Smoke billows from the positioning of an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese metropolis of Baalbeck within the Bekaa valley on September 23, 2024. |Photograph by Nidal SOLH / AFP
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli air strikes killed not less than 356 individuals, together with 24 kids, in Lebanon on Monday, the Lebanese authorities mentioned, within the deadliest cross-border escalation because the Gaza battle erupted.
Arab states sharply condemned Israel over the sharpest escalation in almost a 12 months of Israel-Hezbollah hostilities.
The battle started when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched the worst-ever assault on Israel, with Hezbollah and different Iran-backed teams across the area drawn into the violence.
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Israel mentioned it hit about 1,300 Hezbollah websites in southern and japanese Lebanon in 24 hours, together with a “focused strike” in Beirut. A supply near Hezbollah mentioned the strike within the Lebanese capital focused Ali Karake, the group’s third in command.
State media reported new raids in japanese Lebanon, whereas Hezbollah mentioned it focused 5 websites in Israel.
Within the coastal Israeli metropolis of Haifa, individuals have been seen working for canopy when air raid sirens sounded.
The strikes by the “Israeli enemy” in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa and Baalbek within the east “killed 356 individuals, together with 24 kids and 42 ladies, and injured 1,246”, mentioned the well being ministry.
Well being Minister Firass Abiad mentioned “hundreds of households” had been displaced.
“We sleep and get up to bombardment… that’s what our life has turn out to be,” mentioned Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the southern village of Zawtar.
World powers implored Israel and Hezbollah to drag again from the brink of all-out battle, with the main target of violence shifting sharply from Israel’s southern entrance with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.
Egypt — a key mediator within the Gaza battle — urged the UN Safety Council to intervene following Israel’s “harmful escalation”, whereas the Iraqi appealed for an pressing assembly of Arab states on the sidelines of the UN Normal Meeting in New York.
‘Most troublesome week for Hezbollah’
Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi mentioned the strikes hit fight infrastructure Hezbollah had been constructing for twenty years.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant known as Monday “a big peak” within the operation.
“That is probably the most troublesome week for Hezbollah since its institution –- the outcomes communicate for themselves,” he mentioned.
“Total models have been taken out of battle because of the actions carried out originally of the week through which quite a few terrorists have been injured.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned Israel was appearing to vary the “safety steadiness” within the north by preempting threats.
Explosions close to the traditional metropolis of Baalbek in japanese Lebanon despatched smoke billowing into the sky.
Hezbollah wave of rockets
Hezbollah, a robust political and navy power in Lebanon, has exchanged near-daily fireplace with Israel in assist for its Palestinian ally Hamas.
Its deputy chief, Naim Qassem, mentioned Sunday the group was in a “new part, particularly an open reckoning” with Israel and was prepared for “all navy potentialities”.
He spoke after Hezbollah mentioned it fired rockets at navy websites close to Haifa and later launched “dozens of rockets” at two Israeli bases “in response to the Israeli enemy’s assaults on the south and the Bekaa”.
“No nation can stay like this,” mentioned Ofer Levy, 56, an Israeli who lives close to Haifa.
The assault got here after an Israeli strike on southern Beirut Friday killed its elite Radwan Power commander, Ibrahim Aqil, and coordinated communications system blasts that Hezbollah blamed on Israel killed 39 individuals and wounded nearly 3,000 on Tuesday and Wednesday.
For the reason that cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah started in October, tens of hundreds of individuals on either side have fled their properties.
An Israeli navy official, who can’t be additional recognized below navy guidelines, mentioned the operation seeks to “degrade threats” from Hezbollah, push them again from the border, after which to destroy infrastructure.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the United Nations and world powers to discourage what he known as Israel’s “plan that goals to destroy Lebanese villages and cities”.
Guterres ‘gravely alarmed’
US President Joe Biden, whose nation is Israel’s fundamental ally and weapons provider, mentioned his nation was “working to de-escalate in a approach that permits individuals to return residence safely”.
The Pentagon mentioned it was sending a small variety of further US navy personnel to the Center East after hundreds have been deployed earlier alongside warships, fighter jets and air defence techniques.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was “gravely alarmed” by civilian casualties in Lebanon his spokesman mentioned.
The United Nations peacekeeping power in south Lebanon warned “any additional escalation of this harmful state of affairs might have far-reaching and devastating penalties”.
Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, accused Israel of searching for “to create this wider battle”.
Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel resulted within the deaths of 1,205 individuals, largely civilians, based on an AFP tally based mostly on Israeli official figures that embody hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages additionally seized by militants, 97 are nonetheless held in Gaza, together with 33 the Israeli navy says are lifeless.
Israel’s retaliatory navy offensive has killed not less than 41,455 individuals in Gaza, most of them civilians, based on figures offered by the Hamas-run territory’s well being ministry. The UN has described the figures as dependable.
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