Jerusalem: The United States urged its ally Israel to avoid Gaza-like military action in Lebanon, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it could face “destruction” like the Palestinian territory.
Israel’s military chief, Herzi Halevi, vowed to keep bombing Hezbollah targets, a campaign that has killed more than 1,200 people since September 23, “without allowing them any respite or recovery.”
The comments came after a phone call between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, their first in seven weeks. The White House said Biden told Netanyahu to “minimize harm” to civilians in Lebanon, particularly in “densely populated areas of Beirut.”
“There should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza and leaves a result anything like Gaza,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
Netanyahu said in a video address to the people of Lebanon on Tuesday: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
He added: “Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
Biden and Netanyahu’s call had been expected to focus on Israel’s response to last week’s missile barrage by Iran.
Iran fired about 200 missiles at Israel in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Most were intercepted by Israel or its allies.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Our attack on Iran will be deadly, precise and surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would risk major retaliation, and opposes striking oil installations.
A Lebanese government source told AFP that Hezbollah had accepted a ceasefire with Israel on September 27, the day Israel killed Nasrallah.
But they said Israel’s response had torpedoed the plan, backed by Washington and its allies, and the Lebanese government had “had no contact with Hezbollah” since his death.
Hezbollah said its fighters were locked in clashes with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, using rocket-propelled weapons to repel attempts to breach the border.
Two people were killed by suspected Hezbollah rocket fire in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, while Israel intercepted two projectiles fired toward the coastal town of Caesarea, officials said.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least four people were killed in an Israeli strike on a village southeast of Beirut, an area so far largely spared from Israeli bombing.
Lebanon’s state civil defense body said an Israeli strike killed five of its personnel in the southern village of Derdghaiya.
Israel has intensified air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon since September 23, uprooting more than a million people, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Its ground forces crossed into Lebanon on September 30 in response to Hezbollah rocket and artillery attacks over the past year that have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.
Israel’s military said Wednesday its troops “eliminated terrorists during close-quarter encounters and in aerial strikes” over the previous 24 hours, adding “100 Hezbollah terror targets were destroyed.”
Israeli operations have expanded from border areas in the interior to the southern section of Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast.
According to a toll from the Israeli army on Wednesday, 13 of its soldiers have died since ground operations inside Lebanon began.
Syrian state media reported an Israeli attack Thursday on the central provinces of Homs and Hama.
Off the coast of Yemen, a ship was struck and damaged by an “unknown projectile,” a British maritime agency said, following months of attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas allies, the Houthis.
Israel expanded an ongoing military operation around Jabalia in northern Gaza, where about 400,000 people are trapped, according to Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Lazzarini said on X there was “no end to hell” in the area and that “recent evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities are forcing people to flee again & again.”
The army surrounded Jabalia and its refugee camp at the weekend and shelled it on Wednesday, preventing the delivery of aid, Gaza’s civil defense agency said.
Washington said it was “incredibly concerned” about the humanitarian situation in north Gaza as Israel tightens its siege.
“We have been making clear to the government of Israel that they have an obligation under international humanitarian law to allow food and water and other needed humanitarian assistance to make it into all parts of Gaza,” said the State Department’s Miller.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 42,010 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations has described as reliable.
Israeli police said at least six people were wounded Wednesday, some seriously, in a stabbing rampage in the central Israeli town of Hadera.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli border police killed at least four Palestinians in the northern city of Nablus, Palestinian health authorities and Israeli security forces said.
In Beirut, many people are sleeping out in the streets after Israeli air strikes.
Ahmad, a 77-year-old who did not want to give his family name for fear of reprisals, said he had a message for Hezbollah.
“If you can’t continue to fight, announce you are withdrawing and that you have lost. There is no shame in losing,” he said.
But Raed Ayyash, a displaced man from the south of the country, said he hoped Hezbollah would keep fighting.
“We hope for victory, and we will never give up.”
