Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has urged the Lebanese people to free their country from Hezbollah and avoid “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.” The Israeli military reported that 50 Hezbollah members were killed in air strikes on Monday, while the Lebanese health ministry reported 36 people killed and 150 injured in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours. Hezbollah launched barrages of rockets towards the Israeli port of Haifa for the third consecutive day, injuring 12 people.
Netanyahu claimed the Israel Defense Forces had killed the successor to Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but the IDF later said it could not confirm Hashem Safieddine’s death. Hezbollah has remained defiant despite three weeks of intense Israeli strikes and other attacks that have killed more than 1,400 people and displaced another 1.2 million.
The UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned in a joint statement that the humanitarian impact of the conflict was “nothing short of catastrophic.” Lebanon’s government says as many as 1.2 million people have fled their homes over the past year, with almost 180,000 people in approved centers for the displaced. More than 400,000 people have fled into war-torn Syria, including more than 200,000 Syrian refugees.
The World Food Programme expressed extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself, as thousands of hectares of farmland had been burned or abandoned. An apartment in Kiryat Yam, a suburb of Haifa, was damaged by a Hezbollah rocket on Tuesday. The IDF announced that its aircraft had carried out a new round of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs and other areas of Lebanon on Tuesday.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, stated that its command and control were “solid” and had “no vacant positions,” citing its attacks on Israel in recent days. He made no mention of ending the war in Gaza as a pre-condition where previously Hezbollah has said it would not stop attacking Israel until the Gaza conflict is over.
In a televised address, Qassem said that they support the political efforts that Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is undertaking towards a ceasefire. The IDF said most of the rockets were intercepted, and there were no serious casualties. On Sunday night, there was a direct hit on Haifa, something which had not happened since Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war in 2006.
(BBC)
