JERUSALEM/BEIRUT/MANILA: Rocket fire from Lebanon killed an Israeli civilian on Tuesday, medics said, adding to tensions at the frontier as Lebanon braced for Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah after a deadly missile strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Tensions have spiked since Saturday when the rocket killed 12 children and teenagers at a football pitch in a Druze village. Israel accused the Iran-backed Hezbollah and vowed a harsh response. Hezbollah has denied involvement.
As diplomats sought to contain the fallout, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he did not believe a fight was inevitable between Hezbollah and Israel, though he remained concerned about the potential for escalation.
Hezbollah and Israel, which last fought each other in a major war in 2006, have been trading fire since the eruption of the Gaza war in October, after Hezbollah began attacking Israeli territory in what it says is solidarity with the Palestinians.
The hostilities have mostly been contained to the frontier region and both sides have previously indicated they do not seek a wider confrontation even as the conflict has prompted worry about the risk of a slide toward war.
In the latest exchanges of fire on Tuesday, the Israeli military said 10 rockets had been fired from Lebanon and one hit Kibbutz Hagoshrim, causing one casualty. Israel’s ambulance service said the 30-year-old male died of shrapnel wounds.
Israel said it hit some 10 Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon overnight and killed one Hezbollah fighter — attacks which appeared to be in keeping with the pattern of the last nine months. Hezbollah confirmed one of its fighters was killed.
Hezbollah, one of the world’s most heavily armed non-state groups, said its air defense unit had fired at Israeli warplanes which broke the sound barrier over Lebanon, forcing them to retreat.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military said it was unfamiliar with any such incident.
The United States has been leading a diplomatic effort to deter Israel from striking Lebanon’s capital Beirut or major civil infrastructure in response to Saturday’s attack, five people with knowledge of the drive told Reuters on Monday.
“While we’ve seen a lot of activity on Israel’s northern border, we remain concerned about the potential of this escalating into a full-blown fight. And I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable,” US Defense Secretary Austin said during a visit to Manila.
“We’d like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion,” he added in a joint news conference following security talks between himself, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their respective Philippine counterparts.
Two Israeli officials said on Monday that Israel wanted to hurt Hezbollah but not drag the Middle East into all-out war.
Some flights at Beirut’s international airport have been canceled or delayed this week due to the heightened tensions.
Hezbollah has denied firing the rocket that hit the village of Majdal Shams on Saturday. It said it had fired a missile against a military target on the Golan, a border region Israel seized from Syria in 1967.
Tens of thousands of people have fled or been evacuated from towns and villages on both sides of the frontier since the cross border firing began in October.
Israeli strikes have killed around 350 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and more than 100 civilians, according to security and medical sources and a Reuters tally of Hezbollah death notifications.
Twenty-four civilians, including one on Tuesday and 12 on Saturday, have been killed in Hezbollah attacks since October, along with at least 17 soldiers, according to Israeli tallies.
Israeli killed by rocket from Lebanon, Austin believes conflict not inevitable
https://arab.news/gqt7k
Israeli killed by rocket from Lebanon, Austin believes conflict not inevitable
- As diplomats sought to contain the fallout, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he did not believe a fight was inevitable between Hezbollah and Israel
- Hezbollah said its air defense unit had fired at Israeli warplanes which broke the sound barrier over Lebanon, forcing them to retreat
Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market
The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military as part of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
“Twenty-three people were confirmed dead and more than 40 others wounded” and taken to hospital after “military air strikes on Saturday afternoon on the main market” in southern Khartoum, the youth-led Emergency Response Rooms said in a post on Facebook.
Fierce fighting has raged since Friday around Khartoum, much of which is controlled by the RSF, with the military pounding the center and south of the city from the air.
The military is advancing toward Khartoum from nearby Omdurman, where clashes erupted on Saturday, eyewitnesses said.
Since April 2023, when war broke out between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitaries had largely pushed the army out of Khartoum.
The World Health Organization says at least 20,000 people have been killed in the civil war, but some estimates put the toll much higher at up to 150,000.
The war has also created the world’s largest displacement crisis, the UN says.
More than 10 million people, around a fifth of Sudan’s population, have been forced from their homes, according to UN figures.
A UN-backed assessment in August declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur near the city of El-Fasher.
The government loyal to the army is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where the army has retained control.
The RSF meanwhile has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, rampaged through the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and pushed into the army-controlled southeast.
Iran, Iraq funerals for general killed with Hezbollah chief
- Nilforoushan is a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm was killed alongside Nasrallah
Tehran: Iran and Iraq will both stage funerals for Revolutionary Guard General Abbas Nilforoushan, killed in an Israeli air strike alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the Guards’ news agency said Sunday.
Nilforoushan, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm, was killed on September 27 alongside Nasrallah in the strike on south Beirut.
