Two people were killed and three were injured, including a child, after an Israeli drone attack on the outskirts of the city of Sakra, in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese civil protection service announced, confirming fears of unpredictable developments in the Middle East.
This rescue service did not specify whether the dead were fighters or civilians.
It was the first Israeli strike with casualties in Lebanon since Saturday’s rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and youths, which Israel blamed on the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah . This denies any involvement in this attack.
It is recalled that the Israeli government declared yesterday Sunday that it would “hit the enemy hard”, the day after a bombardment that killed at least 12 children and young people in a village in the annexed Golan Heights attributed to the Lebanese Hezbollah, as concerns intensify about igniting the entire area of the Middle East amid the war in the Gaza Strip.
Iran has warned Israel against the “consequences” of a large-scale retaliatory attack on Lebanon. Any new “adventure” by Israel could “lead to an aggravation” of the “war in the region,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
According to Israeli authorities, on Saturday a rocket fired from Lebanon hit a soccer field in the village of Majdal Shams, killing 12 boys and girls, aged between ten and sixteen, and injuring around thirty other people. The police announced that an eleven-year-old boy is missing.
The White House blamed the Iranian-backed Lebanese Islamist movement for the “horrific” attack. “It was his own rocket, launched from an area under his control,” he said in a press release signed by the spokeswoman for the National Security Council of the US presidency, Adrienne Watson.
An Iranian Falak-type rocket was used, with a warhead containing 53 kilograms of explosives, according to Israeli authorities.
Hezbollah denies
Hezbollah, which has denied that it was its own action, is the only force in the region that has this type of rocket in its arsenal, Israel’s foreign ministry said, accusing the Lebanese movement of “crossing all red lines” by opening fire “against civilians.” “, and “deliberately”.
Last night his government’s security council authorized him and Defense Minister Yoav Gallad to “decide on the manner and timing of retaliation against the terrorist organization Hezbollah,” the prime minister’s services announced, without giving any other details.
Yesterday Sunday, the movement hastily removed its members from positions in southern Lebanon after the Israeli threats, said a source close to Hezbollah.
The rocket launch came shortly after news broke that four Hezbollah fighters had been killed in an Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon. Last night, the movement said it had fired rockets at military positions in the Golan, including Falak, before denying responsibility for the strike in Majdal Shams.
The small Druze community is located in the Golan Heights, an area of strategic importance on the trilateral border of Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The plateau was two-thirds occupied by the Israeli army during the 1967 war, before it was annexed in 1981.
The international community has never recognized the annexation of occupied Syrian territory.
Israel’s defense minister went to the stadium in Majdal Shams yesterday, where he “insisted” that Israel will “hit the enemy hard”, according to his services.
Thousands of people gathered in the community for the funerals of the victims, including women wearing black mourning dresses and white headscarves in front of the coffins.
It is “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since October 7,” said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, referring to the Hamas raid on southern sectors of Israeli territory that sparked the Gaza war.
Erdogan’s reactions and threats against Israel and “Hitler” Netanyahu
The thermometer in the Middle East rose even more yesterday with Turkey entering… a wedge and Tayyip Erdogan threatening to invade Israel, “just as we entered Karabakh and Libya”, the Turkish president characteristically emphasized during his speech to his local organization of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in his hometown of Rizunda.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Israel Katz, immediately answered him, who posted on “X” the photo of the Turkish president and the former Iraqi president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, saying: “Erdogan is following in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein and threatening to attack Israel. Just let him remember what happened there and how it ended.”
A few minutes later, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with its post, also on “X”, described Netanyahu as Hitler and talks about genocide committed by Israel in Palestine, like the Nazis: “Just as the genocidal Hitler ended, so will the Genocide Netanyahu. As the genocidal Nazis were held accountable, so will those who tried to destroy the Palestinians be held accountable. Humanity will stand with the Palestinians. You will not destroy the Palestinians,” says the post of the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
With information from APE – BEE, ertnews.gr
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