US warns Israel not to repeat Gaza destruction in Lebanon
https://arab.news/9nmzh
US warns Israel not to repeat Gaza destruction in Lebanon
- Biden and Netanyahu’s call had been expected to focus on Israel’s response to last week’s missile barrage by Iran
Palestinian officials say an Israeli strike on a Gaza shelter has killed at least 21 people
- Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza has killed at least 21 people,
DEIR AL-BALAH: An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza killed at least 21 people on Thursday, with the toll likely to rise, Palestinian medical officials said.
Israel has continued to strike at what it says are militant targets across the Palestinian enclave even as attention has shifted to its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. It launched a large-scale air and ground operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought, confirmed the toll from the strike in the central town of Deir Al-Balah. It said several other people were wounded in the strike.
An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies, many of which arrived in pieces.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Witnesses said the strike targeted a makeshift post of the Hamas-run police inside the shelter.
Israel has repeatedly attacked schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of hiding out there.
Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces and fire occasional rockets into Israel more than a year after its Oct. 7 attack ignited the war.
Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and rampaged through army bases and farming communities in that attack, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Egypt denies involvement in Sudan war
- Egypt’s foreign ministry rejected Dagalo’s claim that Egypt’s air force carried out strikes targeting his forces near Jebel Moya
Cairo: Egypt has denied allegations from Sudanese paramilitary chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, at war with the army since April last year, that its military has been involved in the conflict.
The war between Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces and the regular military, led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has killed tens of thousands and caused the world’s largest displacement crisis.
In a video posted online Wednesday, Dagalo accused Egypt’s air force of carrying out strikes targeting his forces near Jebel Moya, a key area south of Khartoum.
“Egypt is fighting us,” he said, accusing it of being one of six countries of interfering in the conflict, including Iran.
Iran’s supply of MoHajjer-6 drones, verified by two weapons experts to AFP, appeared to give the army support for an advance on the Sudanese capital earlier this year.
In a statement issued late Wednesday, Egypt’s foreign ministry rejected Dagalo’s claim.
Egypt “denies the allegations... regarding the participation of the Egyptian air force in the battles taking place in brotherly Sudan,” the statement said.
Army chief Burhan has historically been close to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
Analysts say war-torn Sudan war has become a playground for proxies, warning in particular about the impact of the United Arab Emirates’ support for the RSF.
In December, UN experts monitoring an arms embargo on Sudan’s Darfur region described as “credible” allegations Abu Dhabi had funnelled weapons to Dagalo’s forces on cargo planes.
According to diplomats, the United States recently pressed the UAE behind closed doors over its support for the RSF, though US President Joe Biden designated Abu Dhabi as a “major defense partner.”
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of repeated atrocities in the war, including targeting civilians, the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and looting or blocking aid.
The RSF has been accused of crimes against humanity, systematic sexual violence and ethnic cleansing.
Israel says it eliminates Hezbollah ‘Golan Heights’ member, Syrian media report Israeli airstrikes
- Israel military says it eliminated 2 Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon
- Israeli fighters attack ammunition depots in Beirut area, says military
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: Israel’s military said it had eliminated a Hezbollah member in Syria who relayed intelligence against Israel in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, while Syrian media reported on Thursday that Israeli airstrikes hit targets in Syria.
Israel, which has carried out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, has ramped up its raids since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israeli territory, which ignited Israel’s war in Gaza.
Israel has escalated its retaliation for the Hamas attack, sending troops into Lebanon and airstrikes into Iran, Yemen and Syria in the hunt for Iran-backed militants, raising fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could draw in Iran and the United States.
Ground clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, which is also backed by Iran, spread along southern Lebanon’s mountainous frontier on Wednesday as the Middle East was on high alert awaiting Israel’s response to an Iranian missile strike last week.
US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Wednesday about potential Israeli retaliation against Iran, in a call both sides described as positive.
The two discussed Israel’s plans in the 30-minute call, and Biden urged Netanyahu to minimize civilian harm in Lebanon, the White House said.
Israel has promised that arch-foe Iran will pay for its missile attack, which caused little damage, while Tehran has said any retaliation would be met with vast destruction, raising concerns of broader fighting in the oil-producing region.
Biden last week made comments discouraging Israel from striking Iranian oil fields and said he would not support Israel striking Iranian nuclear sites.
