.
“Lebanon would not recover from a total war,” he said.
Fears of a major war on Israel’s northern border have increased after thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ communication devices exploded across Lebanon, killing 37 people and wounding nearly 3,000 more across two days.
Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts
- Attacks on Hezbollah's communications equipment killed 37, wounded around 3,000 in past two days
- Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like war in Gaza, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel bombed southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had thwarted an Iranian-led assassination plot after explosions in booby-trapped radios and pagers in the past two days caused bloody havoc in the ranks of its arch-foe Hezbollah.
The attacks on Hezbollah’s communications equipment killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000, raising fears that a full-blown war was imminent. The action also sowed disarray across Lebanon as panicked residents abandoned their mobile phones.
“This isn’t a small matter, it’s war. Who can even secure their phone now? When I heard about what happened yesterday, I left my phone on my motorcycle and walked away,” said Mustafa Sibal on a street in Beirut.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being behind the attacks but multiple security sources have said they were carried out by its spy agency Mossad.
The Lebanese army said on Thursday it was blowing up pagers and suspicious telecom devices in controlled blasts in different areas. It called on citizens to report any suspicious devices.
Lebanese authorities banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport until further notice, the National News Agency reported. Such devices were also banned from being shipped by air.
In Beirut on Thursday, a distant roar in the skies could be heard from what state media said was Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier — a noise that has become common in recent months.
Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on the day after the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas which triggered the Gaza war, and since then constant exchanges of fire have occurred, although neither side has allowed this to escalate into a full-scale war.
Israel said its warplanes struck villages in southern Lebanon overnight, and a security source and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported airstrikes near the border began again on Thursday just after midday.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south.
The previous day, hundreds of pagers — used by Hezbollah to evade mobile phone surveillance — exploded at once, killing 12 people including two children, and injuring more than 2,300.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on the United Nations Security Council to take a firm stand to stop what he called Israel’s “aggression” and “technological war” against his country.
Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like its war in Gaza against Hamas, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran, which sponsors both groups as well as armed movements in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Assassination plot
Also on Thursday, Israeli security forces said that an Israeli businessman had been arrested last month after attending at least two meetings in Iran where he discussed assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister or the head of the Shin Bet spy agency.
Last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
Israel has been accused of assassinations including a blast in Tehran that killed the leader of Hamas and another in a Beirut suburb that killed a senior Hezbollah commander within hours of each other in July.
Despite the events of the past few days, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said the situation along the frontier had “not changed much in terms of exchanges of fire between the parties.”
“There was an intensification last week. This week it is more or less the same. There are still exchanges of fire. It is still worrying, still concerning, and the rhetoric is high,” the spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, said.
Tens of thousands of people have had to flee the Israel-Lebanon border area on both sides since the hostilities began in October.
Shifting focus
The Israeli military said its overnight air strikes hit Hezbollah targets in Chihine, Tayibe, Blida, Meiss El Jabal, Aitaroun and Kfarkela in southern Lebanon, as well as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Khiam.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the war was moving into a new phase, with more resources and military units being shifted to the northern border.
According to Israeli officials, the forces being deployed there include the 98th Division, an elite formation including commando and paratrooper elements that has been fighting in Gaza.
Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts
- Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks
- Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not“
BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Thursday his powerful group had suffered an “unprecedented” blow when thousands of operatives’ communication devices exploded in attacks it blamed on Israel.
Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 across Lebanon over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.
Delivering a speech after the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, which plunged Lebanon into panic, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks.
Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
“It could be a war crime or a declaration of war,” he said of the attacks, which he branded a “massacre.”
Nasrallah also vowed to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.
“The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops” despite “all this blood spilt,” he said.
Nasrallah addressed Israeli officials’ promises to return thousands of Israelis displaced by exchanges of fire across the border with Lebanon to their homes.
“You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north,” he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border.”
Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which on October 7 launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked Gaza’s deadliest ever war.
Up until now, the focus of Israel’s firepower had been on Gaza.
But Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has seen exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants almost every day since October.
The violence has killed hundreds of people, mostly fighters, on the Lebanese side, and dozens on the Israeli side.
Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut as Nasrallah spoke, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said, with AFP correspondents in Beirut reporting loud booms.
Nasrallah announced the launch of an internal probe into the attacks, which experts and some Israeli media have said bear all the hallmarks of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
EU’s Borrell says Lebanon attacks aimed to ‘spread terror’
- “The indiscriminate method used is unacceptable due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians,” Borrell said
- At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded
BEIRUT: The EU foreign policy chief condemned attacks which targeted mobile communication devices used by Hezbollah this week, saying whoever was behind them aimed “to spread terror in Lebanon,” a statement from the EU’s Beirut delegation said on Thursday.
“The indiscriminate method used is unacceptable due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians, and the broader consequences for the entire population, including fear and terror, and the collapse of hospitals,” Josep Borrell said.
At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded when first pagers, then walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded in two waves of attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Lebanon and Hezbollah say Israel carried out the attack. Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Hezbollah, a heavily armed group backed by Iran, and Israel have been trading fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border for almost a year in a conflict triggered by the Gaza war.