The IRGC said Friday his body had been recovered from the site of the strike on the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Funeral ceremonies will be held in “Najaf and Karbala” in Iraq on Monday before the body is transferred to Iran’s holy city of Mashhad, the Sepah news agency said.
Another ceremony will take place at Tehran’s Imam Hossein Square on Tuesday before burial Thursday in the central city of Isfahan, his hometown, Sepah said.
On October 1, Iran fired some 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah, Nilforoushan and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in late July.
Israel said it carried out the Beirut strike but did not comment on Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, where he had attended the inauguration of the Islamic republic’s new president.
Israel has vowed to retaliate for the Iranian missile attack, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying the response would be “deadly, precise, and surprising.”
Iran condemns ‘illegal and unjustified’ US sanctions on oil industry: ministry
- US on Friday slapped Iran with a spate of new sanctions on the country’s oil and petrochemical industry in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack against Israel.
Tehran: Iran condemned Sunday what it called an “illegal and unjustified” expansion of US sanctions targeting its oil industry following Tehran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this month.
In a statement, foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei defended Iran’s attack on Israel and “strongly condemned” the sanctions, saying they were “illegal and unjustified.”
The United States on Friday slapped Iran with a spate of new sanctions on the country’s oil and petrochemical industry in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack against Israel.
Baghaei defended Iran’s attack on Israel as being legal and insisted on Iran’s right to respond to the new sanctions.
The US Treasury Department said it targeted Iran’s so-called shadow fleet of ships involved in selling Iranian oil in circumvention of existing sanctions.
It said it had designated at least 10 companies and 17 vessels as “blocked property” over their involvement in shipments of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products.
The State Department also announced it was placing sanctions on six further firms and six ships for “knowingly engaging in a significant transaction for the purchase, acquisition, sale, transport, or marketing of petroleum or petroleum products from Iran.”
Baghaei said “the policy of threats and maximum pressure” had no impact on “Iran’s will to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests and citizens against any violation and foreign aggressions.”
He said the sanctions would enable Israel “to continue killing innocents and pose a threat to the peace and unity of the region and the world.”
The new wave of sanctions comes as the world awaits Israel’s promised response to Tehran’s missile attack, with oil prices hitting their highest levels since August.
Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden advised Israel against targeting oil infrastructure in Iran, one of the world’s 10 largest producers.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi last Tuesday warned that “any attack against infrastructure in Iran will provoke an even stronger response.”
Israel widens Lebanon strikes as troops fight Hezbollah along border
- Hezbollah says fighting Israeli troops near Ramiya village, southern Lebanon
- Third UN peacekeeper wounded in Israeli strike in Lebanon
BEIRUT: Israel expanded its aerial bombardment of targets in Lebanon, hitting areas both in and outside traditional Hezbollah bastions, as its troops battled militants across the border on Sunday.
In areas where Hezbollah holds sway, Israeli warplanes hit a marketplace in the southern city of Nabatiyeh on Saturday, and then a 100-year-old mosque in a village near the border on Sunday, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA).
There have also been deadly strikes in other areas of Lebanon — one on a Shiite Muslim village in a mostly Christian mountain area, and another in north Lebanon, the health ministry said.
AFP footage shot from the northern Deir Billa area after the strike there showed rescuers and villagers digging with bare hands through rubble as smoke rose from the site.
The mayor of Kfar Tibnit, where the NNA said a strike destroyed a mosque, said he felt he had lost a beloved site that brought people together.
“It was a significant place because families used to gather in the square right next to it on special occasions,” Fuad Yassin told AFP, adding that the mosque was at least 100 years old.
Lebanon’s health ministry said strikes on three villages on Saturday killed 15 people.
Israel has alleged that militants use civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza to conduct operations — a claim the groups have denied.
The Israeli military said its 36th division continued “targeted and limited operational activity” in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah.
In a statement, it said Israeli jets had hit “Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities, and additional terror targets.”
On the ground, soldiers had “eliminated dozens of terrorists.”
According to the NNA, Israeli forces have “escalated their attacks” on southern Lebanon, with “successive air strikes from midnight until morning” pounding several border villages.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said it clashed with Israeli troops who tried to “infiltrate” twice into a border village, sparking an hour-long battle.
It later said it shelled Israeli soldiers gathered in Maroun Al-Ras village.
Early Sunday, Israel said it intercepted five more projectiles fired from Lebanon as air raid sirens sounded.
The military said Hezbollah launched about 320 projectiles into Israel over the weekend of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
It also said roughly 280 “terror targets” were attacked in Lebanon and Gaza over the same period.
Israel on Saturday told residents of south Lebanon not to return home, and issued new evacuation warnings for several villages.
Targetting peacekeepers
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin that Israel will continue to take measures to avoid any harm to UN peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon, the defense ministry said Sunday.
“Minister Gallant emphasized ... the IDF (Israeli military) will continue to take measures to avoid harm to UNIFIL troops and peacekeeping positions” in southern Lebanon, the ministry said in a statement following overnight talks between the pair. At least five peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israeli forces fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, has accused the Israeli military of “deliberately” firing on its positions.
