Israel carried out new strikes on Tuesday against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, following the bombings the day before which left more than 550 dead and raised fears of a flare-up in the region almost a year after the start of the war in Gaza.
Fears of a full-scale war in the Middle East will dominate the UN General Assembly, which opens Tuesday in New York, at a time when the military escalation continues to worsen between the Israeli army and the Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran and allied with the Palestinian Hamas.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army announced that it had struck “dozens of Hezbollah targets in many regions of southern Lebanon,” and targeted the Islamist movement’s infrastructure and weapons.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for new Fadi 2 missile launches towards Israel and announced that it had targeted military sites near Haifa, the large city in the north of the country, including an “explosives factory” about 60 kilometers from the Lebanese border, as well as the city of Kiryat Shmona.
Monday’s bombardments, of an intensity unprecedented since the start of the exchange of fire on the Israeli-Lebanese border in October 2023, targeted around 1,600 targets, according to the army, in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in the east, Hezbollah strongholds.
These strikes left 558 dead, including 50 children and 94 women, Health Minister Firass Abiad announced at a press conference on Tuesday.
“The vast majority, if not all, are unarmed people who were in their homes,” the minister added. This is the heaviest toll since the last war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese have fled the bombed areas since Monday, according to the UN, seeking refuge in Saida, the largest city in the south, or in Beirut. On Tuesday, long lines of cars were blocked on the road leading to the capital.
“Day of Terror”
“It was a day of terror,” Thuraya Harb, a 41-year-old Lebanese woman who fled to Beirut after an eight-hour journey from her southern village of Toul, told AFP. “I didn’t want to leave, but the children were afraid and we left, with nothing but the clothes we were wearing,” added the woman, dressed in a long black dress and her hair covered by a veil.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati denounced on Monday “a plan to destroy” his country.
In one day, the Israeli army “neutralized tens of thousands of rockets and munitions,” said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, estimating that Hezbollah was experiencing its “most difficult week since its creation” in 1982.
The Israeli army also announced a “targeted strike” in Beirut, which, according to Hezbollah, unsuccessfully targeted its commander for the southern front, Ali Karaké.
In the port city of Haifa, which is being overflown by warplanes, schools, universities and shops remained closed on Tuesday and traffic was lighter than usual, according to an AFP journalist.
Israel had announced in recent days that the centre of gravity of the war was shifting to the north of the country, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is determined to allow the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents.
Hezbollah has vowed to continue attacking Israel “until the end of the aggression in Gaza,” where the war was triggered on October 7, 2023, by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israeli soil. Since then, exchanges of fire have never ceased 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 killed 16 fighters from the movement’s elite unit including its leader, Ibrahim Aqil.
“Working towards de-escalation”
“We are on the brink of total war,” warned the head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, while France called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Lebanon this week.
Iran’s new president, Massoud Pezeshkian, told CNN on Tuesday that Hezbollah could “not stand alone” against Israel. He added that the international community “must not allow Lebanon to become a new Gaza in the hands of Israel.”
US President Joe Biden, who will deliver his final speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, reaffirmed that he was “working towards de-escalation”.
The United States opposes a ground invasion of Lebanon and will present “concrete ideas” to its partners at the United Nations this week to ease the conflict, a senior U.S. official said.
Many countries, including Qatar and Egypt, have expressed concern. The Kremlin has said it fears a “complete destabilization” of the region.
The G7 pointed out the risk of a “regional conflict with unimaginable consequences” while China denounced “blind attacks” against civilians.
Iraq said it wanted an “urgent meeting” of Arab countries on the sidelines of the General Assembly to “stop” Israel.
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel that killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages who died or were killed 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 the Palestinian Islamist movement, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organisation, as do the United States and the European Union.
His army launched an offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed 41,467 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.