-Advertisement-spot_img
HomeWorldMiddle East crisis live: Israel launches further attacks on Hezbollah after almost...

Middle East crisis live: Israel launches further attacks on Hezbollah after almost 500 killed in Lebanon

- Advertisement -


Israel launches strikes on southern Lebanon overnight

The IDF has said it launched a fresh wave of strikes on Lebanon overnight, targeting positions from which rockets were fired towards Israel.

In an update online, IDF officials said that “warplanes targeted dozens of sites” in several areas in southern Lebanon.

The statement said that secondary explosions were observed during the strikes “indicating the presence of weapons stored in the buildings.” The Guardian was unable to verify this.

Monday saw some of the heaviest cross-border fire exchange in almost a year. Israel says it has started shifting its focus north to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas.

Share

Key events

The IDF has reported that warning sirens are sounding again in northern Israel.

Share

Nimo Omer

For the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter today my colleagues Nimo Omer and senior international reporter Peter Beaumont spoke about the potential fallout of the intensification of this conflict. Here is a snippet:

Hezbollah is one of the most heavily armed non-state militia groups in the world. Its army is tens of thousands strong and it is backed by Iran, so even though the attacks from Israel have put Hezbollah on the back-foot, it has not deterred them. “In militias like this the number two in command is always ready to step into the number one position,” Peter says. Destabilising an organisation that is inherently fluid in that way is not straightforward. And when all that is needed to keep parts of Israel uninhabitable are a few rockets fired over the border, it is hard to see how Israel can achieve its goal through force alone.

“The pager attack was significant in its ambition and most clearly signifies that Israel has moved on from the somewhat agreed upon red lines,” Peter says. Both sides have acknowledged that their conflict of attrition, limited in its geography and scope, has entered a far more critical phase.

As their airstrikes intensify, the Israeli military have flown jets low above Beirut to create thundering sonic booms that shook the capital, with critics decrying the tactic as a form of psychological warfare against civilian populations. “It’s not just Hezbollah, Lebanese society is feeling under attack,” Peter says.

Read more here: Tuesday briefing – How to make sense of the new wave of violence in the Middle East

Share

Israel’s Magen David Adom reports that overnight one of its ambulances was damaged in a blast in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel.

Following the Red Alert sirens in the north of Israel last night, the damage was caused to a MDA ambulance in the Jezreel Valley, as a result of the blast, the ambulance’s windshields were shattered and damage was caused by shrapnel that penetrated. There were no casualties! pic.twitter.com/4dsMVLLpC8

— Magen David Adom (@Mdais) September 24, 2024

Share

Zeina Khodr, reporting for Al Jazeera from Beirut, says that people in Lebanon are scared of what might happen next. She writes for the news network:

Tens of thousands of people fled their homes and they really didn’t have much time before they had to evacuate … We were in southern Lebanon and we saw people pack whatever they could to make their way further north … Whole families. People were scared. They were afraid and they were concerned about what would happen next.

Some of the families we spoke to said that they had to escape while there was bombardment around them. There were nonstop airstrikes almost everywhere you looked. You didn’t know which road was safe, even along the main highway linking south Lebanon to Beirut, we saw airstrikes along that highway.

This is an impoverished society, a country where the economy has all but collapsed. And it’s also a state which is nearly bankrupt. So there is a lot of concern among these people about how long they are going to be displaced because already in 11 months of fighting, 110,000 people have been displaced from border villages.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, and at the weekend raided and closed the news network’s offices in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Share

Turkey has condemned Israel’s attacks on Lebanon as “efforts to drag the region into chaos” and called for a halt to support for Israel.

In a statement late on Monday, the Turkish foreign ministry said countries that “unconditionally support Israel” were helping Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “shed blood for his political interests”.

“It is imperative that all institutions responsible for maintaining international peace and security, especially the UN security council, as well as the international community, take the necessary measures without delay,” it said.

Nato member Turkey has condemned Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which began in retaliation for Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October. Ankara also halted all trade with Israel and applied to join a genocide case against Israel at the world court.

Share

Tens of thousands have reportedly fled for safety in southern Lebanon, after Israel on Monday warned people to evacuate areas where it claimed Hezbollah was storing weapons.

Families loaded cars, vans and trucks with belongings and people, sometimes multiple generations in one vehicle. Children crammed on to parents’ laps and suitcases were tied to car roofs.