Strikes in Syria
The Israeli military said on Thursday it had eliminated two Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon and its fighter jets attacked ammunition depots in the Beirut area and ammunition depots and other military infrastructures in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
The Israel Defense Force said on Wednesday it had eliminated Adham Jahout, a member of Hezbollah’s “Golan Terrorist Network” in the area of Quneitra in Syria.
The IDF said Jahout’s role was to relay information from Syrian regime sources to Hezbollah and transmit intelligence gathered on the Syrian front to facilitate operations against Israel in the Golan Heights.
Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the area, a move not recognized by most countries.
Syrian state TV said early on Thursday that Israel had carried out airstrikes targeting an industrial site in the Syrian city of Homs and a military site in the countryside near the city of Hama, causing “some material damage.”
The strikes targeted a car manufacturing plant in Homs and caused a fire, Syrian TV said, citing the director of the industrial site, Amer Khalil.
Explosions were also heard in the Syrian city of Daraa and were being investigated, state media reported.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday it had intercepted a drone that approached Israel over the Red Sea but did not cross into Israeli territory, minutes after the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it had targeted Israel’s Eilat with drones.
’Deadly, precise, surprising’ retaliation
The Biden-Netanyahu discussion was “direct and very productive,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, while acknowledging the two leaders have disagreements. Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters the two held “a positive call, and we appreciate the support of the US“
Relations between Biden and Netanyahu have been tense over the Israeli leader’s handling of Gaza and Lebanon. The US has tried to prevent hostilities from escalating and has unsuccessfully sought to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.
Some analysts say Israel is most likely to respond to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack by targeting Iranian military installations, especially those that produce ballistic missiles like the ones used in the attack. It could also seek to destroy Iranian air defense systems and missile-launching facilities.
In a video carried by Israeli media on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reiterated plans for a lethal strike against Iran. “Our attack will be deadly, precise and above all surprising,” he said.
Although the conflict has intensified, a proposal last month by the US and France for a 21-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah “is still on the table,” the top UN official in Lebanon said on Wednesday.
Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the last few weeks, and forced 1.2 million from their homes, according to the Lebanese government. Israel says it has no choice but to strike Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they fled under Hezbollah rocket fire.
The Hamas attack a year ago killed about 1,200 people while about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, the Gaza health ministry says. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the enclave has been laid to waste.
Suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels target ship in Red Sea
- The vessel was a distance away from Hodeida
- At least two more projectiles later fell in the waters around the vessel
DUBAI: A series of suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted a ship on Thursday in the Red Sea, authorities said.
The attack comes as the rebels continue to threaten ships moving through the Red Sea, a waterway that once saw $1 trillion in goods move through it a year, over the ongoing conflicts in the Mideast stemming from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
A ship in the Red Sea skirting the coast of the East Africa found itself struck first by a projectile that damaged the vessel, but sparked no fire and caused no injuries, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.
At least two more projectiles later fell in the waters around the vessel, which was a distance away from Hodeida, the Houthi-controlled port from which many of the rebels’ attacks have been launched.
The rebels did not immediately claim the attack. However, it can take them hours or even days to acknowledge their assaults.
The Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.
The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
Israeli defense minister warns an attack on Iran would be ‘lethal’ and ‘surprising’
- US president Joe Biden says he would not support a retaliatory strike on Tehran’s nuclear sites
JERUSALEM: Israel’s defense minister warned on Wednesday that his country’s retaliation for a recent Iranian missile attack will be “lethal” and “surprising,” while the Israeli military pushed ahead with a large-scale operation in northern Gaza and a ground offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah militants.
On the diplomatic front, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden held their first call in seven weeks, with a White House press secretary saying the call included discussions on Israel’s deliberations over how it will respond to Iran’s attack.
“It was direct, it was productive,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the 30-minute call.
The Israeli operation in northern Gaza left dozens of people dead and threatened to shut down three hospitals over a year into the war with Hamas, Palestinian officials and residents said.
The continuing cycle of destruction and death in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, comes as Israel expands a weeklong ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon and considers a major retaliatory strike on Iran following Iran’s Oct. 1 missile barrage.
“Our strike will be lethal, precise and above all, surprising. They won’t understand what happened and how. They will see the results,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a speech to troops. “Whoever strikes us will be harmed and pay a price.”
