Hezbollah fired a missile towards Tel Aviv on Wednesday, for the first time according to the Israeli army, which has carried out new air strikes against the Islamist movement in Lebanon, at a time when the international community fears a conflagration in the Middle East.
The army announced that it was carrying out “large-scale” bombings in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in the east, two strongholds of the Iran-backed Islamist movement.
A strike also targeted, for the first time, a village north of Beirut, where three people were killed according to the Lebanese authorities.
At dawn, warning sirens sounded in the large Israeli city of Tel Aviv, about 100 kilometers south of the Lebanese border, when Hezbollah fired a surface-to-surface missile that was intercepted, according to the army.
“This is the first time that a Hezbollah missile has hit the Tel Aviv area,” the army said.
The Lebanese movement claimed that it was a Qader missile that targeted the headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, accused of being “responsible for the assassination of the leaders” of Hezbollah “and the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies.”
At least 15 dead in Lebanon
The Lebanese Health Ministry announced that 15 people were killed on Wednesday in Israeli raids on five villages, including two located in mountainous areas outside Hezbollah strongholds.
“A strike by the Israeli enemy” on the village of Joun, in the Chouf mountain south of Beirut, killed four people, the ministry said.
Another in Maaysara, a Shiite village in the predominantly Christian mountains north of Beirut, left three dead, according to the same source.
Raids on three localities in southern Lebanon left eight dead and dozens injured, according to the same source.
A resident of the village of Maaysara who requested anonymity told AFP by telephone that “a house and a café” were destroyed in this village, about thirty kilometers north of Beirut.
“Climate of terror”
These bombings forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese onto the roads.
Nour Hamad, a 22-year-old student from Baalbeck, described “a climate of terror” since the start of the strikes targeting the surrounding areas of the city.
“We spent four or five days without sleeping, not knowing if we would wake up in the morning. The children are afraid, the adults too,” she said.
The UN Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting in New York on Wednesday, where concern over the escalation between the Israeli military and Hezbollah dominated the opening of the UN General Assembly.
“Israel is pushing the region towards open war,” warned the heads of diplomacy of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, condemning “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon.”
The head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said he feared “a full-blown war” and that Lebanon would become like the Gaza Strip, where the war was triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel.
Israel announced in mid-September that it had moved the “center of gravity” of the war to the north of the country, along the Lebanese border, to allow the return of tens of thousands of residents displaced by cross-border violence.
Hamas’ ally Hezbollah has vowed to continue attacking Israel “until the end of the aggression in Gaza.” For nearly a year, exchanges of fire have not stopped along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
These shots have gained in intensity since the wave of deadly explosions of Hezbollah transmission devices, attributed to Israel, on September 17 and 18 in Lebanon, then an Israeli strike on September 20 on the southern suburbs of Beirut, which decapitated the elite unit of the Shiite movement.
Schools and universities will remain closed until the end of the week in Lebanon. Many airlines have suspended flights to Beirut.
“Generalized war”
In this context, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed his departure to the United States to attend the UN General Assembly.
Hezbollah confirmed on Wednesday that one of its military leaders, Ibrahim Mohammed Kobeissi, had been killed in an Israeli bombing on Tuesday on the southern suburbs of the capital.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the recent assassination in Lebanon of several Hezbollah commanders by Israel could not bring the movement “to its knees.”
“We will continue to strike Hezbollah. And I say to the Lebanese people: our war is not against you” but “against Hezbollah,” Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video released by his office.
US President Joe Biden has warned of a “full-scale war” in Lebanon and said it was “time to finalise now” a ceasefire deal in Gaza.
The war in the Palestinian territory was triggered by a Hamas attack on Israel that left 1,205 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages killed or held in captivity in Gaza.
Of the 251 people abducted, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 declared dead by the army.
In retaliation, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organisation, along with the United States and the European Union.
His army launched an offensive in Gaza that has so far killed 41,495 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN. It has also caused a humanitarian disaster there.