The relentless hammering in South Lebanon continues as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues talks over US ceasefire proposals.
“Our teams met (on Thursday, September 26) to discuss the US initiative on Lebanon and how we can advance the common goal of returning people safely to their homes. We will continue these discussions in the coming days,” he said in a statement.
Nevertheless, yesterday the Israeli government pledged that it would not stop the war with Hezbollah until “victory”. In fact, two Israeli far-right ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, also rejected the idea of declaring a ceasefire. “The campaign in the north can only be ended in one way: the crushing of Hezbollah,” said Mr. Smotrich. Mr. Ben Gvir, for his part, threatened to boycott the work of the government if a cease-fire agreement is signed in Lebanon.
92 dead from the attacks in one day
Dozens of strikes were carried out against positions of Hezbollah, which opened a front with Israel the day after Hamas’s unprecedented incursion into southern Israeli territory on October 7. The Lebanese movement vows to continue its action “until the end of the attack on Gaza”.
According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, yesterday’s airstrikes killed 92 people and injured 153 others.
The Israeli armed forces announced that they launched “precision strikes” in Beirut and killed the commander of the Hezbollah unit that operates its drones, Mohamed Shrour. The Shiite movement confirmed his death last night.
They also reported that they hit 75 military targets, Hezbollah positions, in southern and eastern Lebanon, while in the evening they emphasized that they were continuing the bombing in southern Lebanon.
They noted that dozens of rockets, missiles and drones were launched from Lebanon against Israel yesterday.
Hezbollah, for its part, reported that it launched about a hundred rockets against the cities of Safed and Haifa, in northern Israel.
Israeli shelling, which has killed more than seven hundred people since Monday, including hundreds of civilians, has forced more than 90,000 people to flee to Lebanon, according to the UN. More than 31,000 of the country’s citizens have fled to war-torn Syria, according to Beirut.
“The war has now arrived at our door”
Hassan Slim took his elderly mother and they went to seek refuge on Syrian soil, even though the neighboring country has been torn apart by the civil war that has been going on since 2011. “We were avoiding Syria because of the war, but now the war has reached the door.” us”, explained the 24-year-old, who is unemployed.
France and the US, along with Arab and Western countries, called yesterday Wednesday for an “immediate 21-day ceasefire” to be declared in order to give “diplomacy a chance”.
Washington assured that the call for a ceasefire was made “in coordination” with Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron estimated that it would be a “mistake” for Mr. Netanyahu to “reject” the proposed cease-fire, as this would make him “responsible” for a possible regional escalation, stressing that the proposal was “prepared” and was “an object of negotiation ” with “Prime Minister Netanyahu and his groups”, both “from the Americans” and “from ourselves”.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called yesterday from the floor of the UN General Assembly for Israel and Hezbollah to “move away from the brink of the abyss”.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned against “all-out war”, which would be “disastrous” for both Israel and Lebanon, estimating that if a cease-fire agreement was reached in Lebanon, it could facilitate a cease-fire agreement in the Strip as well. of Gaza.
New US aid package
On the other hand, the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced that it had secured a new package of US military aid, with an estimated value of 8.7 billion dollars, to “support the ongoing military effort”.
The day before Wednesday, Israel’s chief of staff, General Herchi Halevi, ordered his men to prepare for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon.
At war with Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, Israel announced in mid-September that the “center of gravity” of operations was now shifting to the north to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of residents who have been forced to flee the their homes due to Hezbollah fire for the past almost a year.
The escalation of border hostilities followed what Israeli intelligence attributed to a series of bombings of Hezbollah communications devices rigged with explosives on September 17 and 18, killing 39 and injuring hundreds, then, on September 20, Israeli shelling of southern Beirut who claimed the lives of 55 people and decapitated the elite Radwan unit of the Shiite movement.
Since October 8, hostilities have claimed the lives of 1,540 people on Lebanese soil, the country’s authorities said yesterday.
The Israeli military says it has hit “over 2,000 targets,” Hezbollah positions, since Monday. Israeli authorities reported this week that 9,360 rockets or rockets had been fired at the country in the past nearly a year.
The Houthis are in the frame
At the same time, the Israeli armed forces announced that they had destroyed a missile launched from Yemen, adding that “(air defense) sirens and explosions were heard after (it) was intercepted and debris fell”.
At the same time, Israel continues its attack on the Gaza Strip, where civil protection announced yesterday that at least 15 people were killed in a shelling of a school that had been turned into a reception center for displaced people in the refugee camp in Jabalia (north).
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, 2023, triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented incursion into southern Israel, during which 1,205 people, mostly civilians, were killed on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official data from Israeli authorities, including hostages killed while being held in the Palestinian enclave.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 97 remain in the hands of Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, but 33 have been declared dead by the Israeli military.
Israel’s government has vowed to destroy Hamas, in power in the enclave since 2007, a movement labeled a terrorist organization by the US and EU governments.
Large-scale Israeli military retaliatory operations have since killed at least 41,534 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN, and have caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the small Palestinian enclave under siege.
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