Israel hits Lebanon from the air and fights Hezbollah on the ground

BEIRUT/CAIRO – Israel expanded its aerial bombardment in Lebanon, hitting areas in and outside traditional Hezbollah bastions, as the Iran-backed group reported “point-blank range” fighting on Oct 13, and Israel said it captured a Hezbollah militant.

In areas where Hezbollah holds sway, Israeli warplanes hit a 100-year-old mosque in a village near the border on Oct 13, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said.

On Oct 12, a marketplace in the southern city of Nabatiyeh was targeted. There were also deadly strikes on a Shi’ite Muslim village in a mostly Christian mountain area and another in north Lebanon, the Health Ministry said.

AFP footage from the northern Deir Billa area showed rescuers and villagers digging through debris left by a strike with their bare hands.

In Kfar Tibnit, the NNA said a strike destroyed a mosque. “It was a significant place because families used to gather in the square right next to it on special occasions,” Mayor Fuad Yassin told AFP, adding that the mosque was at least 100 years old.

The Health Ministry said strikes on three villages on Oct 12 killed 15 people.

The Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were lightly injured and ambulances were destroyed in Sirbin when a house was hit by a second air strike as they searched for casualties.

Israel has alleged that militants use civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza to conduct operations – a claim the groups have denied. The Israeli military said its 36th division continued “targeted and limited operational activity” against Hezbollah.

Jets hit “Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities and additional terror targets”, and on the ground, soldiers “eliminated dozens of terrorists”, it said.

According to the NNA, Israeli forces have “escalated their attacks” on southern Lebanon, with “successive air strikes from midnight until morning” pounding several border villages.

Hezbollah said it clashed with Israeli troops who tried to “infiltrate” twice into a border village, sparking an hour-long battle. It later said it shelled Israeli soldiers gathered in the village of Maroun al-Ras.

Hezbollah said that in Blida village, its forces engaged Israeli soldiers “with machine guns at point-blank range”. It also said a salvo of rockets was fired at a “base in southern Haifa”.

Israel said it intercepted five projectiles after Hezbollah launched around 320 projectiles into Israel at the weekend of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. It also said roughly 280 “terror targets” were attacked in Lebanon and Gaza over the same period.

A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Oct 13, Israel’s military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.

On Oct 12, Israel told residents of south Lebanon not to return home and issued new evacuation warnings for several villages.

‘No military solution’

With no sign of clashes easing, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned against a “catastrophic” regional conflict.

Mr Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission Unifil, told AFP he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah could soon spiral “into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone”. There is “no military solution”, Mr Tenenti said.

At least five UN peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israeli forces battle Hezbollah.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart that soldiers would “continue to take measures to avoid harm to Unifil troops”, his ministry said on Oct 13.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct 13 called on the UN chief to move peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm’s way, after the force rejected repeated requests to abandon their positions.

Lebanon call for ceasefire

Hamas sparked the year-long war in Gaza by launching the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures. The number includes hostages killed in captivity.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 42,227 people, a majority of them civilians, have been killed since Israel’s military campaign began there. The UN acknowledges these figures to be reliable.

In support of its ally Hamas, Hezbollah started firing into northern Israel in October 2023, triggering a near-daily exchange of fire that even before the current escalation had led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people.

In September, Israel expanded its focus to Lebanon, with Mr Netanyahu vowing to fight Hezbollah until Israelis displaced by the violence could return to their homes.

Since Israel began a wave of air strikes on targets around Lebanon and sent troops across the border, more than 1,200 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese Health Ministry figures, and a million others have been displaced.

Efforts to negotiate an end to the Lebanon and Gaza wars have so far failed.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a “full and immediate ceasefire”.

In a show of support for Hezbollah – which Tehran arms and finances – the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mr Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Oct 12 visited the Lebanese capital.

In another high-level contact ahead of Israel’s expected retaliation for Iran’s Oct 1 missile attack, Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi visited Iraq on Oct 13.

There, he vowed there would be “no red lines” for Iran in defending its people and interests.

‘Risk of death’

In Gaza, Israeli forces have focused on an area around Jabalia in the north, with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, saying the fighting is causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there.

“Our brave soldiers are now in the heart of Jabalia, where they are dismantling the Hamas strongholds,” said Mr Netanyahu.

Hamas on Oct 13 condemned what it described as Israel’s “criminal military campaign” in the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip, many of whom have been uprooted multiple times by the war, were praying for an end to the violence.

“There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north – everyone is at risk of death,” said Gaza resident Sami Asliya, 27.

Nine days into a major Israeli operation in northern Gaza, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said Israeli strikes had killed around 300 Palestinians there. It said Israel’s bombardment of civilian houses and displacement shelters was intended to force residents to leave Gaza once and for all, which Israel denies.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says dozens of people have been confirmed killed in the assaults on northern areas, with many dozens of others feared dead on roads and under the rubble of houses beyond the reach of medical teams.

Many Jabalia residents posted on social media platforms: “We will not leave, we die, and we don’t leave.”

The northern part of Gaza, home to well over half of the territory’s 2.3 million people, was bombed to rubble in the first phase of Israel’s assault on the territory a year ago.

After a year of Israeli assaults, hundreds of thousands of residents have come back to ruined northern areas. Israel sent troops back more than a week ago to root out fighters it said were regrouping for more attacks. Hamas denies fighters operate among civilians.

“As the world is focused on Lebanon and a possible Israeli strike against Iran, Israel is wiping out Jabalia,” said resident Nasser of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.

“The occupation is blowing up roads and destroying residential districts. People also don’t find anything to eat, they are trapped inside their homes, fearing bombs could fall onto their heads,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

While the main assault is on the north, Israel is also striking other areas across the Gaza Strip. The Health Ministry reported at least 11 people killed by late morning on Oct 13, including at least six killed in a house in Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, south of Gaza City.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Oct 13 that forces operating throughout the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours had attacked about 40 targets and killed dozens of militants.

“The forces of Division 162 continue to operate in the Jabalia region. In the last day the forces killed dozens of terrorists and found explosives, weapons, grenades and other means of warfare in the region,” it said.

The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other smaller factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets and mortar fire.

Palestinian and United Nations officials have voiced concerns over severe shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies in northern Gaza, and said there is a risk of famine there.

Some tank shells landed in some streets of the Gaza City suburb of Sheikh Radwan, where tanks arrived at the edges of the territory, residents said, spreading panic among the population farther south.

In the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli authorities released 12 Palestinians detained during the ground offensive, local border officials said. Freed detainees have complained of torture and ill-treatment while in Israeli detention, allegations the country denies. AFP, REUTERS