Hezbollah Battles Troops On Border As Israel Pounds Lebanon

Hezbollah said Saturday that its members were engaging Israeli troops in Lebanon’s southern border region, where the Israeli military claimed to have attacked militants from the Iran-backed movement at a mosque.

In recent days, Israeli bombings on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon have intensified, while ground soldiers have undertaken operations close the border, transforming over a year of cross-border confrontations into a full-fledged war.

Palestinian militant group Hamas alleged a “Zionist bombardment” of the Beddawi refugee camp on Saturday, killing a commander, his wife, and two daughters.

Repatriated citizens from Lebanon arrive in a Portuguese Air Force C130 aircraft to Figo Maduro airport in Lisbon on October 4, 2024. (Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP)

The escalation, which this week included Iran’s second-ever missile attack on Israel, intensifying Hezbollah rocket fire and strikes claimed by Iran allies from as far away as Yemen, comes just days before the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

In downtown Beirut, Ibrahim Nazzal, who is among hundreds of thousands displaced by the violence, said: “We want the war to stop so we can go back to our land.

“All our homes are gone. I don’t know what we will go back to.”

Nearly a year into the Gaza Strip war, sparked by the unprecedented Hamas invasion, Israel has moved its emphasis north, hoping to let tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah missile fire to return home.

Israel’s military has expanded its attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, killing almost 1,110 people since September 23.

On the ground, Hezbollah stated early Saturday that its militants were fighting Israeli troops near the border, after previously claiming that they had forced soldiers to retreat.

The Israeli military claimed to have killed 250 Hezbollah fighters in the border area this week, and on Saturday bombed a militant “command centre located inside a mosque” near Bint Jbeil.

Peacekeepers ‘remain’

Israel’s recent attacks on Lebanon have killed an Iranian general, a number of Hezbollah leaders, and, in the group’s most devastating blow in decades, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

In a rare public address on Friday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated that “the resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms,” hailing Hezbollah and Hamas’ “fierce defence” against Israeli forces.

As Israel considers its reaction to Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden warned against targeting Iranian oil facilities, a day after saying Washington was “discussing” such action.

The Iranian attack, allegedly in retaliation for the execution of Nasrallah and other leaders, resulted in one fatality in the occupied West Bank.

Satellite images of the Nevatim air station in southern Israel showed visible damage to a facility on Wednesday, compared to a photo taken on August 3.

Israeli shelling in Lebanon has rendered at least four hospitals inoperable, and the first medical relief delivery organized by the United Nations arrived at Beirut International Airport on Friday.

AFP correspondents heard a succession of explosions in south Beirut early Saturday after the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, ordered locals to evacuate a portion of the area.

Lebanon reported an Israeli strike on Friday cut off the key international road to Syria, with Israel claiming the purpose was to restrict the passage of weapons.

Lebanon’s crisis management unit said that more than 374,000 persons, the most of them were Syrian refugees, sought sanctuary in Syria in the final week of September.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon stated that its personnel “remain in all positions,” despite an Israeli request on Monday to “relocate some of our positions” as the military’s ground operations began.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon also encouraged adherence “in actions, not just words” to Security Council Resolution 1701, which concluded the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and mandated that only the Lebanese army and peacekeepers be stationed in south Lebanon.

 ‘Rally the world’

In a visit to Beirut on Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his government backs “efforts for a ceasefire” that would be acceptable to Hezbollah and come “simultaneously with a ceasefire in Gaza”.

Biden said the United States, Israel’s top military supplier, was working to “rally the rest of the world and our allies” to prevent the fighting from spreading even further.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a Gaza truce and secure the release of 97 hostages still held in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Israeli fire early Saturday killed at least 12 people in Gaza, said a hospital medic, the civil defence agency and the Palestinian Red Crescent separately.

The Red Crescent said a child was killed in “a missile attack” that hit a makeshift displacement camp near a central Gaza school, where the Israeli military said it targeted a militant “command-and-control centre”.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry and described as reliable by the UN.

An official with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told AFP life was becoming “impossible” in Gaza, urging greater humanitarian efforts.

“As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly,” said MSF’s president for France, Isabelle Defourny, back from a mission to southern Gaza.

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