LIVE – War in the Middle East: Israel expands its ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon

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Israel announced on Tuesday that it had expanded its ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, after deploying additional troops there and calling on residents to avoid the coastal area. On the first anniversary Monday of the deadly Hamas attack on Israeli territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to continue the fight until victory against Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist movement, both supported by the ‘Iran.

Information to remember:

– Israel said on Tuesday it had expanded its ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, after deploying additional troops there and calling on residents to evacuate the coastal area

– Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with “destruction like in Gaza” and says the Jewish state has “eliminated Nasrallah’s replacement”

– Despite the blows inflicted on Hamas and Hezbollah, these movements continue to fire rockets against Israel

Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with ‘destruction like in Gaza’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called on the Lebanese to “save” their country by freeing it “from Hezbollah”, otherwise threatening the country of Cedar to experience “destruction and suffering like that we see in Gaza”.

“We eliminated [Hassan] Nasrallah [chef du Hezbollah tué le 27 septembre dans une frappe israélienne dans la banlieue sud de Beyrouth] and Nasrallah’s replacement and his replacement’s replacement,” Benjamin Netanyahu also said in a video message in English, without providing names.

A fourth division deployed by Israel

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that Hezbollah was now “a battered and broken organization” after intense Israeli strikes targeting it. Despite the blows inflicted on Hamas and Hezbollah, whose leaders were killed, these movements continue to fire rockets against Israel, which borders the Gaza Strip to the south and Lebanon to the north.

The Israeli army announced that the 146th Division began Monday “limited and localized operations against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southwest Lebanon” bordering the Mediterranean.

This division is the fourth that Israel has deployed since the start, on September 30, of its ground offensive in southern Lebanon, a region from which the Israeli army withdrew in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

Airstrikes on Hezbollah’s three strongholds

In the coastal town of Saida, 40 kilometers south of Beirut, fishing boats and the few boats remained at the dock, the day after Israel’s call on Monday to avoid the southern coast. “We are fishermen with no other source of income and now all our work has stopped,” testified Hamza Sonbol, a fisherman. At the same time, Israel carried out airstrikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s three strongholds.

The Islamist movement claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on military sites as well as the city of Haifa, in northern Israel. Around 85 projectiles were fired, according to the Israeli army. Most rockets are regularly intercepted. Hezbollah also claimed to have pushed back Israeli soldiers “infiltrating” into southern Lebanon near a position of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force.

Hezbollah number two assures that the movement’s capabilities are “good”

“Our capabilities are good, contrary to what the enemy says who claims to have weakened us,” assured Naïm Qassem, Hezbollah’s number two, in a televised speech. According to him, the leadership of the movement is “perfectly organized” despite the “painful” Israeli strikes, an allusion to the death of several Hezbollah leaders including its number one, Hassan Nasrallah, killed on September 27 in an Israeli raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

After weakening Hamas during a devastating offensive launched in Gaza in retaliation for the attack of October 7, 2023, the Israeli army moved most of its operations to Lebanon in mid-September, against Hezbollah.

Israel seeks to distance Hezbollah from the border areas of southern Lebanon and to stop its rocket fire towards northern Israel to allow the return to this region of some 60,000 displaced inhabitants.

More than a million people displaced in Lebanon

The spiral of cross-border violence for a year turned into open war on September 23, when Israel launched a massive bombing campaign on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon. Since October 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than 1,110 since September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures. More than a million people have been displaced.

“We have defined the goals of the war and we are achieving them: to overthrow Hamas, to bring all the hostages home, the living and the dead. This is a sacred mission,” he said on Monday. Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 led to the death of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip. Of the 251 people kidnapped, 97 are still detained in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the Israeli army.

“Enough of the massacres”

On the anniversary of the attack, Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, promised a “long, painful and costly battle of attrition” for Israel. In the Gaza Strip, besieged and in the grip of a humanitarian disaster, Civil Defense announced Tuesday the death of 17 Palestinians, including children, in an attack on a house in Bureij, in the center. “It was like an earthquake. All the people here are civilians and children!” exclaimed Mohamed Abou Khader amid the destruction. “We want the war to stop. We have had enough of the massacres.”

At least 41,965 Palestinians were killed, the majority civilians, in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN. The war against Hamas and Hezbollah is accompanied by an escalation between Iran and Israel, which has said it is preparing a response to the attack launched by Tehran with 200 missiles on October 1 against its territory. “Any attack on Iranian infrastructure will result in a stronger response,” warned the head of Iranian diplomacy, Abbas Araghchi.

According to Tehran, the October 1 attack was a response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and to that, on July 31 in Tehran, of Hamas leader Ismaïl Haniyeh, in an attack attributed to Israel. Western leaders emphasize Israel’s right to defend itself, while affirming the Palestinian right to statehood and the need to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

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