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.

Thousands of people are trapped in Gaza’s Jabalia camp as Israeli forces attack the area, Médecins Sans Frontières(Doctors Without Borders) said on Friday, a week after Israel launched an offensive there which it says is aimed at stopping Hamas regrouping.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed and dozens more were wounded late on Friday by Israeli strikes in Jabalia, which also damaged four nearby homes, medics told Reuters. The death toll is likely to rise, they added.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 61 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Friday, the medics added. Nearly half of the fatalities, including the 20 killed at the home, occurred in Jabalia, the northern district which is the largest of Gaza’s historic refugee camps.

The Israeli military says it has killed dozens of militants in Jabalia, though it remains unclear how many of the dead were civilians rather than fighters.

“Nobody is allowed to get in or out; anyone who tries is getting shot,” MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke said on X.

Five MSF staff were trapped in Jabalia, she said.

“I don’t know what to do; at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave,” she quoted Haydar, an MSF driver, as saying.

At least 15 of the fatalities in Jabalia since dawn were due to Israeli strikes targeting various areas, including a school sheltering displaced individuals, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said, citing medical sources.

Gaza’s Civil Defence said dozens were wounded by Israeli quadcopter drone fire at the same school.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has previously said Gaza’s militants use such shelters for cover. Hamas has denied this.

The Israeli military has sent troops into the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya as well as Jabalia. Hamas has said it will keep fighting Israeli forces.

Palestinian health officials have reported at least 130 deaths in the operation so far, while the military has told residents to evacuate areas where the UN estimates over 400,000 people are trapped.

United Nations officials expressed concern that the ongoing Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza could disrupt the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to begin next week.

Healthcare officials have reported that dozens of facilities in Gaza are under evacuation orders from the Israeli military, complicating humanitarian efforts amid the conflict.

Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

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

Jerusalem:

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had killed a senior Hezbollah official in an air strike on a Beirut suburb the day before, as it continued to target the Lebanese armed group.

The military said Nabil Qaouq, a member of Hezbollah’s central council, was “struck and eliminated” on Saturday, just a day after the group’s chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a similar strike.

A source close to Hezbollah confirmed to AFP that Qaouq was killed in a strike on Saturday and identified him as a member of Hezbollah’s central council in charge of security in the group.

“Qaouq was considered to be close to Hezbollah’s senior commanders, and directly engaged in terrorist attacks against the state of Israel and its citizens, even in recent days,” the military said in a statement.

He joined Hezbollah in the 1980s and was “regarded as an important source of expertise in his field”, the military added.

In recent weeks, Israel has launched widespread strikes targeting senior Hezbollah commanders and the group’s weapons sites in southern and eastern Lebanon and in its south Beirut bastion.

On Friday, it killed the group’s chief Nasrallah in a strike that sent shock waves across the Middle East.

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West Bank:

The Israeli military said on Thursday its troops killed five Palestinian fighters who were hiding inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.

The operation, which a Reuters witness said has yet to conclude, began in the early hours of Wednesday with hundreds of Israeli troops backed by helicopters, drones and armoured personnel carriers raiding the flashpoint cities of Tulkarm, Jenin and areas in the Jordan Valley.

There was also a complete network outage at Jawwal, one of the two main telecommunications companies in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, according to the Reuters witness.

Palestinian health authorities said at least 12 Palestinians were killed in Wednesday’s operations.

In Jenin earlier, bulldozers edged along empty, rubbish-strewn streets as the sound of drones pierced the sky.

Israeli troops searched ambulances on deserted city streets and in front of Jenin’s main hospital, having blocked off access to it on Wednesday to prevent fighters from seeking refuge there.

Israel said one of the five fighters killed in the Tulkarm mosque was Muhhamad Jabber, known as “Abu Shujaa”, the head of a network of fighters in the Nur Shams refugee camp next to the city.

The Tulkarm division of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said: “As part of the response to the assassination of our leader, our fighters were able to ambush an infantry force in the Manshiyya axis behind Abu Ubaida Mosque”.

The group claimed “direct hits” on Israeli troops after it detonated an explosive device near them.

The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions said in separate statements on Wednesday their gunmen were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in Jenin, Tulkarm and Far’a, a town in the Jordan Valley.

