A man walks near a flag of Hezbollah and portraits of the group’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, on the rubble of a building destroyed during Israel’s air and ground offensive in the southern Lebanese town of Khiam on January 28, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Israeli military said on Friday (January 31, 2025) it struck several Hezbollah targets overnight in the Bekaa Valley and along the Syrian-Lebanese border.

The Army said the targets include a facility used for underground weapons development and another associated with the smuggling of arms into Lebanon.

On January 30 2025, Israel said it intercepted a surveillance drone launched by Hezbollah calling it “a breach of the ceasefire agreement” between Israel and Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Israel reached a ceasefire in late November, ending a deadly conflict that began with the Gaza war in 2023. The U.S. confirmed on Sunday that the agreement, which includes a 60-day period for Israeli troop withdrawal, will remain in effect until Feb. 18, extending the original Jan. 26 deadline.

Israel has carried out multiple strikes on Lebanese territory since the ceasefire extension killing and injuring more than 100 people.

The most recent attack is a drone strike that injured at least five people in southern Lebanese town of Majdal Selm.

Displaced children draw at a school-turned shelter in Beirut, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, on October 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Strikes hit south Beirut on Wednesday (October 16, 2024), an AFP journalist saw, less than an hour after the Israeli military ordered residents to leave part of the Lebanese capital.

Click here to read indepth onIsrael-Palestine Conflict

Black smoke billowed from between buildings in Haret Hreik after the first strike, which followed Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee telling people to leave the area.

Moments later an AFP journalist witnessed a second strike in south Beirut.

“You are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, which the IDF (Israeli military) will work against in the near future” Adraee wrote in Arabic on X before the strikes, addressing Haret Hreik residents.

The Israeli military has repeatedly bombarded south Beirut in recent weeks, as well as carrying out deadly strikes elsewhere in the capital and across Lebanon.

At least 1,356 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel escalated its bombing last month, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected on Tuesday (October 15, 2024) the idea of a ceasefire in Lebanon that would leave Hezbollah close to his country’s northern border, as the militant group threatened to widen its attacks.

Mr. Netanyahu’s comments came as the United States ramped up pressure over Israel’s conduct of the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, criticising the recent bombing of Beirut and demanding that more aid reach the Palestinian territory.

In a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr. Netanyahu said he was “opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was”, according to a statement from his office.

Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli military have insisted there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu clarified that Israel would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this (a buffer zone) and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement said.

In a defiant televised speech, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the only solution was a ceasefire while threatening to expand the scope of its missile strikes across Israel.

“Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place” in Israel, he said.

In another day of fighting, the Iran-backed group said it launched a barrage of rockets towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa and targeted Israeli bulldozers and a tank near the border.

Israel’s military bombed several areas in southern and eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, including in the Bekaa Valley where a hospital in Baalbek city was put out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported.

It also said it had captured three Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health ministry said nine people were killed Tuesday evening in strikes on the country’s south, and five others in the east, including three children.

Asked about Israeli air strikes in Lebanon in which residential buildings in central Beirut were hit on October 10, the U.S. State Department voiced open criticism.

“We have made clear that we are opposed to the campaign the way we’ve seen it conducted over the past weeks” in Beirut, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

In a letter sent to the Israeli government on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also warned that the United States could withhold weapons deliveries unless more humanitarian aid was delivered to Palestinians in Gaza.

The letter made “clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today,” Mr. Miller said.

‘Worst restrictions’

Despite the need for food, medical supplies and shelter in hunger-ravaged Gaza, a spokesman for the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF said Tuesday that aid was facing the tightest restrictions since the start of Israel’s offensive in October last year.

“We see now what is probably the worst restrictions we’ve seen on humanitarian aid, ever,” spokesman James Elder said in Geneva, adding that there were “several days in the last week (where) no commercial trucks whatsoever were allowed to come in”.

For over a week, Israeli forces have engaged in a sweeping air and ground assault targeting northern Gaza and the area around Jabalia amid claims that Hamas militants were regrouping there.

