Lebanon counts nearly 500 killed in a day of Israeli strikes, with over 1,600 wounded

Up to date September 23, 2024 at 17:01 PM ET

BEIRUT — Combating has escalated on the Israeli-Lebanese border, as Israeli strikes killed practically 500 folks largely in southern Lebanon on Monday, in keeping with Lebanese well being authorities.

Analysts have known as it the biggest marketing campaign of Israeli aerial strikes in opposition to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia, for the reason that 2006 Israel-Hezbollah struggle.

Lebanon’s Well being Ministry has raised the dying toll to 492, together with 35 kids, in addition to 1,645 folks injured within the Israeli assaults.

Israel and Hezbollah have been buying and selling assaults backwards and forwards throughout the Israeli-Lebanese border for the reason that struggle in Gaza started in October final 12 months. Hezbollah’s management says it’s performing out of solidarity with Palestinians and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Israel says it’s combating Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, to forestall an assault in northern Israel much like the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault in southern Israel. Israel needs to degrade Hezbollah’s rocket-launching capabilities, push Hezbollah fighters away from the border and permit Israeli households who evacuated the northern area to return dwelling, as NPR’s Daniel Estrin reported on Morning Version.

Israel says it hit Hezbollah’s rockets

The Israeli navy spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, mentioned Israeli forces struck 1,300 Hezbollah targets and destroyed cruise missiles, short-range rockets, assault drones and different weaponry.

Strikes broken a number of buildings inside populated areas in Lebanon’s south in addition to farther east within the nation’s Bekaa Valley, however not less than one landed some 80 miles north of the border close to the town of Byblos, in keeping with Lebanon’s state-run broadcaster.

Hezbollah has fired a whole lot of rockets at Israel in latest days, following the explosion of 1000’s of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members final week, which killed dozens of individuals and injured 1000’s, throughout Lebanon and in components of Syria. Israel has not publicly acknowledged a task within the blasts. However a U.S. official, who was not approved to talk publicly, advised NPR that Israel notified Washington it carried out final Tuesday’s assaults in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s management mentioned in a press release Monday it was focusing on dozens of rockets at an Israeli navy publish in northern Israel. Residents within the metropolis of Nazareth advised NPR it was a “scary evening” into early Monday morning, with “rockets and interceptions over us all evening.”

Israeli authorities acknowledged there have been repeated air raid sirens within the nation’s north, indicating incoming rocket hearth from Lebanon.

On Friday, an airstrike over the Lebanese capital metropolis, Beirut, killed not less than 50 Hezbollah fighters and civilians, together with kids. Israel’s navy mentioned that the strike had focused a senior Hezbollah commander.

Israel warned Lebanese to evacuate

Throughout villages and cities in southern Lebanon, residents have been departing for safer components of the nation farther from the border. A number of months in the past, Israeli navy officers ordered residents dwelling in communities on the Israeli facet of that border to additionally evacuate as skirmishes and tit-for-tat missile barrages intensified.

Early Friday, Hagari, the Israeli navy spokesperson, warned folks dwelling in southern and japanese Lebanon to depart their houses, because the air marketing campaign in opposition to Hezbollah’s fighters and positions elevated and widened.

Residents in southern areas acquired messages in Arabic instructing them to maneuver away from recognized weapons storage websites managed by Hezbollah, in keeping with Lebanese information studies. Lebanese Data Minister Ziad Makary criticized the messages as “a part of the psychological warfare of intimidation adopted by the Israeli enemy.”

Information photos from the realm confirmed automobiles filling the primary highway out of the southern metropolis of Sidon, northward up the shoreline towards Beirut, whilst some Israeli airstrikes continued to land dozens of miles inside Lebanese territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later known as for folks in Lebanon to heed Israel’s warning in the event that they acquired a message to evacuate their houses. “Please get out of hurt’s manner now,” Netanyahu mentioned in a video recording.

Requires diplomacy

The United Nations’ peacekeeping power in Lebanon, often known as UNIFIL, mentioned on social media it has “grave concern for the protection of civilians in southern Lebanon amidst essentially the most intense Israeli bombing marketing campaign since final October.” The group known as for a diplomatic resolution to the battle.

Egypt additionally known as for diplomacy in a press release condemning what it mentioned was a “harmful Israeli escalation in Lebanon.”

And Turkey warned that “Israel’s assaults on Lebanon mark a brand new part in its efforts to tug your entire area into chaos.”

Their remarks got here as world leaders collect in New York this week for the United Nations Basic Meeting.

President Biden mentioned he and different leaders are “working to de-escalate in a manner that permits folks to return dwelling safely.”

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder mentioned, “in mild of elevated stress within the Center East and out of an abundance of warning, we’re sending a small variety of further U.S. navy personnel” to the area, however did not present specifics.

The Pentagon mentioned it helps Israel’s proper to defend itself and that it is also selling diplomatic means to resolve regional tensions.

For extra protection and evaluation, go to npr.org/mideastupdates.

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