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JERUSALEM/BEIRUT – Israeli strikes pummeled Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday as Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired salvos of rockets at northern Israel, with one drone directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home, his spokesman said.
The volleys from the Iran-backed Lebanese group came as health officials in Gaza, where Israel has been battling Palestinian militant group Hamas for more than a year, said Israeli strikes had killed more than 30 people across the territory.
Pledges from Israel and its enemies Hamas and Hezbollah to keep fighting in Gaza and Lebanon have dashed hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might hasten an end to more than a year of escalating war in the Middle East.
Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday.
Israel also tightened a siege around hospitals in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where residents and medical officials said Israeli forces were bombing houses and preventing medical and food supplies from entering.
Israel has been pounding Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, in what it says is an effort to stop Hamas fighters regrouping.
On Saturday afternoon, Israel carried out heavy strikes on several locations in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, leaving thick plumes of smoke wafting over the city horizon throughout the evening.
It issued evacuation orders for four separate neighborhoods within the suburbs, urging residents to get 500 meters (yards) away, but carried out strikes in other parts as well, Reuters witnesses said.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the southern suburbs – once a densely populated zone that also housed Hezbollah offices and underground installations – since Israel began regularly targeting the zone approximately three weeks ago.
An Israeli air attack there on Sept. 27 killed Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, and other strikes in the zone have killed other top figures within the Iran-backed group.
New area struck
An Israeli strike on Saturday killed two people as they were traveling on Lebanon’s main highway near the Christian-majority town of Jounieh – the first such attack on the area. A spokesperson for Israel’s military said it was looking into it.
Witnesses described passengers running from a car after a blast, then seeing the charred remains of one passenger after a second blast.
Another strike killed at least four people in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, health authorities said. One of them was the mayor of a nearby town, making him the second mayor of a Lebanese town to be killed this week.
Separately, the Israeli military said it killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander of the Bint Jbeil area on Friday and that its troops had seized weapons including anti-tank missiles.
Hezbollah by Saturday evening had claimed at least 20 attacks on Israeli military targets that day, all of them with salvos of rockets. There was no immediate comment from it on any drone attacks or attacks targeting Netanyahu’s home.
In northern Israel, some of the rockets were intercepted but one hit a residential building, police said.
One person was killed and at least nine people were injured in different locations, the Israeli ambulance service said. Air raid sirens sent people running to shelters.
Netanyahu’s spokesman said the prime minister was not in the vicinity of his holiday home in Caesarea and there were no casualties.
Later, Israeli media published a video of Netanyahu walking in a park. “Nothing will deter us, we will keep going until victory,” he said in the video filmed by one of his aides.
Stalled talks
Iran-backed Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel since the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas began in Gaza last October.
Nearly three weeks ago, Israel launched a ground assault inside Lebanon in an attempt to stabilize the border region for its citizens who had fled the fighting.
More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them in the last month, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, while 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights, according to Israeli authorities.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostage in their attack on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military response has left more than 42,500 people dead, Palestinian officials say.
The Israeli offensive has made most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people homeless, maimed tens of thousands, caused widespread hunger and destroyed hospitals and schools.
More than 10,000 packages of food and medical supplies were airdropped into Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday in coordination with the United Arab Emirates, the Israeli military said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that oversees administration in the Palestinian Territories, has stepped up deliveries of aid into Gaza amid international pressure to ease a dire humanitarian crisis.
Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, have said Sinwar’s death offered a chance for a deal for a truce in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages.
Negotiations for such a deal have been stalled for weeks.
Biden said on Friday that there was a possibility of working towards a ceasefire in Lebanon but it would be harder in Gaza. — Reuters