Israel war: weapons caches found in Lebanon are of Russian origin
Israeli forces are finding Russian-origin Hezbollah weapons caches. The discoveries come as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to maintain he isn’t picking sides in the Israeli conflicts.
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Israeli troops are uncovering an increasing number of weapons stashes held by Hezbollah which were manufactured recently in Russia.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Israeli Defence Force operation into Beirut have uncovered troves which include Kornet antitank missiles made in 2020 among other newly manufactured Russian weaponry in alarming numbers.
Hezbollah, along with a number of other designated terror groups operating in the Middle East, often tote ageing Soviet-era arms.
However this is the first time modern Russian made weapons of this quantity have been found in the hands of Hezbollah.
Russia has funnelled arms to nearby Syria for many years, both supplying the Syrian military as well as maintaining their own stockpiles located in the Arab nation.
Former Israeli ambassador to Russia and now senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Arkady Mil-Man, told the Journal he believes Israel should speak up about the discoveries.
“Israel needs to be more assertive and defend its interests,” Mr Mil-Man said.
“We must explain and convey to the Russians that we will no longer stand any assistance to Hezbollah and Iran that could hurt Israelis.”
It comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will continue to operate militarily against the Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.
“The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be laid on paper,” Mr Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament.
“We will be forced to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks … even after a ceasefire”, to keep the group from rebuilding, he said.
US special envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday for talks with officials on a truce plan, which Lebanon has largely endorsed, to halt the Israel-Hezbollah war
Mr Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached.
Mr Hochstein is expected to travelon to Israel on Wednesday.
“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6, 2023,” the eve of the strike by its Palestinian ally Hamas into southern Israel, he said.
It comes as the head of the UNRWA said there is no alternative following Israel’s order to ban the organisation that coordinates nearly all aid in war-ravaged Gaza.
“There is no plan B,” Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva.
Within the UN family, “there is no other agency geared to provide the same activities”, providing not only aid in Gaza, but also primary health care and education to hundreds of thousands of children,” he said.
“If you are talking about bringing in a truck with food, you will surely find an alternative,” he said, but “the answer is no” when it comes to education and primary healthcare.
He called on the UN, which created UNRWA in 1949, to prevent the implementation of a ban on the organisation in Israel and occupied east Jerusalem, which was approved by the Israeli parliament last month.
The ban is due to take effect at the end of January.
The ordered suspension of the agency sparked global condemnation, including from key Israeli backer the United States.
UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Lazzarini cautioned that a halt to UNRWA’s activities in Israel and East Jerusalem would block it from co-ordinating massive aid efforts inside Gaza.
“This would mean we could not operate in Gaza … and thus the environment would be much too dangerous,” he said.
If UNRWA ceases to operate, he warned, the responsibility for providing all the services it has provided until now “will come back to the occupying power, being Israel”.
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US ENVOY IN LEBANON FOR CEASEFIRE TALKS
US special envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday for talks with officials on a truce plan, which Lebanon has largely endorsed, to halt the Israel-Hezbollah war.
The United States and France have spearheaded efforts for a ceasefire in the war, which escalated after nearly a year of deadly exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli troops.
Israel expanded the focus of its operations from Gaza to Lebanon in late September, vowing to secure its northern border to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by the cross-border fire to return home.
Since the clashes began with Hezbollah attacks on Israel, more than 3,510 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to authorities there, with most fatalities recorded since late September.
With the Lebanese government reviewing a US truce proposal, an official who has been following the talks closely said Monday that it had “a very positive view” on the plan.
“We are finalising our last remarks about the US wording of the draft,” the official said.
Another government official said Lebanon was “waiting for US special envoy Amos Hochstein to arrive so we can review certain outstanding points with him”.
FIVE KILLED AFTER STRIKE ON BEIRUT SUBURB
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israel struck a densely packed Beirut neighbourhood on Monday local time, killing five people, in the third attack in two days on the city’s central districts.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Zuqaq al-Blat in Beirut killed five people and injured 24,” a ministry statement said, giving an updated death toll.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said an apartment near a Shiite Muslim place of worship had been targeted.
“A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said.
The air strike was not preceded by a warning from the Israeli military to evacuate.
DAMAGE IN TEL AVIV AFTER ROCKET ATTACK
Five people were injured following a Hezbollah missile attack on central Israel.
The IDF said one missile was fired from Lebanon in the attack, which was intercepted by air defences.
