Protesters gesture, as Hezbollah supporters rally in solidarity with Iran, after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 1, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A woman looks at a damaged building through a broken window in her apartment after a rocket fired from Lebanon strikes in the northern Arab city on November 19, 2024 in Shfaram, Israel.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

The Israeli military said on Tuesday (November 19, 2024) that some 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central and northern Israel, with first responders reporting that four people were lightly injured by shrapnel.

“Following sirens that sounded between 09:50 and 09:51 in the Upper Galilee, Western Galilee, and Central Galilee areas, approximately 25 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified in the area,” the military said in a statement.

Also read | Lebanon, Hezbollah agree to U.S. proposal for ceasefire with Israel: Lebanese official

That announcement followed earlier reports that some 15 projectiles fired that set of air raid sirens.

A spokesperson for Israeli first responders said that in central Israel it found “four individuals with light injuries from glass shards…. They were injured while in a concrete building where the windows shattered.”

The Israeli police said they were searching the impact sites from projectiles intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems but did not report any serious damage.

On Monday, one person was killed and several people were injured in two separate incidents, one in the northern Israeli town of Shfaram and the other in the suburbs of Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.

The military said Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Iran, fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon towards Israel on Monday, while Israel’s air force carried out strikes on Beirut.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Since September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing campaigns in Lebanon primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.

Beirut:

Lebanon’s army on Sunday warned Lebanese against actions that would disturb public order in the crisis-hit country after Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the powerful Iran-backed group Hezbollah.

The army in a statement said it “calls on citizens to preserve national unity and not to be drawn into actions that may affect civil peace at this dangerous and delicate stage”, following the massive Friday strike that killed Nasrallah and as Israeli attacks continue.

“The Israeli enemy is working to implement its destructive plans and sow division among Lebanese,” the army statement added.

Tiny Lebanon has long been divided along sectarian lines and witnessed a devastating 1975-1990 civil war.

Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim movement that wields great power in Lebanon and whose military might is widely believed to dwarf Lebanon’s armed forces, has drawn criticism from some Lebanese politicians over its decision to open a “support front” against Israel over the Gaza war nearly a year ago.

A Lebanese army official told AFP troops had been deployed since Saturday in Beirut, where thousands have sought refuge from intense Israeli raids on Lebanon’s south and east and on Hezbollah’s south Beirut bastion.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged Lebanese “to come together” to preserve civil order.

“Our national responsibility at this historic and exceptional moment requires setting aside political differences,” he said on Saturday, after cutting short a New York trip.

‘Radio silent’

United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert also called for unity in a statement on X on Sunday.

“At this critical moment for Lebanon when uncertainty is rife, now is the time for the country to focus on the common interest that unites its people,” she said.

Even the parties traditionally opposed to the powerful Iran-backed group have refrained from making fiery statements following Nasrallah’s killing.

The Lebanese Forces, a Christian party widely viewed as one of Hezbollah’s fiercest critics, even ordered supporters to go “radio silent” on social media in a message circulated on their groups, a source close to the party told AFP.

On Saturday, former prime minister Saad Hariri called on Lebanese to “rise above differences”, adding that Nasrallah’s killing “has plunged Lebanon and the region into a new phase of violence”.

An international court had found that Hezbollah operatives were behind the 2005 killing of his father Rafic Hariri, also a former Lebanese premier.

Hezbollah began exchanging cross-border fire with Israel in support of ally Hamas a day after the Palestinian group’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which triggered war in Gaza.

Israel has over the past days shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, where heavy bombing since Monday has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.

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

Beirut:

Intense Israeli attacks may have forced up to a million people to flee parts of Lebanon in possibly the worst displacement crisis in the tiny country’s history, Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Sunday.

Mikati told reports that “the estimated number is very high and may reach one million” — which would amount to roughly a sixth of Lebanon’s population.

“It is the largest displacement movement that may have happened… in Lebanon,” he said.

On Friday, Israel killed Hezbollah’s powerful leader Hassan Nasrallah in a move many fear risks destabilising Lebanon and the wider region.

Since Monday, intense Israeli attacks across Lebanon’s east, south and on southern Beirut have killed hundreds of people and forced many to flee their homes.

Earlier this week, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said “well over 200,000 people are displaced inside Lebanon” and more than 50,000 had fled to neighbouring Syria.

The intensive strikes come as Israel shifted the focus of its operation from Gaza to Lebanon, after nearly a year of cross-border fire with Hezbollah over the Gaza war, with the group saying it is acting in support of ally Hamas.

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

A drone view of the remains of a ballistic missile, as it lies in the desert following a massive missile and drone attack by Iran on Israel
| Photo Credit: YAIR PALTI

West Asia supplies the most extractive resources for the world’s energy consumption, which makes peace an imperative in the region. Yet tensions are escalating in the region on account of the Israel-Gaza conflict, the hostilities between Iran and Israel, and the attacks and counter-attacks between Israel and Iran-backed militias from Lebanon and Yemen.

Apart from this, the region has also become one of the most heavily militarised in the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers 2023’, four of the top 10 largest importers of arms last year were from West Asia, with the U.S. being the main supplier (Table 1).

All this has resulted in West Asia becoming a powder keg.

Table 1 | The table lists the top suppliers of arms to West Asian countries. Figures in %.

Table appears incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

Crises in the region

Israel’s shadow war with Tehran underwent a dramatic escalation recently. Iran launched its first-ever full-scale military attack against Israel on April 14 in retaliation to the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s attack on April 1 on an Iranian compound in Syria in which General Mohammed Reza Zehadi, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed.