“The whole area has been reduced to ashes,” said Rana Abdel Majid, 38, from the Al-Faluja area of northern Gaza.

Mr. Majid said entire blocks had been levelled by “the indiscriminate, merciless bombing”.

At a school-turned-shelter hit by an Israeli strike in the central Nuseirat camp, Fatima al-Azab said “there is no safety anywhere” in Gaza.

“They are all children, sleeping in the covers, all burned and cut up,” she said.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza after an October 7 attack by Hamas that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.

The Israeli campaign has killed 42,344 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory which the UN considers reliable.

Lebanon strikes

Israel escalated its air campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon from September 23 and then launched a ground offensive a week later intended to push the group back from its northern border.

Hezbollah has been firing thousands of projectiles into Israel over the last year in support of Hamas, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.

At least 1,356 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel escalated its bombing last month, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

The war in Lebanon, which has suffered years of economic crisis, has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

Israel is also weighing how to respond to Iran’s decision to launch around 200 missiles at the country on October 1.

Netanyahu’s office said that Israel – and not its top ally the United States – would decide how to strike back.

“We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest,” it said on Tuesday.

The Iranian barrage was in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Lebanon’s Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and another that killed Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan on September 27.

U.S. President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier, has warned Israel against striking Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities.

According to a Washington Post report on Monday citing unnamed US officials, M.r Netanyahu reassured the White House that Israel was contemplating targeting only military sites.

Israeli soldiers and a man fold gurneys following a drone attack from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, at Sheba Medical Centre in Ramat Gan, Israel on October 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli rescue services say almost 40 people have been wounded in a drone strike in the central city of Binyamina, three of them critically. The Hezbollah militant group is being blamed.

Israeli media reported that two drones were launched from Lebanon on Sunday (October 13, 2024). The Israeli military says one drone was intercepted.

Also read | Hezbollah says it clashed twice with Israeli troops who tried to infiltrate near Lebanese border

Israel’s advanced air-defence systems mean that it is rare for so many people to be hurt by drones or missiles.

This is the second time in two days that a drone has struck in Israel. On Saturday, during the Israeli holiday of Yom Kippur, a drone struck in a suburb of Tel Aviv, causing damage but no injuries.

A member of the Lebanese intelligence service stands at the site of an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the Adloun plain area, between Lebanon’s southern cities of Sidon and Tyre, on April 23, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said it launched drone attacks on two north Israel bases on April 23 in retaliation for the killing of a fighter Israel described as “significant”.

Since Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza, there have been near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army.

But Hezbollah has stepped up its rocket attacks on Israeli positions in recent days, with the latest assault targeting beyond the border area that the group usually strikes.

Hezbollah launched “a combined air attack using decoy and explosive drones that targeted” two Israeli bases north of Acre, the group announced in a statement, while Israel said they did not hit their targets.

The Lebanese group added the attack was “in response” to an Israeli drone strike that killed one of its members in south Lebanon earlier in the day.

Israel’s army said it had “successfully intercepted two suspicious aerial targets off the northern coast”.

On Tuesday morning, a source close to Hezbollah told AFP an Israeli drone strike deep into Lebanon killed an engineer working for the group’s air defence forces as he was travelling in a vehicle.

The strike hit the Abu al-Aswad area near the coastal city of Tyre, some 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the border, an AFP journalist reported.

The fighter’s vehicle was completely burnt out.

Hezbollah said one of its fighters had been killed by Israeli fire, adding he was a resident of the area where the vehicle was struck.

The group also said another fighter had been killed by Israel in a statement overnight.

Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli army had said it killed “two significant terrorists in Hezbollah’s aerial unit” on Tuesday morning and overnight.

The fighter killed Tuesday was “heavily involved in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks against Israel,” it added.

On Sunday evening, Hezbollah shot down an Israeli drone, both sides said.

Since October 7, at least 378 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 11 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed on its side of the border.