A woman carries a frame that shows a portrait for Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, as she passes destroyed houses that were hit by Israeli airstrikes, in Aita al-Shaab, a Lebanese border village with Israel, south Lebanon, on June 29, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Iran on June 29 warned that “all Resistance Fronts”, a grouping of Iran and its regional allies, would confront Israel if it attacks Lebanon.

The comment from Iran’s mission to New York comes with fears of a wider regional war involving Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.

Such exchanges have escalated this month, alongside bellicose rhetoric from both sides. Israel’s military said plans for a Lebanon offensive had been “approved and validated”, prompting Hezbollah to respond that none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict.

In a post on social media platform X, the Iranian mission said it “deems as psychological warfare the Zionist regime’s propaganda about intending to attack Lebanon”.

But, it added, “should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue. All options, incl. the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts, are on the table.”

The war in Gaza began in October when Hamas Palestinian militants attacked southern Israel.

Iran, which backs Hamas, has praised the attack as a success but has denied any involvement.

Alongside Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel, Iran-backed rebels in Yemen have repeatedly struck commercial ships in the Red Sea area in what they say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Iran also backs other groups in the region.

The Islamic republic has not recognised Israel since the 1979 revolution that toppled Iran’s United States-backed shah.

Fears of regional war also soared in April, after an air strike that levelled Iran’s consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

Iran hit back with an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13-14.

Iran’s state media later reported explosions in the central province of Isfahan as U.S. media quoted American officials saying Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes on its arch-rival.

Tehran downplayed the reported Israeli raid.

The United Nations says about one million people have been displaced from Rafah since early May, when Israel began ground operations in pursuit of Hamas militants. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Israel bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday, witnesses and first responders said, with fallout from the war bringing a resurgence of tensions to the Lebanon border and Yemen.

In the ninth month of war between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces, the Civil Defence agency in Gaza City reported 10 bodies recovered from Israeli strikes on three separate homes.

In Rafah witnesses reported clashes between militants and Israeli troops in the city’s west, and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre.

Fears of a broader West Asia conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran and allied with Hamas, launching waves of rockets and drones against Israeli military targets.

Hezbollah said intense strikes since Wednesday were retaliation for Israel’s killing of one of its commanders.

Israeli forces responded with shelling, the military said, also announcing air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure across the border.

The fallout from the Gaza war also escalated this week off Yemen.

On Friday the U.S. military said it destroyed two unmanned surface vessels in the Red Sea belonging to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, as well as one drone and seven radars that allowed the rebels to target ships.

In Rafah’s west, militants and Israeli troops clashed while artillery fire struck a refugee camp

Beirut:

A local official in southern Lebanon said an Israeli strike on a village Sunday killed a couple and their child, the latest deadly incident in the border region.

Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged regular cross-border fire since the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’s unprecedented October attack on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza.

Fighting intensified in the past few weeks, with Israel striking deeper into Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah has stepped up its missile and drone attacks on military positions in northern Israel.

“The dad, the mother and their little son were martyred”, according to the Mays al-Jabal municipality chief Abdelmoneim Chukair.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the strike killed “three civilians” and wounded several others.

Hezbollah had on Saturday evening said it fired on military positions in northern Israel.

The Lebanese movement has repeatedly declared that only a ceasefire in Gaza will put an end to its attacks on Israel.

The latest violence came as a Hamas delegation met with mediators in Egypt for talks on a possible truce deal in the Gaza war.

Both the United States and France have made diplomatic efforts to calm tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

In Lebanon, at least 389 people have been killed in nearly seven months of cross-border violence, mostly operatives but also more than 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

The death count includes at least 11 Hamas fighters.

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

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Israeli forces are carrying out “offensive action” across southern Lebanon, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday without specifying whether ground troops had crossed the border.

“Many forces are deployed on the border and IDF (army) forces are carrying out offensive action currently throughout southern Lebanon,” Gallant said in a statement, also claiming that “half of Hezbollah’s commanders in southern Lebanon have been eliminated” in months of violence.

“The other half are in hiding and abandoning the field to IDF operations,” he added without giving a specific number.

In a separate statement, the army said it had struck 40 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

“A short while ago, IDF (army) fighter jets and artillery struck approximately 40 Hezbollah terror targets” around Aita al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, including storage facilities and weaponry, it said.

The army said Hezbollah “has established dozens of terror means and infrastructures in the area” to attack Israel.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel had carried out more than 13 strikes near Aita al-Shaab and surrounding villages.

“Israeli warplanes carried out … more than 13 air strikes targeting the outskirts of the towns of Aita al-Shaab, Ramya, Jabal Balat and Khallet Warda,” it said.

The strikes came after Hezbollah said it fired a fresh barrage of rockets across the border on Wednesday after a strike blamed on Israel killed two civilians.

The group had already fired rockets at northern Israel late on Tuesday “in response” to the civilian deaths.

Cross-border exchanges of fire have flared between the Israeli army and Iran-backed Hezbollah since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.

Since October 7, at least 380 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also 72 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

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

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)