Clashes in the West Bank have escalated since Israel’s war with Hamas began in Gaza nearly 11 months ago.

Escalating Clashes

Israel says Iran provides weapons and support to factions there and has stepped up West Bank operations, while Jewish settlers have launched frequent vigilante-style attacks on Palestinian communities.

Referring to the latest West Bank assault, Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz said in a post on X overnight: “This is a war in every sense, and we must win it.”

He accused Iran of working to destabilize Jordan and establish an eastern front against Israel, like it has done in Gaza and in Lebanon, where Israel has been trading almost daily fire with operatives from the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah.

To address the threat of an eastern front, Katz said Israel would have to use “all necessary means, including, in cases of intense combat, allowing the population to temporarily evacuate from one neighbourhood to another to prevent civilian harm”.

In nearby Gaza, evacuation orders have displaced nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people multiple times, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease.

The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian violence began on Oct. 7 after Hamas stormed from Gaza into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s Gaza campaign has since demolished swathes of the enclave, and killed more than 40,500 people, Palestinian health officials say.

Internationally mediated talks to end the conflict continue.

Since the Gaza war began, thousands of Palestinians have been arrested in West Bank and East Jerusalem raids and more than 660 – fighters and civilians – have been killed, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.

At least 30 Israelis have been killed in attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank during the period, according to Israeli tallies.

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

Jerusalem:

Israel’s military said a barrage of rockets fired earlier Sunday from the besieged Gaza Strip towards the Kerem Shalom border crossing had killed three soldiers and wounded a dozen others.

Three of the 12 wounded were in serious condition, the military told AFP.

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas earlier claimed the rocket attack, which led Israeli authorities to close the crossing, used to deliver aid into Gaza.

The military said 14 rockets were fired at the crossing from an area adjacent to the Rafah crossing.

In response, the air force carried out a rapid response and destroyed the launchers from which the projectiles were fired, military spokesman Peter Lerner told journalists in an online briefing.

“It’s a very serious event from our perspective, it’s unacceptable, and the IDF (army) is investigating why the soldiers were killed as the siren was sounding,” he said.

The army was “not aware of any interception that took place” during the incoming fire, he said.

“The airforce will look into exactly what happened,” Lerner added.

The soldiers were hit while guarding heavy machinery, tanks and bulldozers that are stationed in the area.

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

Israeli soldier walks by a pickup truck used by Palestinian militants in Sderot, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. File photo
| Photo Credit: AP

The Israeli military said Monday, April 22, 2024, the head of its intelligence corps has resigned over the failures surrounding Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 attack., which broke through Israel’s vaunted defenses.

Aharon Haliwa, the head of Israel’s military intelligence, becomes the first senior Israeli figure to step down Hamas’ attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, with roughly 250 more taken captive, and sparked the six-monthlong war against Hama sin Gaza.

Mr. Haliva said shortly after the attack in October that he shouldered the blame for not preventing the assault.

The Israeli military said in a statement that the military chief of staff accepted Haliva’s request to resign and thanked him for his service.

His resignation could set the stage for more of Israel’s top security brass to accept blame for not preventing the attack and step down.

With ally Hamas under attack in Gaza, the head of Iran’s Quds Force visited Beirut in February to discuss the risk posed if Israel next aims at Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an offensive that could severely hurt Tehran’s main regional partner, seven sources said.

In Beirut, Quds chief Esmail Qaani met Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the sources said, for at least the third time since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel and Israel’s devastating retaliatory assault on Gaza.

The conversation turned to the possibility of a full Israeli offensive to its north, in Lebanon, the sources said. As well as damaging the Shia Islamist group, such an escalation could pressure Iran to react more forcefully than it has so far since October 7, three of the sources, Iranians within the inner circle of power, said.

Over the past five months, Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, has shown support for Hamas in the form of limited volleys of rockets fired across Israel’s northern border.

At the previously unreported meeting, Mr. Nasrallah reassured Mr. Qaani he did not want Iran to get sucked into a war with Israel or the United States and that Hezbollah would fight on its own, all the sources said.

“This is our fight,” Mr. Nasrallah told Mr. Qaani, said one Iranian source with knowledge of the discussions.

