Fresh Israeli strikes on Lebanon after 492 killed

Fresh Israeli strikes on Lebanon after 492 killed | Daily Tribune

BEIRUT (AFP) — Israel announced dozens of new air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon Tuesday, a day after 492 people, including 35 children, were killed in the deadliest bombardment since a devastating war in 2006.

Israel’s overnight strikes on southern Lebanon came after it said it had killed a “large number” of militants when it hit about 1,600 suspected Hezbollah targets around the country.

Hezbollah said Tuesday it had launched volleys of missiles at Israeli military bases, hours after 180 of its projectiles and an unmanned aerial vehicle crossed into Israeli airspace, sending people in the city of Haifa running for shelter.

The Israeli military said more than 50 projectiles were fired into northern Israel in less than 10 minutes on Tuesday morning, most of which were intercepted.

In Lebanon, Monday’s raids killed 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and wounded 1,645, according to the health ministry, which said “thousands of families” had fled their homes.

“Everyone is heading (to Lebanese capital Beirut) with their children and their belongings — it’s the first time we see such panic since 2006,” said Lebanese journalist Nazir Reda, who was driving to his hometown near the Israeli border to get his family away from the violence.

Longtime foes Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire for nearly a year, since Palestinian militant group Hamas staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October.

Hezbollah, which has been fighting Israel for decades, and other Iran-backed militants in the region have been drawn into the violence.

Monday’s bombardment of Lebanon was by far the largest, not just in the past year, but since the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006.

That war killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, and devastated large swathes of Hezbollah’s strongholds.

‘Operation Northern Arrows’

Israel has dubbed its large-scale raids on Hezbollah “Operation Northern Arrows” after announcing earlier this month it was shifting the focus of its firepower from Gaza to Lebanon.

World leaders have expressed alarm over the rapid escalation on the Lebanon front, with United Nations chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesperson saying he was “gravely alarmed” and the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell warning “we are almost in a full-fledged war.”

France and Egypt called on the UN Security Council to intervene, while Iraq requested an urgent meeting of Arab states on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The Pentagon said it was sending a small number of additional US military personnel to the Middle East after thousands were deployed earlier alongside warships, fighter jets and air defense systems.