Fragments from the interception impacted between two Tel Aviv suburbs, causing a fire and damage to surrounding buildings and vehicles, The Times of Israel reported.
‘NO MORE WORDS’: EU CHIEF FUMES
The European Union’s outgoing top diplomat Josep Borrell said he had “no more words” to describe the situation in the Middle East, before chairing his last planned meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
“I exhausted the words to explain what’s happening in the Middle East,” Borrell told reporters, barely concealing his frustration at the EU’s failure to weigh on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his five-year mandate.
“There is no more words,” he said.
“It’s about 44,000 people killed in Gaza, the whole area is being destroyed, and 70 per cent of the people being killed are women or children.”
“The most frequent ages of casualties are children below nine years old,” said the 77-year-old foreign policy chief.
Borrell confirmed he would urge ministers Monday local time to suspend a political dialogue with Israel – part of a wider agreement governing trade ties – over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
But the proposal is expected to be given short shrift by numerous member states including key powers France and Germany, as well as Italy and the Netherlands.
Since Israel unleashed its devastating offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the EU’s member states have been deeply divided over the conflict.
DOZENS KILLED, MISSING IN GAZA’S NORTH
Israeli strikes on Sunday local time killed dozens of people in Gaza, civil defence rescuers said, most of them in northern Gaza where the UN and others have decried disastrous humanitarian conditions.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 34 people were killed including children, and dozens were missing, after an Israeli air strike hit a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahia.
“The chances of rescuing more wounded are decreasing because of the continuous shooting and artillery shelling,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Weighed down with backpacks, many like Omar Abdel Aaal were fleeing, often on foot, through dusty streets.
“They bombarded the houses and completely destroyed Beit Lahia,” he said.
Israel’s military said there were “ongoing terrorist activities in the area of Beit Lahia” and several strikes were directed at militant targets there.
“We emphasise that there have been continuous efforts to evacuate the civilian population from the active war zone in the area,” the military said in a statement.
It separately announced the death of two soldiers during combat in north Gaza.
In other deadly strikes, Bassal said attacks killed 15 people in central Gaza and five in the southern city of Rafah.
Also in the south, in the Khan Yunis area, civil defence said an Israeli drone targeted a group of unarmed people securing an aid delivery, killing six.
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846.
The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry data, which the United Nations consider reliable.
BIDEN URGES G20 LEADERS TO ‘INCREASE PRESSURE ON HAMAS’
US President Joe Biden called on G20 leaders to step up pressure on Hamas for a ceasefire with Israel, as he vowed to “keep pushing” for a deal in his last weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House.
“I ask everyone here to increase their pressure on Hamas, which is currently refusing this deal,” Mr Biden said in his opening remarks to the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.
ISRAEL BOMBARDS LEBANON, HEZBOLLAH SPOKESMAN KILLED
At least 11 people have been killed and nearly 50 injured by Israeli attacks on the ancient city of Tyre in Lebanon, hours after a strike on a central Beirut residential and shopping district killed two people.
An earlier strike killed Hezbollah’s spokesman, a security source said.
Israel has been heavily bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah, since all-out war erupted on September 23 but attacks on central Beirut have been rarer.
“Israeli warplanes launched a strike on the Mar Elias area,” the official National News Agency said of the densely-packed district that also houses people displaced by the conflict.
The health ministry said the strike killed two people and wounded 22, raising an earlier toll of one dead and nine wounded.
AFP journalists heard the sound of explosions and then sirens amid a strong acrid smell of burning.
AFP images showed a blaze at the site that firefighters were trying to extinguish.
A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity, told AFP that the strike hit an electronics store and a vehicle.
Lina, 59, whose home in Mar Elias is less than 500 metres from the strike site, said the raid hit a street she uses “every day to go to work”.
“It’s a residential area … Nowhere in the country is safe anymore,” she said, requesting to be identified only by her first name.
The NNA said the strike “targeted a Jamaa Islamiya centre”, referring to a Sunni Muslim group allied to Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
But Jamaa Islamiya politician Imad Hout told AFP that “no centre or institution affiliated with the group is located in the area targeted by the strike, and no member of the group was targeted”.
Earlier, a Lebanese security source said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif was killed in a strike on central Beirut’s Ras al-Nabaa district.
A total of four people, including a woman, were killed in that incident and 14 were wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
In the wake of the strikes, Lebanon’s Education Minister Abbas Halabi said schools and higher education institutions in the Beirut area would remain closed for two days.
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