Situation at a glance: Heavy Israeli air strikes in Beirut again

The Lebanese capital Beirut was once again the target of massive air strikes by the Israeli military overnight. A reporter from the German Press Agency reported serious explosions. Unconfirmed reports said the attack targeted Hashim Safi al-Din, head of the Hezbollah militia’s Executive Council. He is considered the most promising candidate to succeed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was recently killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. The Israeli army initially provided no information about the renewed attacks in Beirut.

According to Lebanese security circles, the attacks again took place in southern suburbs, which are mainly controlled by Hezbollah. Detonations could be heard over the city on video recordings, huge flames and plumes of smoke rose into the night sky. Israel’s military had warned residents of certain buildings in the southern suburbs to evacuate in Arabic. The attacks came as Israel’s troops and tanks are fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel’s stated goal is to drive the pro-Iranian Shiite militia from the border so that around 60,000 evacuated Israelis can return to their homes.

Pentagon: Consult with Israel on response to Iranian attack

Meanwhile, the US government continues to talk with Israel about a response to the recent Iranian missile attack. “We are discussing with them what a response to Iran could look like. But I don’t think it makes sense or really helpful to explain details here about what possible targets could look like,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh when asked whether Iranian oil facilities are a possible target. US President Joe Biden said the US was discussing its stance on a possible Israeli attack on Iranian oil facilities. The statement promptly caused uncertainty on the markets.

The second day of the Jewish New Year is celebrated in Israel today. After Iran’s missile attacks in April, it took five days for Israel to retaliate. Meanwhile, the Islamist Hamas has called for global solidarity demonstrations from today until the first anniversary of the start of the Gaza war on October 7th.

Terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups killed more than 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023 and kidnapped around 250 others as hostages in the Gaza Strip. This was the trigger for the Gaza war. Since then, the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon says it has been attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Warning sirens wailed again at night in northern Israel, the army announced. A flying object that entered Israel’s territory from the east was intercepted.

Many dead in Israeli airstrike in West Bank

Meanwhile, Israel’s military is also increasingly taking action against its enemies in the occupied West Bank. At least 18 people were killed when an Israeli warplane attacked a cafe in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah. The number of injured was initially unclear. It was the first airstrike of its kind in the West Bank in years. According to the Israeli army, he was the head of the Islamist Hamas in Tulkarm, Sahi Jasser Abd al-Rasegh Ufi. According to Palestinian media, the leader of the local branch of the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, Gaith Radwan, was killed in the airstrike.

Israel’s army calls on people in Lebanon to flee

As part of its ground offensive in Lebanon, the Israeli military has asked people in dozens of towns in the south of the country to flee. Accordingly, people should move to safety about 60 kilometers behind the border. The aim of the ground offensive so far has been to destroy tunnels and weapons that Hezbollah had prepared near the border for a possible attack on Israel, the Wall Street Journal quoted several Israeli officials informed of the operation. Accordingly, the military has no intention of turning the invasion into a large-scale land war in Lebanon. According to the army, nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting so far.

Israel: Fired 230 rockets from Lebanon into the north

At the same time, Israel again received massive rocket fire from Lebanon. Within one day, around 230 projectiles and several drones were counted that were fired by the Shiite militia Hezbollah into northern Israel, the Israeli army announced in the evening. The previous day the number of such attacks was 140. In many towns in Israel, the air alarm sirens repeatedly sounded. Some of the bullets were intercepted, others fell over uninhabited areas, it was said. Initially, nothing was reported about possible victims or major damage.

Although Hezbollah has been weakened by recent massive attacks by the Israeli army, it has retained its capabilities as a guerrilla fighting force in the south of the country, the Washington Post quoted a retired Lebanese army general as saying. “Hezbollah hopes that the Israelis will penetrate deeper into Lebanon,” he said. “The air war that the Israelis have waged has been very successful. If they stay on the ground, Hezbollah will get the war it wants,” Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington think tank, told Wall Street Journal”.

Expert: Israel’s actions in Lebanon are similar to Gaza tactics

Rather than repeating the experiences of previous ground offensives in southern Lebanon in 1978 and 2006, which failed to deliver lasting security gains for Israel, Israel’s current war in Lebanon is more akin to its crackdown on the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip, said Sanam Vakil, head of the Middle East program at the London think tank Chatham House. the US newspaper. “I assume that, as in the Gaza Strip, they will use the threat of a long-term presence as a negotiating tool,” said Vakil.

Hezbollah has so far resisted all Israeli pressure to decouple its rocket fire from the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. She only wants to stop the attacks when there is a ceasefire in Gaza. However, months-long efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip have come to nothing. The US, as Israel’s most important ally, defended Israel’s recent attacks in Lebanon.

US defends Israel’s actions in Lebanon

“Nothing we have seen so far leads us to conclude that they are doing anything other than attacking a terrorist organization,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. When asked by journalists whether Washington was tacitly approving of Israel’s actions in Lebanon because of the threat to civilians, Miller replied: “It’s not that we approve of individual attacks. But we approve of the right of the Israeli government to take action against a terrorist organization to defend.”