The aftermath of Israeli airstrikes overnight Thursday on the south-Beirut suburb of Dahieh. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE
Israeli forces carried out more than 10 airstrikes against targets in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, overnight, causing several casualties with numbers yet to be confirmed.
The bombardment of the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh came as Israel renewed its aerial campaign against the area, which it says is a Hezbollah stronghold after a lull of three weeks, Al Jazeera reported. Advertisement
Elsewhere in Lebanon, two people were killed and four injured in a raid by the Israeli military on the town of Tarayya, 45 miles northeast of Beirut. Maqna, Al-Bazaliyah, Qasr Naba, the Zahraa neighborhood of Baalbek city and Rasm al-Hadath in the northern Bekaa valley were also attacked.
The Israel Defense Forces said it put out notices to evacuate to people in areas where it was targeting Hezbollah weapons factories and command facilities, but acting Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Makati said the strikes were part of an “expansion of Israeli aggression” that he condemned as proof Israel had no interest in a cease-fire. Advertisement
Prior to Friday’s fatalities from the raids in the northeast, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said in a post on X that 2,867 people had been killed and 13,047 injured in Lebanon in the six weeks since Israel began launching attacks on the country as it said it sought to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets into Israel.
The latest rocket attack launched from Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday killed seven people, including four foreign workers from Thailand.
In Gaza, at least 55 people were killed and 186 injured in airstrikes and other military actions by Israeli forces across the enclave in the past 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry.
More than 30 people were killed in central Gaza in strikes on and near the Nuseirat refugee camp, The Washington Post reported, citing medics and local reports.
In a post on its social media account, the health ministry said that the latest casualties brought the total number of people killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks to 43,259 with another 101,827 injured.
Amid the mounting death toll in all three theaters, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that now that Israel had achieved its main strategic goal of destroying Hamas’ ability to mount another Oct. 7 type of attack, every effort had to be directed toward ending the conflict. Advertisement
Speaking at a press briefing in Washington he also expressed optimism that a deal in Lebanon based on implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution was edging closer.
“We are working very hard and making progress on reaching understandings of what would be required for the effective implementation of [the resolution]. It’s important to make sure that we have clarity both from Lebanon and from Israel about what would be required under 1701 to get its effective implementation: the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the border; the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces; the authorities under which they’d be acting; an appropriate enforcement mechanism.
“And I can tell you that based on my recent trip to the region and the work that’s ongoing right now, we have made good progress on those understandings. We still have more work to do, but that’s what’s necessary to get us to a diplomatic resolution, including through a cease-fire,” said Blinken.
The comments of the United States’ top diplomat came after CIA director William Burns met in Cairo on Thursday with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, who has been mediating on stalled Israel-Hamas cease-fire negotiations, with the Egyptian leader backing a cease-fire in Lebanon as a matter of urgency to head off the danger of “continued regional escalation.” Advertisement
On Gaza, Sisi’s office said in a news release that the president had stressed that “immediate and complete access to humanitarian aid” in Gaza was a top priority and that the two-state solution was the route to peace and security in the region.