Calibrated to avoid a major escalation, the skirmishes in Lebanon have nonetheless pushed tens of thousands of people from their homes on either side of the border.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 200 Hezbollah fighters and some 50 civilians in Lebanon, while attacks from Lebanon into Israel have killed a dozen Israeli soldiers and six civilians.

In recent days, Israel’s counter-strikes have increased in intensity and reach.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant indicated in February that Israel planned to increase attacks to decisively remove Hezbollah fighters from the border in the event of a Gaza ceasefire, although he left the door open for diplomacy.

Israeli security sources have said previously that Israel did not seek any spread of hostilities but added that the country was prepared to fight on new fronts if needed.

Iran and Hezbollah are mindful of the grave perils of a wider war in Lebanon, two of the sources aligned with the views of the government in Tehran said, including the danger it could spread and lead to strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations.

The U.S. lists Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and has sought for years to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel has long considered Iran an existential threat.

Two U.S. sources and an Israeli source on request of anonymity, said Iran wanted to avoid blowback from an Israel-Hezbollah war.

The Beirut meeting highlights strain on Iran’s strategy of avoiding major escalation in the region while projecting strength and support for Gaza across the West Asia through allied armed groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, analysts said.

In Israel’s sights

Between them, Mr. Qaani and Mr. Nasrallah hold sway over tens of thousands of fighters and a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles. They are the main protagonists in Tehran’s network of allies and proxy militias, with Mr. Qaani’s elite Quds Force acting as the foreign legion of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

While Hezbollah has publicly indicated it would halt attacks on Israel when the Israeli offensive in Gaza stops, U.S. Special Envoy Amos Hochstein said last week a Gaza truce would not automatically trigger calm in southern Lebanon.

Arab and Western diplomats report that Israel has expressed strong determination to no longer allow the presence of Hezbollah’s main fighters along the border, fearing an attack similar to Hamas’s incursion that killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages.

Israel’s retaliatory assault in Gaza has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and laid waste to the coastal enclave.

A senior Israeli official agreed that Iran was not seeking a full-blown war, noting Tehran’s restrained response to Israel’s offensive on Hamas.

“It seems that they feel they face a credible military threat. But that threat may need to become more credible,” the official said.

A war in Lebanon that seriously degrades Hezbollah would be a major blow for Iran, which relies on the group founded with its support in 1982 as a bulwark against Israel and to buttress its interests in the broader region, two regional sources said.

“Hezbollah is the first line of defence for Iran,” said Abdulghani Al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank in Yemen.

If Israel were to launch major military action on Hezbollah, the Iranian sources within the inner circle of power said, Tehran may find itself compelled to intensify its proxy war.

According to the Iranian insider, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not inclined to see a war unfold on Iran, where domestic discontent with the ruling system last year spilled over into mass protests.

“The Iranians are pragmatists and they are afraid of the expansion of the war,” said Iryani

.“If Israel were alone, they would fight, but they know that if the war expands, the United States will be drawn in.”

The Open Arms vessel carrying aid sails off the shore of Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from central Gaza Strip, March 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

A ship carrying 200 tons of aid approached the coast of Gaza on March 15 in a mission to inaugurate a sea route from Cyprus to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the enclave five months into the war between Israel and Hamas.

The ship, operated by the Spanish aid group Open Arms, left Cyprus on Tuesday towing a barge laden with food sent by World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. It could be seen off Gaza’s coast Friday morning.

Israel has been under increasing pressure to allow more aid into Gaza. The United States has joined other countries in airdropping supplies to the isolated region of northern Gaza and has announced separate plans to construct a pier to get aid in.

Aid groups said the airdrops and sea shipments are far less efficient ways of delivering the massive amounts of aid needed in Gaza. Instead, the groups have called on Israel to guarantee safe corridors for truck convoys after land deliveries became nearly impossible because of military restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of order after the Hamas-run police force largely vanished from the streets. The daily number of supply trucks entering Gaza since the war began has been far below the 500 that entered before October 7.

Earlier in the week, Israel allowed six aid trucks to enter directly into the north, a step aid groups have long called for.