Iran fired dozens of missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 which the United States helped fend off. Biden has said he would not support a retaliatory strike on sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack that killed two people in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. The town’s acting mayor, Ofir Yehezkeli, said the two killed were a couple walking their dogs.
Dozens killed in Gaza and survivors fear displacement
In northern Gaza, there was heavy fighting in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, where Israeli forces have carried out several major operations over the course of the war and then returned as militants regroup. The entire north, including Gaza City, has suffered heavy destruction and has been largely isolated by Israeli forces since late last year.
In Gaza, Jabaliya residents said thousands of people have been trapped in their homes since the operation began Sunday, as Israeli jets and drones buzz overhead and troops battle militants in the streets.
“It’s like hell. We can’t get out,” said Mohamed Awda, who lives with his parents and six siblings. He said there were three bodies in the street outside his home that could not be retrieved because of the fighting.
“The quadcopters are everywhere, and they fire at anyone. You can’t even open the window,” he told The Associated Press by phone, speaking over the sound of explosions.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said it recovered 40 bodies from Jabaliya from Sunday until Tuesday, and another 14 from communities farther north. There are likely more bodies under rubble and in areas that can’t be accessed, it said.
Jabaliya residents fear Israel aims to depopulate the north and turn it into a closed military zone or a Jewish settlement. Israel has blocked all roads except for the main highway leading south from Jabaliya, according to residents.
“We are concerned about the displacement to the south,” Ahmed Qamar, who lives in Jabaliya with his wife, children and parents, said in a text message. “People here say clearly that they will die here in northern Gaza and won’t go to southern Gaza.”
Hospitals are under threat
Fadel Naeem, the director of Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, said it had received dozens of wounded people and bodies from the north. “We declared a state of emergency, suspended scheduled surgeries, and discharged patients whose conditions are stable,” he told AP in a text message.
Israel’s offensive has gutted Gaza’s health sector, forcing most hospitals to shut down and leaving the rest only partially functioning.
Naeem said three hospitals farther north — Kamal Adwan, Awda and the Indonesian Hospital — have become almost inaccessible because of the fighting. The Gaza Health Ministry says the Israeli army has ordered all three to evacuate staff and patients. Meanwhile, no humanitarian aid has entered the north since Oct. 1, according to UN data.
Israel’s authority coordinating humanitarian affairs in Palestinian territories said Israel “has not halted the entry or coordination of humanitarian aid entering from its territory into the northern Gaza Strip.”
Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it fights in residential areas.
Israel ordered the wholesale evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in the opening weeks of the war, but hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have remained there. Israel reiterated those instructions over the weekend, telling people to flee south to a humanitarian zone where hundreds of thousands are already crammed into squalid tent camps.
The war began just over a year ago, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. They still hold around 100 hostages, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters. It has said women and children make up over half of the dead. The offensive has also caused staggering destruction across the territory and displaced around 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until “total victory” over Hamas and the return of all hostages.
Israel warns Lebanon it could end up like Gaza
On Tuesday, Netanyahu said Lebanon would meet the same fate as Gaza if its people did not rise up against Hezbollah.
Video verified by The Associated Press shows what appears to be a group of Israeli soldiers raising an Israeli flag in a village in southern Lebanon.
In the video, which appears to have been filmed in Maroun A-Ras, three soldiers are seen hoisting up a flag atop a pile of debris. A soldier off camera speaks in Hebrew and refers to the nearby Israeli village of Avivim. The date it was filmed wasn’t immediately known.
The video follows other similar acts that took place throughout Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
An Israeli strike killed four people and wounded another 10 at a hotel sheltering displaced people in the southern Lebanese town of Wardaniyeh on Wednesday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
An Associated Press reporter in a nearby town heard two sonic booms from Israeli jets before the strike. Plumes of smoke rose from the building after the explosion.
In recent weeks Israel has waged a heavy air campaign across large parts of Lebanon, targeting what it says are Hezbollah rocket launchers and other militant sites. A series of strikes had killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his top commanders.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that Hezbollah has fired more than 12,000 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel in the past year.
