Team News Riveting
Beirut, September 24
Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah escalated significantly that turned into an open-ended war after the military launched its most intensive air assault yet on Lebanon on Monday.
The strikes killed hundreds in the country, while the Iran-backed group fired rockets as far as the occupied West Bank. Hezbollah extended its fire into areas it rarely strikes, such as Haifa, Tel Aviv and the West Bank, where hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in illegal settlements. Of the 165 rockets fired by Hezbollah on Monday, 10 reached the West Bank, Israel’s military said. Some struck “open areas”, as sirens sounded in parts of the West Bank.
Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon killed at least 356 people and injured more than 1,200 others on Monday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said This is the deadliest day of Israeli attacks there since at least 2006, when Israel last fought a war with the Iranian-backed militant group.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said that since Monday morning, Israeli fighter jets had struck over 1,300 targets. He said the targets were affiliated with Hezbollah, particularly in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Main roads to Beirut, the capital, were clogged with people fleeing to what they hoped would be the safety of the capital, witnesses said.
Dozens of Israeli fighter jets have struck roughly 800 Hezbollah military sites in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley since this morning, the Israeli military said in a statement. Israeli forces struck “buildings in which Hezbollah hid rockets, missiles, launchers, drones and additional military infrastructure,” the military said.
As Israeli warplanes raced through Lebanon’s skies, Hezbollah launched its own barrage at Israel. Air-raid sirens rang out repeatedly as roughly 165 rockets and other munitions crossed into Israeli territory, according to the Israeli military. Most of the attacks were intercepted by Israel’s antimissile defense system, and there were no reports of deaths or serious casualties.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets and drones at Israel since last October in support of its ally, Hamas, prompting Israeli counterattacks. But Israel has ratcheted up its assaults on Hezbollah dramatically over the past week, raising fears that the current fighting could escalate into a full-scale war involving ground troops.
On Monday evening, Israel conducted an airstrike in Beirut in an attempt to assassinate Ali Karaki, one of the members of Hezbollah’s top leadership, New York Times reported. Over the past several months, Israel has assassinated many senior commanders in Hezbollah. On Friday, Israel’s air force killed Ibrahim Aqeel, another veteran leader, alongside several other senior commanders of the group’s elite commandoes, in a bombing on a residential building in Beirut that killed and wounded dozens.
