Israel and the Hezbollah militant group exchanged heavy fire on the Lebanese border on Sunday, stoking fears of a wider conflict in the region as the months-long war in Gaza continues.
Dozens of rockets hit Israel, destroying homes, cars and communities, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said in X.
In another event, this Sunday morning, Israeli soldiers closed the Al Jazeera office in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, an action condemned by several journalist organizations.
The IDF said Hezbollah launched approximately 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones at Israel. While many were intercepted by Israeli air defenses, there were a small number of cases of hits and interception debris falling into Israeli territory, he said.
The Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said in X that three people were injured by shrapnel in the bombing. Another rescue service, United Hatzalah, said it treated 20 people who were injured while heading to a shelter.
The IDF later said its fighter jets had struck dozens of Hezbollah terrorist targets, including launchers and military structures in dozens of areas in southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of rockets as part of its initial response to Friday’s airstrike on a densely populated Beirut suburb that killed 45 people, including the group’s top leaders. That attack followed the coordinated detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members throughout Lebanon.
Separately, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, said it had also launched drones into Israel on Sunday.
In a video statement on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his army had “inflicted on Hezbol a sequence of blows they did not imagine.”
Reiterating his government’s intention to return displaced residents in northern Israel, he said: “No country can tolerate shooting at its residents, shooting at its cities, and we, the state of Israel, will not tolerate it either. We will do everything necessary to restore security.
Israel and Hezbollah, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization, have exchanged fire since the war broke out in Gaza, which began with the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, in which some 1,200 people were killed and Palestinian militants took over. about 250 hostages. About 100 people remain in captivity, although a third are believed to be dead.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has since killed more than 41,000 people, according to health officials in the enclave. These figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Hezbollah said it began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and their Iran-backed ally Hamas, and since then low-level attacks have killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon and displaced tens of thousands in both. sides of the border.
Authorities in Lebanon said nine people were killed and at least 2,700, including Hezbollah fighters and medics, were injured Tuesday when pagers they use to communicate exploded across the country.
THE UN WARNING
The United Nations warned that the region was “on the brink of imminent catastrophe.” In a statement published in
Further south in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli air force killed seven people and wounded several others in an attack on a compound that housed a former school, Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Saber Basal said in a statement. a Telegram post on Sunday. He added that the complex housed “hundreds of displaced people.”
In a statement, the IDF stated that Hamas was operating from the compound and that numerous measures had been taken to mitigate the risk of harm to uninvolved civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence information.
Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers closed Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, on Sunday morning.
In an exchange broadcast live on Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language news channel, Israeli troops handed the network’s bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, an order to close the office for 45 days.
The IDF said in a statement that the order was signed after a legal opinion and an updated intelligence assessment that determined that the offices were being used to incite terror, to support terrorist activities and that the channel’s broadcasts endanger security. and public order both in the area and in the State of Israel as a whole.
Calling the accusations baseless, the network said in a statement that the raid was an affront to press freedom.
These repressive measures are clearly aimed at preventing the world from witnessing the reality of the situation in the occupied territories and the ongoing war in Gaza and its devastating impact on innocent civilians, the statement added.
The measure was condemned by the Foreign Press Association, which said in a statement that it was deeply concerned by this escalation of threats to press freedom. Urging the Israeli government to reconsider the measures, he added that the restriction on foreign correspondents and the closure of media outlets signal a departure from democratic values.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement that the raid was deeply troubling. He added that journalists must be protected and allowed to work freely.
Israel banned Al Jazeera from broadcasting within Israeli territory, but continued broadcasting from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Last week, the Israeli government announced that it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country, four months after banning the channel from operating within Israel.
