Israel hits Lebanon from the air and fights Hezbollah on the ground

Israel hits Lebanon from the air and fights Hezbollah on the ground

A Palestinian youth reacts after having relatives killed in an Israeli air strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza

Israel expanded its aerial bombardment in Lebanon, hitting areas in and outside traditional Hezbollah bastions, as the Iran-backed group reported "point-blank range" fighting Sunday and Israel said it captured a Hezbollah militant.

In areas where Hezbollah holds sway, Israeli warplanes hit a 100-year-old mosque in a village near the border on Sunday, Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said.

On Saturday a marketplace in the southern city of Nabatiyeh was targeted.

There were also deadly strikes on a Shiite Muslim village in a mostly Christian mountain area and another in north Lebanon, the health ministry said.

AFP footage from the northern Deir Billa area showed rescuers and villagers digging through debris left by a strike with their bare hands.

In Kfar Tibnit, the NNA said a strike destroyed a mosque.

"It was a significant place because families used to gather in the square right next to it on special occasions," Mayor Fuad Yassin told AFP, adding that the mosque was at least 100 years old.

The health ministry said strikes on three villages on Saturday killed 15 people.

The Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were lightly injured and ambulances destroyed in Sirbin when a house was hit by a second air strike as they searched for casualties. 

Israel has alleged that militants use civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza to conduct operations -- a claim the groups have denied.

The Israeli military said its 36th division continued "targeted and limited operational activity" against Hezbollah.

Jets hit "Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities and additional terror targets" and on the ground, soldiers "eliminated dozens of terrorists", it said. 

According to the NNA, Israeli forces have "escalated their attacks" on southern Lebanon, with "successive air strikes from midnight until morning" pounding several border villages.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said it clashed with Israeli troops who tried to "infiltrate" twice into a border village, sparking an hour-long battle.

It later said it shelled Israeli soldiers gathered in the village of Maroun al-Ras.

Hezbollah said that in Blida village, its forces engaged Israeli soldiers "with machine guns at point-blank range".

It also said a salvo of rockets was fired at a "base in southern Haifa".

Israel said it intercepted five projectiles after Hezbollah launched around 320 projectiles into Israel over the weekend of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

It also said roughly 280 "terror targets" were attacked in Lebanon and Gaza over the same period.

A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel's military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.

On Saturday Israel told residents of south Lebanon not to return home and issued new evacuation warnings for several villages.

- 'No military solution' -

With no sign of clashes easing, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned against a "catastrophic" regional conflict.

Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, told AFP he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah could soon spiral "into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone".

There is "no military solution", Tenenti said.

At least five UN peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israeli forces battle Hezbollah.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart troops would "continue to take measures to avoid harm to UNIFIL troops", his ministry said Sunday.

Hamas sparked the year-long war in Gaza by launching the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

The number includes hostages killed in captivity.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 42,227 people, a majority civilians, have been killed since Israel's military campaign began there. The UN acknowledges these figures to be reliable.

In support of its ally Hamas, Hezbollah started firing into northern Israel in October last year, triggering a near-daily exchange of fire that even before the current escalation had led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people.

In September, Israel expanded its focus to Lebanon, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to fight Hezbollah until Israelis displaced by the violence could return to their homes. 

Since Israel began a wave of air strikes on targets around Lebanon and sent troops across the border, more than 1,200 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, and a million others have been displaced.

Efforts to negotiate an end to the Lebanon and Gaza wars have so far failed.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a "full and immediate ceasefire".

In a show of support for Hezbollah -- which Tehran arms and finances -- the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Saturday visited the site of an earlier deadly Israeli strike.

A source close to Hezbollah said the strike had targeted the group's security chief Wafiq Safa, something neither Hezbollah nor Israel has confirmed.

Ghalibaf's visit, a signal of Tehran's defiance, came after Israel vowed to respond to Iran's second-ever direct attack, after an earlier missile barrage in April.

Tehran said the barrage was retaliation for the killing of top militants and an Iranian general.

- 'Combat zone' -

In Gaza, Israeli forces have focused on an area around Jabalia in the north, causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted an evacuation warning on X on Saturday for an area near Jabalia, saying it was "considered a dangerous combat zone".

"There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north -- everyone is at risk of death," Gaza resident Sami Asliya, 27, told AFP.

burs-srm/dcp

Originally published as Israel hits Lebanon from the air and fights Hezbollah on the ground