Lebanese citizens who fled southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Photograph: Mohammad Zaatari/AP
People sit on their cars at a highway that links to Beirut city. Photograph: Mohammad Zaatari/AP
People sit in their cars on a highway. Photograph: Mohammad Zaatari/AP
A traffic jam clogs up a street in the Lebanese city of Sidon on Monday night. Photograph: Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images
Share

US sends additional forces to Middle East

The US is sending a small number of additional troops to the Middle East due to escalating tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the Pentagon said on Monday, declining to specify the precise number or mission of the deployed forces.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional US military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region,” air force Maj Gen Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters.

“We have more capability in the region today than we did on April 14th when Iran conducted its drone and missile attack against Israel,” Ryder said, referring to Iran’s attack by more than 300 missiles and drones, which caused only modest damage inside Israel thanks to air defence interceptions from the United States, Britain and other allies in the region.

USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. Photograph: US Navy/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

“So all of those forces combined provide us with the options to be able to protect our forces should they be attacked.”

The US capabilities in the region include the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group, fighter aircraft and air defences.

Share

Updated at 

Israel launches strikes on southern Lebanon overnight

The IDF has said it launched a fresh wave of strikes on Lebanon overnight, targeting positions from which rockets were fired towards Israel.

In an update online, IDF officials said that “warplanes targeted dozens of sites” in several areas in southern Lebanon.

The statement said that secondary explosions were observed during the strikes “indicating the presence of weapons stored in the buildings.” The Guardian was unable to verify this.

Monday saw some of the heaviest cross-border fire exchange in almost a year. Israel says it has started shifting its focus north to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas.

Share

Welcome and summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

Israel has said it launched a fresh wave of strikes on Hezbollah overnight, targeting positions that had fired rockets into Israel. The IDF said it had attacked “dozens of targets” in several areas in southern Lebanon.

The announcement comes a day after 492 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes. Almost 1,650 people were injured as well, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said the military was changing the “security balance” along its northern border.

Cars sit in traffic as they flee the southern Lebanon amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Photograph: Mohammed Zaatari/AP

Tens of thousands of people fled from south Lebanese towns and villages along the main road towards the capital, Beirut, in Israel’s most intense barrage in nearly a year of cross-border clashes, as sirens were also heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. The Lebanese health ministry said 35 children and 58 women were among those killed.

More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.

  • Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon on Monday destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets. The Israeli military is preparing for the next stage of its operation in Lebanon after launching a wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets on Monday morning, the military chief of the general staff Herzi Halevi said. There is rising tension on the ground in Lebanon and a collective bracing to see whether Israel intends a ground invasion of its neighbour.

  • Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89 temporary shelters in schools and other facilities had been activated, with capacity for more than 26,000 people. Families from south Lebanon loaded cars, vans and trucks with belongings and people, sometimes multiple generations in one vehicle. As bombs rained down, children crammed on to parents’ laps and suitcases were tied to car roofs. Highways north were gridlocked.

  • The United States does not think Israeli escalation to force Hezbollah to reduce tensions will yield the desired outcome of de-escalation, a senior State Dept official said on Monday, effectively disagreeing with Israel’s strategy. The conflict is a key focus for secretary of state Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the UN general assembly this week, where Washington had concrete ideas to prevent a broader war and would seek an “off ramp” to the tensions, the official told reporters in New York.

  • The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil) issued a statement on Monday afternoon expressing “grave concern” for the safety of civilians in southern Lebanon amid the most intense Israeli bombing campaign since last October and urging the need for de-escalation from both Hezbollah and Israel.

  • Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, has called Israel’s wave of airstrikes “a genocide in every sense of the word”. Mikati made the comments at the start of a cabinet meeting in Beirut on Monday in which he said that Israel’s airstrikes aim to destroy Lebanon’s towns and villages, according to an update from the Associated Press news agency. Mikati said that the Lebanese government was calling on the United Nations, the UN security council and world nations to “deter the aggression”.

  • France has requested an emergency UN security council meeting to discuss Lebanon. “I have requested that an emergency meeting of the Security Council be held on Lebanon this week,” French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot told the UN general assembly on Monday, calling on all sides to “avoid a regional conflagration that would be devastating for everyone.”.

Share





Source link

- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
Trending
- Advertisement -
Related News
- Advertisement -

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here