World Central Kitchen operates 65 kitchens across Gaza from where it has served 32 million meals since the war started, the group said. The aid includes rice, flour, lentils, beans, tuna and canned meat, according to World Central Kitchen spokesperson Linda Roth.

It plans to distribute the food in the north, the largely devastated target of Israel’s initial offensive in Gaza, which has been mostly cut off by Israeli forces since October. Up to 300,000 Palestinians are believed to have remained there despite Israeli evacuation orders, with many reduced to eating animal feed in recent weeks. The aid is a tiny fraction of what is required, but the shipment was intended to pave the way for other larger shipments, officials working on the route have said.

A second vessel being loaded with even more aid will head to Gaza once the aid on the first ship is offloaded and distributed, Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said. He declined to specify when the second vessel would leave, saying it depends in part on whether the Open Arms delivery goes smoothly.

The Israel-Hamas war was triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and left another 250 taken into Gaza as hostages. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 31,000 Palestinians and driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the United Nations.

The ship could be spotted from the coast hours after the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza accused Israeli forces of launching an attack near an aid distribution point in northern Gaza, killing 20 people and wounding 155 others.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Palestinian gunmen were the ones to open fire and that none of its forces, who were securing a convoy of 31 aid trucks, fired toward the waiting crowd or the convoy. Some of those in the crowd were run over by the trucks, it said.

The health ministry said a group waiting for aid near the Kuwaiti roundabout was hit by Israeli shelling late Thursday.

Bloodshed surrounding an aid convoy on Feb. 29 killed 118 Palestinians in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said some of its forces fired at people in the crowd who were advancing toward them. Witnesses and hospital officials said many of the casualties were from bullet wounds. The Israeli military said many of the casualties were caused by a stampede over the food and people being run over by the aid trucks.

After that, plans for the sea route took shape and the United States and other countries joined Jordan in dropping aid into the north by plane.

But people in northern Gaza say the airdrops are insufficient to meeting the vast need. Many can’t access the aid because people are fighting over it, said Suwar Baroud, 24, who was displaced by the fighting and is now in Gaza City. Some people hoard it and sell it in the market, she said.

A recent airdrop that malfunctioned plummeted from the sky and killed five people.

Another drop landed in a sewage and garbage dump, said Riham Abu al-Bid, 27. Men ran in but were unable to retrieve anything, she said.

“I wish these airdrops never happened and that our dignity and freedom would be taken into consideration, so we can get our sustenance in a dignified way and not in a manner that is so humiliating,” she said.

The war has exacerbated tension throughout the region and threatened to flare into broader violence.

At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, the first Friday prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan were being held amid Israeli restrictions on worshipers.

The mosque has been a frequent flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in the past. Hamas hopes a fresh eruption now would put more pressure on Israel and improve the militant group’s leverage in cease-fire talks.

But Israel put restrictions in place limiting West Bank Palestinians’ access to the compound for Friday’s prayers to men over 55, women over 50 and children under 10.

The compound has long been a deeply contested religious space, as it stands on the Temple Mount, which Jews consider their most sacred site.

People inspect the rubble of a house where a Hezbollah member and his family were killed in Israeli bombardment.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said on March 12 it launched more than 100 rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for a strike on the country’s east that killed one person the day before.

Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted in October, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north, raising fears of a full-blown conflict.

“Hezbollah launched “more than a hundred katyusha rockets” on Tuesday morning at two military bases in the occupied Golan Heights,” the group said in a statement. This was “in response to the Israeli attacks on our people, villages and cities, most recently near the city of Baalbek and the killing of a citizen”, it added.

On Monday, Israeli air strikes near Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek killed one person, in the second raid on the Hezbollah stronghold since cross-border hostilities began. The Israeli military confirmed its jets had hit two sites belonging to “Hezbollah’s aerial forces” in retaliation for strikes on the occupied Golan Heights over several days.

On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbek, some 100 km (60 miles) from the border, killing two Hezbollah members. Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its chief Hassan Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hayya, a leading member of Hamas’s political bureau.

They discussed ceasefire talks for the Gaza war, as well as attacks by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, the Hezbollah statement said. Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday. Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will only stop its attacks on Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently said any truce in Gaza would not change Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, by force or diplomacy.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 317 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border hostilities.