Jerusalem:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to attack Hezbollah without mercy, a day after the Iran-backed group’s deadliest attack on Israel since the war began in late September.
Hezbollah’s drone strike on an Israeli base on Sunday killed four soldiers and injured another 60 people, Israel’s volunteer rescue service United Hatzalah said.
“We will continue to mercilessly attack Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut,” Netanyahu said as he visited the base near Binyamina, south of Haifa.
Hezbollah said it launched the “squad of attack drones” in response to Israeli strikes, including one last week that Lebanon’s Health Ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.
Since Israel escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon on September 23, the war has killed at least 1,315 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese Health Ministry figures, although the real toll is likely to be higher.
Before Netanyahu’s comments, a series of new airstrikes had already taken place against targets around Lebanon, including one in a northern Christian-majority village, killing at least 21 people, according to the Health Ministry.
Yousef, the manager of a restaurant near the Binyamina base, told AFP he heard “a huge bang” before many ambulances arrived.
Hezbollah said around noon on Monday it had launched rockets at a naval base near Haifa, before another “major rocket salvo” in the northern Israeli city of Safed in the early evening.
The fighters were also “engaged in violent clashes” in the Lebanese border village of Aita al-Shaab, and fought elsewhere, the report said.
Air raid sirens sounded in the early evening across central Israel, including in the commercial center of Tel Aviv, the military said, after earlier reporting the interception of two drones approaching from Syria.
‘Never-ending’ strikes
After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli forces across the border with Lebanon, Israel late last month intensified its attacks on targets in Lebanon before sending ground troops across the border.
Israel wants to push back Hezbollah to secure its northern border and allow tens of thousands of people displaced by rocket fire last year to return safely home.
Hezbollah says its attacks are in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7 last year, sparking the ongoing Gaza war with Israel.
The International Organization for Migration said last week it had verified 690,000 displaced persons in Lebanon.
Israel’s deadly airstrike on the village of Aito in northern Lebanon on Monday marked a departure from the usual pattern as it was far from the main fighting area and in a predominantly Christian area.
Israel has focused its firepower mainly on Hezbollah strongholds in Shiite Muslim-majority areas in the south and on the outskirts of Beirut.
An AFP photographer in Aito said the rocket leveled a residential building. Body parts were scattered under the rubble.
In the southern border town of Marjayoun, civil protection chief Anis Abla told AFP his rescue teams were exhausted.
“Our rescue missions are becoming increasingly difficult as the attacks are never-ending and focused on us,” he said.
The Lebanese Health Ministry condemned Israel’s “continued attacks on medical, emergency and paramedic teams.”
Israel also continues to face criticism for the injuries and damage suffered by the UN peacekeeping force deployed in Lebanon since 1978.
Five peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the UN force on Sunday accusing Israeli forces of breaking through a gate with two tanks and entering one of their positions.
The Israeli army said a tank “backed up several meters into a UNIFIL post” while “under fire” and tried to evacuate wounded soldiers.
Anti-missile defense
Prime Minister Simon Harris of Ireland, who has troops in the UNIFIL mission, told Israeli President Isaac Herzog in a phone call on Monday that UNIFIL “has a clear mandate from the Security Council, and it must be able to carry out its tasks without hindrance. Harris’ office said.
The Hamas attack on Israel last year, which sparked the war in Gaza, resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The number also includes hostages who died in captivity.
Israel’s military retaliation campaign in Gaza has killed 42,289 people in the Hamas-held territory, the majority of them civilians, according to the Health Ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
With the war there, and in Lebanon, showing no signs of abating, fears of an even wider regional conflict have led Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas, to make diplomatic efforts with allies and other powers.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met a senior official from Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi movement in Oman, the latest stop in a regional diplomatic tour.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned on Monday of “a regional war that will be costly for everyone” during a meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
Just before Sunday’s attack on the Israeli army base, the Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system known as THAAD on Israel to further strengthen its ally’s defenses against a possible Iranian attack.
Israel is still weighing its response to an Oct. 1 missile attack by Iran, the last of two it carried out against Israel this year.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)