Hezbollah missile attack on Mossad: Israel defeats Hezbollah missile attack on Mossad headquarters

Israeli air defenses intercepted a missile fired from Lebanon as fighting intensified on Israel’s northern border on Wednesday. Reuters reported that Hezbollah said the rocket was aimed at the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency near Tel Aviv.

Thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon as Israel halted its offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group, which resulted in 558 deaths, Lebanon’s health minister said, CNN reported.

Amid two days of intense Israeli attacks, panicked civilians continued to flee southern Lebanon, crowding main roads and gas stations en route to the capital. United Nations (UN) and Lebanese officials said on Tuesday that 27,000 displaced people were being held in makeshift shelters, while many others were forced to sleep in cars, parks and on beaches.

Key points

1. An Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut on Tuesday, raising fears of an all-out war in the region as cross-border rocket attacks between the two sides escalated. Israel said Qubaisi commanded a missile group and a rocket brigade.

2. As of Monday morning, 569 people, including 50 children, were killed and 1,835 injured in Israeli aircraft, Health Minister Firaz Abiad reported to the Reuters news agency. The current death toll is higher than the toll of the 2020 Beirut port explosion that killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands and destroyed entire neighborhoods in the Lebanese capital.

3. Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdullah Bou Habib, said he was disappointed with US President Joe Biden’s last speech at the United Nations General Assembly. However, he insisted that “America is the only country that can make a real difference in the Middle East and regarding Lebanon.”

Speaking at an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in New York City, he emphasized that America is “the key to our salvation.”

In his last speech as US president before the UN General Assembly, Joe Biden called for peace in the Middle East, saying that total war is in no one’s interest.

4. Hezbollah said on Tuesday that it had attacked a naval base on Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast, which housed Israel’s main naval commando unit.

The Shayetet 13 unit, which operates from the Atlit naval base, “conducts tactical sabotage operations against enemy lines, including damage to vital enemy structures and ports during wartime,” CNN reported, naming Israel’s military.

5. The British government has advised its citizens to leave Lebanon immediately, while moving around 700 soldiers to Cyprus to strengthen its military presence in the Middle East. According to a statement from the UK government on Tuesday, the troops are expected to arrive “in the next few hours”, CNN reported.