Israel carried out another series of punitive airstrikes on Friday (4 October 2024), hitting Beirut’s suburbs and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing Israeli bombardments against the Hezbollah militant group.
The overnight blasts in Beirut’s southern suburbs sent huge plumes of smoke and flames into the night sky and shook buildings miles away in the Lebanese capital. Additional strikes sent people fleeing for cover through rubble-strewn streets in the Dahiya district, where at least one building was razed to the ground and cars burned.
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The Israeli military said it attacked Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters around midnight. It did not say who was targeted or if any fighters were killed in the strike, but 100 Hezbollah fighters were said to have been killed in the past 24 hours.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 10 consecutive airstrikes in the area. About 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and about 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September, aimed at crippling Hezbollah and pushing it away from the two countries’ shared border.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, the Israeli military said.
The Israeli military also said a strike in Beirut the previous day had killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, head of Hezbollah’s communications department. The military said in a statement that Scafi was “a high-ranking Hezbollah terrorist who was in charge of the communications unit since 2000” and was “closely associated” with senior Hezbollah officials.
Thursday’s strike along the Lebanese-Syrian border, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Beirut, led to the closure of the road near the busy Masna border crossing – the first time it has been cut off since Hezbollah and Israel began almost exchange fire a year ago.
Israel said it attacked the crossing because it was used by Hezbollah to transport military equipment across the border. It said fighter jets struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other intermediaries into Lebanon.
Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weapons through Syria from Iran, its main backer.
Associated Press video footage shows two huge craters on either side of the road. People got out of cars unable to cross, carrying bags of their belongings as they crossed on foot. More than 250,000 Syrians and 82,000 Lebanese have fled across the border into Syria during the escalation over the past two weeks. There are half a dozen crossing points between the two countries, and most remain open.
Israel began a ground escalation in Lebanon on Tuesday and its forces clashed with Hezbollah fighters in a narrow strip along the border. Israel has vowed to end Hezbollah shelling of northern Israel after nearly a year of exchanges between the two sides that have driven tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border. Israeli strikes over the past two weeks have killed some of Hezbollah’s key members, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
On Thursday, Israel warned people to evacuate communities in southern Lebanon, including areas beyond the buffer zone declared by the United Nations after Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.
Israeli Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters on Friday that ground operations were limited, aimed at rooting out Hezbollah fighters and making the border safe for northern Israelis to return to their homes, “First of all, our mission is to ensure they (Hezbollah) are not there,” Shoshani said. “Then we will talk about how to make sure they don’t come back.” Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in close combat in the area, which is riddled with weapons and explosives, the military said.
Two more soldiers were killed and two were seriously wounded in a drone strike in northern Israel, the military said.
An umbrella group of Iran-backed militias in Iraq calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it carried out three drone strikes on Friday in northern Israel. In recent months, the group has regularly claimed drone strikes against Israel, but the strikes have rarely landed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was in Beirut on Friday to meet with Lebanese officials, warned that if Israel launched an attack on Iran, Tehran would retaliate more forcefully than it did this week when it fired at least 180 rockets against Israel in response to Israeli strikes against Hezbollah.
The rocket fire, amid a series of rapidly escalating attacks, threatens to push the Middle East closer to regional war.
“If the Israeli entity takes any step or measure against us, our revenge will be stronger than before,” Araghchi said after a meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
In Iran’s capital Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers and delivered a speech praising the country’s missile strikes against Israel and saying Iran was ready to carry out more strikes if necessary.
He spoke to thousands of people in Tehran’s main place of prayer, the Mosalla Mosque, which was decorated with a huge Palestinian flag.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which the militants killed 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage. Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza in retaliation has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, just over half of them women and children, according to local health officials.
Meanwhile, Israel carried out its deadliest strike in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, hitting a cafe in the Tulkarem refugee camp. At least 18 Palestinians were killed, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Relatives said the dead included a family of four, including two children. The Israeli military said several Hamas fighters were killed, including the group’s leader in the camp.
Israel’s military said Friday that militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time Israel has seen rocket fire from the territory in a month.
The military said one of the rockets was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system and the other landed in an open field near a kibbutz across the border with Gaza. (AP) GSP
Published – October 04, 2024, 11:56 PM IST