Also read: A new low: On Israel’s Gaza war and the U.S. response

Israel has been continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip in response to the October 7 Hamas attack which led to the death of 1,139 people. Nearly 34,000 Palestinians have been killed so far. The conflict persists despite the international community urging for an immediate ceasefire. The 10-month-long Gaza war and the amping up of Iran-Israel hostilities has caused concern among international actors amid existing tensions such as the unresolved Yemeni civil war, the Lebanese political crisis, the 14-year-long Syrian civil war, and the Turkey-Cyprus conflict, among others.

Chart 2 | The chart shows region-wise military expenditure as a share of their GDP.

Amid these crises, West Asia today accounts for almost 30% of the global arms imports and spends the most on the military among all other regions in the world. In the case of military expenditure as a share of the GDP, West Asia and North Africa have been consistently leading for over three decades now, though the share has come down from the peak of over 10% of GDP, reported in the 1990s. West Asia spent 4.6% of its GDP in 2020 on the military, compared with 3.3% in North America.

Share of GDP

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the oil and natural gas rich nation-states, have consistently spent over 5% of their GDP on defence in recent years, the highest among countries in this region. Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Israel have also spent close to 5% of their GDP on their militaries in the last decade.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the military expenditure as a share of GDP for individual countries in the West Asian region.

Though Saudi Arabia and Oman’s shares are on a decreasing trend, they continue to lead others in the world in this measure.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the share of labour force employed in the armed forces.

This is also the region where the share of the labour force employed in the armed forces is the highest. Chart 4 shows that 2.5% of the labour force is engaged in the military in the West Asian and North African region, compared with only 1.2% in Europe and Central Asia.

The consistent demand for arms can be attributed to the growing instability in the region fuelled by domestic insurgencies, transnational terrorist attacks, unstable regional boundaries, and, in some cases, foreign policies and the need to project “hard power”.

The hangover of the ‘Arab Spring’ that led to a lot of churning and resulted in the aforementioned issues has also contributed to the increased militarisation.

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Tyre, Lebanon:

Shocked by images of dead children in Gaza, Mustafa al-Sayyid quickly whisked his family to the closest shelter when Israeli strikes began near his village in southern Lebanon this week.

“What we are seeing on television — the massacres happening in Gaza, the children — it cuts your heart to pieces,” said the 53-year-old from Beit Lif, barely six kilometres (3.7 miles) from the Israeli border.

“If I wasn’t afraid this would happen to us, I wouldn’t have left my home,” said Sayyid, who has two wives and 11 children, around half of whom are under 10.

The family is among nearly 4,000 people who have fled flashpoint areas near the Israeli frontier and flocked to the southern city of Tyre, according to local officials.

Around half are staying in three public schools that have been converted into makeshift shelters, while the rest hunker down with relatives or friends.

The scale of displacement has gradually swelled since the Palestinian group Hamas launched a massive October 7 assault on southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 200 in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.

Since then, some 4,385 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed in relentless Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The tensions have spread to the Lebanese-Israeli border, where near-daily tit-for-tat attacks have emptied out entire villages.

At least 22 people, including four civilians, have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. And at least three soldiers and one civilian have died in Israel.

Sayyid, whose brother was killed in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, said he wants to avoid any more family deaths.

“All my children are young. If the apocalypse comes, how will I get them all out in one go?” he wondered inside a classroom stripped of desks and dotted with thin mattresses.

“So I thought, better to leave now.”

– ‘Shelters at full capacity’ –

Fears of a spillover loom large in Lebanon’s border villages, which were occupied by Israeli forces for 22 years before their withdrawal in 2000.

A steady stream of families, mostly from the pummelled village of Aita al-Shaab, queued at the Tyre municipality this week to secure a spot in one of the classrooms.

“We have reached full capacity in all of our shelters,” said Tyre mayor Hassan Dbouk. “Now we are looking for a place to open a fourth centre.”

In the border village of Dhayra, farms and olive groves have been abandoned at the height of the harvest season.

Farmers already crushed by a four-year-long economic crisis in Lebanon are bracing for an uncertain fate — even if the fighting abruptly stops.

“Everyone in Dhayra relies on farming. We have nothing but God and agriculture,” said Mussa Suwaid, 47, speaking outside the Tyre shelter where he has been staying for a week.

“I have five sheep, each worth around $500. I left them without food and ran away,” he added.

He also was forced to leave behind his 88-year-old father and his cow.

“He told me he would rather die than abandon the cow and his home,” Suwaid said.

– ‘Sadness underneath’ –

Ravaged by an economic crisis that has been widely blamed on official corruption and ineptitude, Lebanon has not implemented an evacuation plan.

Instead, the villagers have left under their own steam, strapping bags to motorcycles or hitching rides with neighbours.

Yulla Suwaid, unrelated to Mussa, said she waited for two hours in a pool of her own blood before her brother came to save her during an Israeli bombardment that destroyed their Dhayra home last Wednesday.

The 43-year-old school teacher was running down the stairs when the strike sent part of the wall crashing down on her legs, leaving her badly wounded.

“If I had completely lost my legs, what would I have done? Who would have taken care of me?” she asked at a shelter in Tyre, both legs fully bandaged after surgery.

In a nearby school, Ahmad from Beit Lif said he had planned to get married this month.

Instead, the 26-year-old buried his father, who died of cancer, as the Israelis shelled nearby. He then fled to Tyre with his fiancee’s family.

Declining to provide his surname due to security concerns, Ahmad fought back tears as he recalled one of his father’s last actions.

“I made him go to my fiancee’s family to ask for her hand in marriage,” he told AFP.

“I smile, but there is a lot of sadness underneath.”

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