A rocket attack on central Israel was attempted by Lebanon‘s Hezbollah on Monday afternoon, prompting millions of Israeli citizens, including residents of Tel Aviv, to rush to shelters for protection.
At the same time, information from Lebanon speaks of 18 dead after an Israeli attack on the city of Aitu, which is located in the north of the country.
In fact, this is the first attack by Israel in the northern part of the country, where it is mainly inhabited by the Christian minority, as until now the focus of the Israeli attack was the southern part of the country and the suburbs of Beirut.
The strike targeted an apartment, according to the national news agency NNA.
According to an AFP photographer, bodies were visible in front of the building at the entrance to the village which was flattened by the impact, amid ambulances coming and going.
The Lebanese army cordoned off the area where the fire broke out, he added.
The day before yesterday, Saturday, an Israeli strike on a Shiite village north of Beirut, which is also outside Hezbollah strongholds, had caused the death of at least 16 people, according to the Ministry of Health.
Hezbollah speaks of fierce battles with the Israeli army in Lebanon
Another six people were killed outside areas usually considered strongholds of the pro-Iranian group, including two in a house in Deir Bela “where they were displaced from the south” of the country, a Hezbollah stronghold, according to the NNA.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said today it was engaged in “heavy fighting” against the Israeli army with “all kinds of automatic weapons, rockets and artillery” in a village in southern Lebanon, where the pro-Iranian group is at open war with Israel.
Hezbollah also said it “targeted an Israeli troop transport vehicle with a remote-controlled missile causing a fire,” other Israeli soldiers in another village near the border and fired rockets into northern Israel
Calling on American citizens to leave Lebanon
With violence between Israel and Hezbollah escalating, the US embassy in Lebanon has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon “now,” Reuters reported. The embassy added that the additional flights it arranged for its citizens traveling from Beirut “will not continue indefinitely.”
The bloody attack on an Israeli base
It is recalled that the Lebanese Hezbollah threatened Israel with more blows if it continues its attacks in Lebanon, in the wake of the drone attack on a military base near Haifa, which claimed the lives of four Israeli soldiers and injured dozens of others.
The strike on the Binyamina military base was the deadliest in Israel since the start of Israeli military operations in Lebanon on September 23. It is worth noting that no warning sirens were activated, a fact that the Israeli military will investigate, according to the Jerusalem Post.
In a statement, Hezbollah said that “the resistance promises the enemy” that the attack “south of Haifa was only a foretaste of what awaits him if he decides to continue his attacks against our people.”
Netanyahu’s message
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that Israel will continue to “relentlessly hit Hezbollah, including in Beirut,” in a video released by his office.
“I want to be clear: we will continue to mercilessly hit Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon, including Beirut,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the military base hit the day before by a drone shot down by the Lebanese Islamist organization, resulting in the death of four Israeli soldiers.
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