After Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Lebanon has now become an “active front”, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said during an interview with AFP, speaking of ” triple tragedy”.
The Security Council of the United Nations was convened to meet in an emergency today Wednesday at 18:00 (New York time; at 01:00 tomorrow Thursday Greek time), to discuss the escalation of the crisis, at the request of France.
The torrential, deadly bombardment of recent days has thrown hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens into the streets, fleeing the south in every direction. While, early today, Israel’s air force hit a “warehouse” in Saadiyat, a coastal town about 20 kilometers south of the capital, an AFP source in the Lebanese security forces said.
In a statement released to the public, Hezbollah confirmed the death of “Commander Ibrahim Mohammed Qubaisi,” who was “martyred on the road to Jerusalem,” as the movement generally uses when referring to those killed by Israeli fire.
Earlier, the Israeli armed forces reported that “airforce fighter jets eliminated Ibrahim Mohamed Qubaisi, commander of the rocket and missile network of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, in Beirut on Tuesday.”
Always according to the Israeli military, “at least two” other commanders of the units coordinated by Ibrahim Koubaishi were killed in the strike — which, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, was at least 6 dead and 15 wounded.
Hezbollah retaliated by firing “about 300 rockets” at Israel, “injuring six civilians and soldiers, most of them lightly,” according to the Israeli military.
The Shiite Lebanese movement, for its part, claimed responsibility for 18 attacks against Israeli soil, including the firing of 90 rockets against the headquarters of the Israeli army’s northern command near Safed, as well as the one-way drone launch against a naval base in the south Haifa, the major port of northern Israel.
“We will continue to hit Hezbollah. And I say to the people of Lebanon: our war is not against you, it is against Hezbollah,” assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video released by his services.
Israel has “no desire” to invade the territory of Lebanon, it would prefer a diplomatic solution to end its conflict with Hezbollah, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, offered, reminding that the purpose of the operations is to return in their homes the tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel who have been forced to leave them because of the practically daily exchanges of fire that are going to close time.
Concern over the rapid escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, dominated the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York.
“Lebanon is on the brink of the abyss,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres once again warned from the podium.
On Monday, the heaviest shelling launched by Israel since October 8, 2023 swept through southern and eastern Lebanon, killing at least 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women, and injuring 1,835 others, according to Lebanese media. health authorities. This is the heaviest death toll in one day since the end of the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990).
According to the Israeli military, 1,600 “targets,” Hezbollah positions, were hit in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley (east), another stronghold of the movement close to Tehran.
The number of Lebanese citizens who have become internally displaced is now approaching 500,000 after Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah escalated this week, the country’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib said yesterday at an event organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Tens of thousands of people, according to the UN, left for Saida, the largest city in the south, for Beirut, or for Syria.
Zeinab Diab, 32, who took refuge like hundreds of other families in a school converted into a reception and accommodation center for internally displaced persons near the capital, told how her village, near the border, which she left with her husband and four children , “practically destroyed.”
“We didn’t even know where the shelling was coming from. It’s like this time there’s even more brutality.”
Schools and universities will remain closed until the end of the week in Lebanese territory. Many airlines have suspended flights to and from Beirut.
Britain announced late on Tuesday night that it is sending around 700 of its military personnel to Cyprus, to prepare possible operations for the hasty removal of UK nationals from Lebanon.
In mid-September, Israel announced that the “center of gravity” of the war it is conducting is being transferred from the Gaza Strip to the north, officially describing its “goal” as the “safe” return of tens of thousands of its residents to their homes.
Hezbollah, for its part, vows to continue to hit Israel “until the end of the attack on Gaza”, where the war that broke out in October last year, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas in its southern part, is raging for the 355th day. Israeli territory.
The bombardment followed severe blows to Hezbollah last week — the series of blasts on communications devices rigged with explosives on September 17 and 18, which killed 39 and injured hundreds, and then, on September 20, the Israeli bombardment of southern Beirut which claimed the lives of 55 people and decimated the leadership of the elite Radwan unit, including its leader Ibrahim Akil.
On the floor of the General Assembly, Joe Biden echoed Mr Guterres, warning against “all-out war” in Lebanon and saying it was time to “finalize now” a cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli government and Hamas.
Other leaders condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, referred to the war in the besieged small Palestinian enclave of 2.4 million inhabitants as the “crime of genocide”.
Iranian President Massoud Pezheskian met on Tuesday night with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron — who called on him to advocate “general de-escalation” in the Middle East — on the sidelines of the General Assembly. Earlier, through X, he called the UN’s “inaction” against Israel “incomprehensible” and emphasized to CNN that Hezbollah cannot be “left alone” in the conflict with Israel.
According to Israeli political analyst Michael Horowitz, both camps are aware of the dangers that a general war would entail. The situation is “extremely dangerous”, but there is “still room for diplomacy”, he estimated, speaking to AFP.
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, triggered by an unprecedented Hamas raid on southern Israel, during which 1,205 people, mostly civilians, were killed on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official data. of the Israeli authorities, including hostages killed while being held in the Palestinian enclave.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 97 remain in the hands of Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, but 33 are presumed dead by the Israeli military.
In retaliation, Israel’s government has vowed to wipe out Hamas, in power in the enclave since 2007, which the US and EU designate as a terrorist organization.
Israel’s wide-ranging military retaliatory operations have since killed at least 41,467 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Hamas’ health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN. The small Palestinian enclave under siege is facing a humanitarian disaster.
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