what to remember from Wednesday, October 2

Clashes took place in southern Lebanon between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters, while the Israeli army continued its strikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Fighting pitted Israeli troops against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where Israel announced the death of eight soldiers, the first killed since the start of its ground operations two days earlier against the Iran-backed Islamist movement. The Israeli army also carried out new strikes on southern neighborhoods of the capital Beirut, but also in Damascus, Syria. Here is what to remember from this new day of conflict.

Eight Israeli soldiers killed in combat in southern Lebanon

The Israeli army announced the death of eight soldiers, killed since the start of its ground operations on Monday, which it describes as “limited”in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed to resist the advance of the soldiers and to have notably destroyed “using guided missiles” three Israeli tanks heading towards the border village of Maroun al-Ras. Images released by the Israeli army showed soldiers on Lebanese soil, moving on foot through villages and mountainous areas. The army announced that it had deployed a second division to support the troops already there.

New strikes on the southern neighborhoods of Beirut

Israeli army calls for evacuation “immediate” villages in southern Lebanon while new airstrikes targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut in the evening. This is the third series of Israeli raids targeting this stronghold of the Islamist movement in less than 24 hours. AFP journalists outside the Lebanese capital heard the detonating sound of explosions that rang out for miles around.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced that 46 people were killed and 85 others injured by “Israeli enemy strikes” over the last 24 hours in several regions of the country. Before the publication of this daily report, the Lebanese Crisis Center announced that 1,928 people had been killed in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah began exchanging fire in October 2023. The government estimated at around 1.2 million the number of people displaced by the bombings.

Hassan Nasrallah’s son-in-law killed in strike

An Israeli strike killed three people in Damascus (Syria), including the son-in-law of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, himself assassinated by Israel last week in the suburbs of Beirut, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Hassan Jaafar al-Qasir, son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah, is one of the two Lebanese victims of the Israeli raid which targeted an apartment in a residential building in the Mazzé district of Damascus”specifies the NGO. A source close to Hezbollah confirmed this information to AFP and specified that Hassan Jaafar al-Qasir was the brother of Jaafar al-Qasir, responsible for the transfer of weapons from Iran to Lebanon, which Israel announced it had killed the day before in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Israel and Iran exchange new threats

The day after the firing of around 200 Iranian missiles towards Israel, the Security Council met urgently with Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon threatened arch-enemy Iran with “painful response (…) in full accordance with international law”. He felt that his country, very isolated on the international scene, was “attack”; target of a “direct aggression against [son] very existence”. Danny Danon accused again “the world [de] watching silently as Iran has financed and ordered attacks against us for a year, and has been arming and training proxies for decades.”.

At the other end of the table in the Council room, looking somber, his Iranian counterpart Amir Iravani retorted that“Israel does not understand[ait] than the language of force” and that “diplomacy has[vait] failed”. “Iran’s response was necessary to restore the balance of power and deterrence”argued the representative of the Islamic Republic, threatening: “Israel must understand that every act of aggression will not go unpunished”. The military escalation between Israel on the one hand, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other, has raised fears that the situation in the Middle East could spiral out of control.

Hamas’s military wing claims responsibility for Tel Aviv attack

The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack committed the day before in Jaffa, a peripheral district of Tel Aviv, in which seven people were killed with automatic weapons and stabbing at a tram station. “The Al-Qassam Brigades take responsibility for the heroic operation carried out by Qassam fighters Mohammed Rachid Misk and Ahmed Abdoulfattah Al-Haïmoni from the city of Hebron”in the occupied West Bank, the movement said in a statement.