UNIFIL said that, in recent days, its forces have repeatedly come under fire in the Lebanese town of Naqura where it is headquartered, as well as in other positions.
“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” 40 nations that contribute to the force including Indonesia, Italy and India said in a joint statement on Saturday.
UNIFIL, which involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities, is tasked with, among other things, monitoring a ceasefire that ended the 33-day 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
With no sign of a let-up in the violence, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned against a “catastrophic” regional conflict.
In an interview with AFP, Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, said he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah could soon spiral “into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone.”
There is “no military solution,” Tenenti said.
Hamas sparked the year-long war in Gaza by launching the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The number includes hostages killed in captivity.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 42,175 people, a majority civilians, have been killed since Israel’s military campaign began there. The UN acknowledges these figures to be reliable.
In support for its ally Hamas, Hezbollah started firing into northern Israel in October last year, triggering a near-daily exchange of fire that even before the current escalation had led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people.
In September, Israel expanded its focus to Lebanon, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to fight Hezbollah until Israelis displaced by the violence could return to their homes.
Since Israel began a wave of air strikes on targets around Lebanon and sent troops across the border, more than 1,200 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, and a million others have been displaced.
Efforts to negotiate an end to the Lebanon and Gaza wars have so far failed.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a “full and immediate ceasefire.”
French President Emmanuel Macron repeated his call for a ceasefire and said Hezbollah must “immediately stop” attacking Israel.
In a show of support for Hezbollah — which Tehran arms and finances — the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Saturday visited the site of an earlier deadly Israeli strike.
A source close to Hezbollah said the strike had targeted the group’s security chief Wafiq Safa, something neither Hezbollah nor Israel has confirmed.
Ghalibaf’s visit, a signal of Tehran’s defiance, came after Israel vowed to respond to Iran’s second-ever direct attack, after an earlier missile barrage in April.
Tehran said the barrage was retaliation for the killing of top militants and an Iranian general.
Deeping push in Gaza
In Gaza, Israeli forces have focused on an area around Jabalia in the north, causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted an evacuation warning on X on Saturday for an area near Jabalia, saying it was “considered a dangerous combat zone.”
“There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north — everyone is at risk of death,” Gaza resident Sami Asliya, 27, told AFP.
Israeli strikes kill 29 people in Gaza, medics say, as tanks push deeper in the north
- Israeli forces continue to pound Jabalia from air, ground
- Around 150 killed in Jabalia over past week
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes on Gaza on Saturday killed at least 29 Palestinians, medics said, and forces kept pushing deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped.
Residents said Israeli forces continued to pound Jabalia, in the north of the enclave, the largest of its historic refugee camps, from the air and ground.
Nineteen people were killed in Gaza overnight, and 10 more died on Saturday evening after Israel struck two houses in Jabalia and the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. The death toll could rise as many of the wounded are in critical condition, medics said.
The Israeli military published new evacuation orders on Saturday to two neighborhoods on the northern edge of Gaza City, which also lies in the north of the enclave, saying the area was a “dangerous combat zone.”
In a statement, Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry urged residents not to relocate within northern areas of the enclave and also to avoid heading south “where the occupation is conducting continued bombing and killing every day in the areas it claims to be safe.”
The Israeli military said it had been operating against Hamas fighters who had been using civilian buildings and said clear evacuation instructions had been issued over recent days to areas including the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
It said an evacuation convoy to take patients from the hospital to Gaza City had arrived on Saturday with a supply of fuel for the facility.
In recent days, the military had said that forces operating in Jabalia and nearby areas killed dozens of militants, located weapons and dismantled military infrastructure.
On Saturday, it said more than 20 fighters had been killed by tank fire, close range gunfire and airstrikes as forces continued operations throughout the Gaza Strip.
The operation in this area began a week ago and the military said then it aimed to fight against militants waging attacks and to prevent Hamas from regrouping. Hamas denies that its fighters deliberately use civilian areas as bases.
Palestinian health officials put the number of people killed in Jabalia over the past week at around 150.
SHORTAGES
Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. They have also voiced concerns over severe shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies in northern Gaza, and said there is a risk of famine there.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, aimed at eliminating the militant group Hamas, has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians since it began a year ago, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and has laid waste to the enclave.
The war began after a Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023, on southern Israeli communities in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said Israel’s “massacre against the civilians” aimed to punish the residents of Jabalia for refusing to leave their homes. It also said it was a sign of Israel’s military failure to defeat the group.
Israel has denied it targets civilians.
The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets, and mortar fire.
United Nations officials said on Friday an Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.
The territory’s health ministry announced on Saturday that the campaign would begin on Monday in central Gaza Strip areas and would last three days before moving to other territories.
Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
As in the first phase, humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza are planned, in order to reach hundreds of thousands of children.
