(Beirut) Intense Israeli strikes against Hezbollah left 492 dead on Monday in Lebanon, including 35 children, according to the authorities of this country, which experienced its deadliest day in nearly a year of exchanges of fire between the two parties on the sidelines of the war in Gaza.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “very seriously concerned” about the number of civilian casualties in southern and eastern Lebanon, which have been pounded by the Israeli army, his spokesman said on Monday, at a time when the international community fears that this escalation between Israel and the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, could drag the region into an uncontrollable spiral.
The human toll has continued to rise as the hours passed. “The airstrikes caused the martyrdom of 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and injured 1,645 others,” the Health Ministry’s Emergency Operations Center said in a new tally in the evening.
The Israeli army reported a “large number” of Hezbollah members killed during the day.
In a video, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recommended at the end of the day that the Lebanese “move away from dangerous areas” while waiting for the end of the “operation”.
PHOTO JOSEPH EID, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Lebanese people “in Beirut and several regions” received calls to evacuate on their landlines from Israel.
His Lebanese counterpart, Najib Mikati, denounced “a plan to destroy” his country, where schools will remain closed on Tuesday.
“The strikes don’t stop”
“It’s a catastrophe, a massacre,” Jamal Badrane, a doctor at the Secours Populaire hospital in Nabatiyé, a town in the south, told AFP.
The strikes did not stop, they bombed us while we were removing the wounded.
Jamal Badrane, doctor at the Lebanese hospital of Secours Populaire
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Rescue workers gather at the site of an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, September 23, 2024.
Thousands of families have fled the bombed areas, according to the health ministry.
Displaced people from the south have flocked to the capital and to Saida, where they have been taken in by reception centres, AFP photographers have observed.
Taking refuge in a school in Saida, Hassan Banjak had not left his region “since the beginning of the war and the bombings of the Israeli enemy.” “But when the strikes intensified and got closer, the children were afraid and we decided to leave,” he says.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ZAATARI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hundreds of cars carrying families were stuck in traffic jams in Saida.
The Israeli army said in the evening that it had struck 1,300 targets of Hezbollah in the last 24 hours, which has been firing rockets into Israeli territory for almost a year in support of the Palestinian Hamas, which is at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The army also announced a “targeted strike” in Beirut, targeting, according to a source close to Hezbollah, the commander of the southern front of this formation, who announced that he was “fine”, “in a safe place”.
In one day, the 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.
PHOTO AZIZ TAHER, REUTERS
A man walks on a beach as smoke rises over southern Lebanon’s Tyre.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel was shifting the “balance of power” in the north of the country, where it is determined to allow the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents, during a security meeting in Tel Aviv, according to his office.
Warning sirens in Haifa
Hezbollah, for its part, claimed to have responded with dozens of rockets fired into northern Israel, specifying that they had targeted the army’s “main warehouses” in the area, and a military barracks.
Early in the evening, warning sirens sounded in Haifa, the major port in northern Israel, whose surroundings had been hit by rocket fire for the first time on Sunday.
PHOTO RONEN ZVULUN, REUTERS
The Iron Dome – Israel’s anti-missile system – intercepts rockets launched from Lebanon towards Israel.
“I’m not afraid for myself, but for my three children,” said Ofer Levy, a 56-year-old customs officer who lives in Kiryat Motzkin in northern Israel. “No country can live like this.”
The exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah – which has vowed to continue attacking Israel “until the end of the aggression in Gaza” – has intensified since the wave of explosions of the movement’s transmission devices, attributed to Israel, which left 39 dead, according to the Lebanese authorities, on September 17 and 18 in Lebanon.
On Friday, an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut killed 16 members of Hezbollah’s elite force, including its leader, Ibrahim Aqil.
“Global regional war”
Egypt on Monday called for the UN Security Council to intervene to end “the dangerous Israeli escalation”, warning, as did Jordan, against the risk of a “global regional war”.
Iraq said it wanted an “urgent meeting” of Arab countries on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to “stop” Israel, which Turkey accused of wanting to “lead the entire region to chaos”.
Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian also accused Israel, Tehran’s sworn enemy, of wanting to “widen” the conflict.
PHOTO RABIH DAHER, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, near the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, has “urged” its nationals to leave Lebanon and announced that it would send “a small number” of additional military personnel to the Middle East.
US President Joe Biden reaffirmed on Monday that he was “working towards de-escalation”, an objective that the new head of French diplomacy Jean-Noël Barrot has also set, according to his ministry.
China on Monday called on its citizens to leave Israel “as soon as possible” while the Kremlin expressed deep concern.
On Sunday, Mr Guterres had expressed concern that Lebanon was becoming “another Gaza”.
PHOTO HUSSEIN MALLA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Israeli airstrikes on the village of Taybeh in southern Lebanon
In nearly a year, violence between Israel and Hezbollah has left hundreds dead in Lebanon, mainly fighters, and dozens dead in Israel and the occupied Golan.
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 vowed to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization, along with the United States and the European Union.
The offensive launched by Israel in Gaza has so far caused at least 41,455 deaths, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.
It also caused a humanitarian disaster there.
Lebanon/Israel: main clashes since the 2006 war
Following the new Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday, a reminder of the main clashes between Israel and the Lebanese Islamist movement since their conflict in 2006.
The July-August 2006 confrontation left more than 1,200 dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, most of them soldiers.
Clashes and incursion
Three Lebanese and an Israeli officer were killed on August 3, 2010, during clashes in the area of the border village of Aadaissé.
Four Israeli soldiers were injured on August 7, 2013 by explosions claimed by Hezbollah, during a 400-meter incursion into Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes
On October 7, 2014, Israeli artillery shelled two Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, in retaliation for an attack claimed by the Lebanese group that lightly injured two Israeli soldiers in the Shebaa Farms (territory occupied by Israel on the borders of Syria and Lebanon).
On January 28, 2015, two Israeli soldiers were killed in a Hezbollah ambush in the same area, in response to a deadly raid attributed to Israel on January 18 on the Syrian part of the Golan Heights.
In response, the Israeli army bombed several Lebanese villages.
Drone attack and missile strikes
On August 25, 2019, two drones loaded with explosives struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, causing material damage according to Hezbollah, which blames Israel.
The day before, an Israeli strike in Syria had killed two members of the movement.
The 1er September, the Israeli army and Hezbollah exchange missile fire at the border.
New fever outbreak in 2021
In August 2021, Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery fire to rocket fire from Lebanon.
Since October 7, 2023
Cross-border exchanges of fire have been an almost daily occurrence between the Israeli army and Hezbollah since the unprecedented attack launched on October 7, 2023 by the allied Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, against Israel, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
On January 2, 2024, Hamas’ number two, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed near Beirut in a strike attributed to Israel.
Hezbollah and Fatah leaders killed
On July 27, a rocket attack killed 12 young people in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the Syrian Golan Heights largely annexed by Israel. Hezbollah denies responsibility.
An Israeli retaliatory strike on the 30th killed a senior Hezbollah military official, Fouad Chokr, near Beirut.
On August 21, an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed Khalil al-Maqdah, a leader of the armed wing of Palestinian Fatah.
Large-scale Hezbollah attack
On August 25, Hezbollah announced that it had “successfully” carried out a large-scale drone and rocket attack against Israel, in response to the death of Fouad Chokr.
Israel says for its part it has destroyed “thousands of rocket launch pads”, foiling this vast attack.
Deadly explosions and new strikes
On September 17 and 18, a wave of explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah in its strongholds in Lebanon, attributed to Israel, left 39 dead and 2,931 injured according to the Lebanese authorities.
Exchanges of fire continued in the following days, with an Israeli strike near Beirut on the 20th killing the head of Hezbollah’s elite unit, Ibrahim Aqil.
On the 23rd, the most intense Israeli strikes in almost a year left 274 dead in southern Lebanon, according to the country’s authorities.