Hezbollah and Israel engage in heavy cross-border fire as Blinken tries to prevent regional escalation
Facing the risk of regional escalation, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off an urgent diplomatic tour of the Middle East, his fourth since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out three months ago.
Beirut: Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah exchanged fire on Saturday in one of the heaviest days of cross-border fighting in recent weeks, a day after the militia’s leader urged retaliation for the targeted killing, allegedly by Israel, at a summit Hamas leader in Lebanon’s capital. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that if his group did not retaliate for Tuesday’s killing of Saleh Arouri, Hamas’s deputy political leader, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attacks.
Facing the risk of regional escalation, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off an urgent diplomatic tour of the Middle East, his fourth since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out three months ago.
“It is absolutely necessary to prevent Lebanon from being dragged into a regional conflict,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in Beirut during his own tour of the Middle East.
Hezbollah said it had launched 62 rockets at an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron and scored direct hits in its “initial response” to Arouri’s killing. It said rockets also hit two army posts near the border. The Israeli military said about 40 rockets were fired at Meron and that a base was targeted, but made no mention of the attack on the base. It said it hit the Hezbollah cell that fired the rockets.
Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon hit the outskirts of Kouhariyeh al-Siyad, a village about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said, adding that there were casualties. Such attacks deeper into Lebanon have been rare since border fighting began almost three months ago. The NNA also said Israeli forces shelled border areas, including the town of Khiam. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
In addition, the armed wing of the Islamic Group in Lebanon, the country’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close ally of Hamas, said it fired two salvos of rockets into the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona on Friday evening. Two members of the group were killed in the attack that killed Arouri.
The war in Gaza was sparked by a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages.
In recent weeks, Israel has scaled back its military assault in northern Gaza and continued its offensive in the south of the territory, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are being squeezed into smaller areas as a result of a humanitarian disaster, while they are hit by Israeli airstrikes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated in a video statement that “the war must not be stopped” until the goals of eliminating Hamas, returning the Israeli hostages and ensuring that Gaza will not pose a threat to Israel are achieved.
On Saturday, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 122 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total since the start of the war to 22,722. The count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The ministry has said that two-thirds of the dead were women or children. The total number of injured rose to 58,166, the ministry said.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah received at least 46 bodies in one night, according to hospital data seen by The Associated Press. Many were men who had apparently been shot. The dead also included five members of a family killed in an airstrike.
The latest leaflets dropped by Israel urged Palestinians in some areas near the hospital to evacuate, citing “dangerous fighting.”
In the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive, the European Hospital received the bodies of 18 people killed in a nighttime airstrike on a house, said Saleh al-Hamms, head of the hospital’s nursing department. Hopital. Citing witnesses, he said more than three dozen people were sheltering in the house, including some who had been displaced.
Israel has held Hamas responsible for the civilian casualties, saying the group has embedded itself in Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. Yet international criticism of Israel’s behavior has increased due to the rising number of civilian casualties. The United States has urged Israel to do more to prevent harm to civilians even as it sends weapons and ammunition while shielding its closest ally from international censure.
Blinken began his latest trip to the Middle East in Turkey, which the Biden administration believes can exert influence, especially over Iran and its allies, to quell fears of a regional conflagration.
These fears have increased in recent days with incidents in the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. On Saturday, a drone launched from an area in Yemen controlled by the militant Houthi group was shot down by the US destroyer Laboon near several commercial ships in the Red Sea, the US Central Command said in a statement, adding that there was no casualties or damage. reported.
In talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Blinken sought support for nascent plans for post-war Gaza, which could include financial or in-kind contributions to reconstruction efforts and some form of participation in a proposed multinational armed forces that could operate in or adjacent to the territory.
Blinken then traveled to Turkish rival and fellow NATO ally Greece to meet Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who supported U.S. efforts to prevent the war between Israel and Hamas from spreading.
Other stops include Jordan, followed by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Sunday and Monday. Blinken will visit Israel and the West Bank next week before wrapping up the trip in Egypt.
The EU’s foreign policy chief will also visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday. He said he plans to boost a European-Arab initiative to revive a peace process that would result in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.