Fighting raged on two fronts on Sunday, as Israel targeted Hezbollah’s “command center” in the Lebanese capital, while rescue workers in Gaza reported that 73 people were killed in a single airstrike. The attack on Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Iran-backed group of attempting to assassinate him by targeting his residence.
It also came as Israelis celebrated the week-long major Jewish holiday Sukkot, which was attacked by Hamas on October 7 last year, sparking the Gaza war.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said the Israeli attacks on Beirut targeted a residential building in Haret Hreik, near a mosque and hospital.
The Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah’s “command center of the intelligence headquarters” and an underground weapons facility in Beirut, and that it also killed three Hezbollah militants in other attacks.
It later said about 70 projectiles fired from Lebanon entered Israel in a matter of minutes, and that it intercepted some of them.
Meanwhile Gaza’s civil defense agency said at least 73 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a residential area in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the territory.
“Our civil defense teams rescued 73 martyrs and a large number of wounded as a result of airstrikes targeting a residential area in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza,” said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the civil defense agency.
The Israeli military said it attacked “Hamas terrorist targets.” It also said the death toll given by Gaza officials “did not match” the information it had.
The army continued its attacks in both Gaza and Lebanon, where it said its forces had “struck about 175 terrorist targets”.
The army said it continued operations in northern, central and southern parts of Gaza.
“Troops killed dozens of terrorists on the ground and in air strikes in Gaza”, it said.
‘Serious mistake’
In southern Lebanon, NNA later said Israeli strikes had hit dozens of locations, including the town of Nabatiyeh for the third time this week.
The army said it had “struck out and killed more than 65 Hezbollah terrorists… and struck dozens of Hezbollah terrorist targets” in southern Lebanon.
On Saturday, Netanyahu’s office said a drone had been launched towards his residence in the central city of Caesarea, but he and his wife were outside and there were no casualties.
“The attempt to assassinate me and my wife today by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah was a grave mistake,” the prime minister said. “Anyone who tries to harm Israeli citizens will pay a heavy price,” he said in comments directed at Tehran and “its proxies,” including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a group with which Israel has been at war since late September. Since then, the war in Lebanon has killed at least 1,454 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures. The Lebanese group, armed and financed by Iran, did not acknowledge the attack, but Iran’s mission to the United Nations said late on Saturday that “this action was carried out by Hezbollah”. Hezbollah said on Saturday it launched rocket barrages into Israel’s north, where rescue workers said one man was killed by shrapnel. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran-backed allied groups in the region have vowed to continue fighting after Israeli troops killed the Palestinian movement’s leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza on Wednesday. It comes more than a year after Hamas launched a war that Israel called for an October 7, 2023, strike.
“Hamas is a reality in Palestine that nobody can ignore, nobody can destroy,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s October 1 attack, in which Tehran said it fired 200 missiles at its arch-enemy in response to the killing of Iranian general and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
‘Every day a massacre’
The war was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas offensive last year that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and recapture hostages has killed 42,519 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.
Vowing to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping in northern Gaza, Israel launched a major air and ground offensive on October 6, tightening its siege on the war-torn region and forcing thousands of people to flee.
Civil defence spokesman Bassal said “we have recovered more than 400 martyrs from various targeted areas in the northern Gaza Strip”, including Jabalia and its refugee camp, since the Israeli operation began.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was investigating the civil defence agency’s reports from Gaza, including that 33 people were killed in airstrikes on Jabalia overnight.
“More than a year has passed, and every day we are bleeding,” displaced Gaza resident Nasser Shakura said outside a hospital in Deir el-Balah where victims of Israeli airstrikes were taken.
“Every day, every hour, there is massacre,” he said. “This is what our lives have become.”
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