Israeli planes attacked south of Beirut and cut off the key crossing to Syria – National
Israel carried out another series of airstrikes on Friday, hitting Beirut and cutting off the main border between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing Israel’s bombing of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
An overnight explosion in the southern suburbs of Beirut sent plumes of smoke and flames into the night sky and shook buildings miles (km) away from the Lebanese capital. More strikes have sent people seeking shelter into rubble-strewn streets in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, where at least one building was damaged and cars burned.
Israeli soldiers said they headed for Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters at midnight. It did not say who it was targeting or if any soldiers were killed in that strike, but it said it had killed 100 Hezbollah fighters in the past 24 hours.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 10 airstrikes in a row in the area. About 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and another 1.2 million displaced since Israel stepped up its strikes in late September aimed at crippling Hezbollah and removing it from the countries’ shared border.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, the Israeli military said.
The Israeli military also said a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah’s communications department. The military said in a statement that Skafi was “a senior Hezbollah terrorist who had been in charge of the communications unit since 2000” and was “very close” to Hezbollah officials.
Thursday’s strike along the Lebanon-Syria border, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Beirut, led to the closure of the road near the Masnaa Border Crossing – the first time it has been closed since Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire approx. last year.
Get daily world news
Get the day’s top news, politics, economics, and current affairs, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Israel said it went straight to the border crossing because it is used by Hezbollah to transport military weapons across the border. It said warplanes hit a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into Lebanon.
Hezbollah is believed to have received most of its weapons in Syria from Iran, its main backer.
Associated Press video footage showed two large craters on each side of the road. People got out of their cars and couldn’t pass by carrying their bags and crossing on foot. More than 250,000 Syrians and 82,000 Lebanese have fled across the border into Syria during the surge in the past two weeks. There are half a dozen crossings between the two countries, and many remain open.
Israel launched its offensive in Lebanon on Tuesday, and its forces have been fighting Hezbollah fighters on a thin line. Israel has vowed to end Hezbollah’s fire in northern Israel, after nearly a year of talks between the two sides that have driven tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border. Israeli strikes over the past two weeks have killed key members of Hezbollah, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.
On Thursday, Israel warned people to evacuate communities in southern Lebanon, including areas beyond the border declared by the United Nations after Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters on Friday that the operation on the ground is small, aimed at eliminating Hezbollah terrorists and making the border safe so that residents of northern Israel can return to their homes.
“First of all, our goal is to make sure they are not there (Hezbollah),” said Shoshani. “After that we will talk about how we make sure they don’t come back.”
Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with the area, which was riddled with weapons and explosives, the army said.
Two more soldiers were killed and two were seriously injured in a drone strike in northern Israel, military officials said.
An umbrella group of Iran-backed militias in Iraq that calls itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it carried out three drone strikes on Friday in northern Israel. In recent months, the group has been claiming drone strikes have been launched in Israel, but the strikes rarely come.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was in Beirut on Friday to meet with Lebanese officials, warned that if Israel attacks Iran, Tehran will retaliate with greater force than this week when it fired at least 180 missiles at Israel in retaliation. Israel attacks Hezbollah.
The missile attack amid a series of escalating attacks threatens to bring the Middle East closer to a region-wide war.
“If the Israeli organization takes any action against us, our revenge will be stronger than before,” Araghchi said after meeting the Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri.
In Iran’s capital, Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers and delivered a speech in which he praised Israel’s missile strikes and said Iran was prepared to carry out more strikes if necessary.
He spoke to thousands of people at Tehran’s mosque, the Mosalla mosque, which was decorated with a large Palestinian flag.
Hezbollah opened fire on Israel a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which the military killed 1,200 people and captured another 250. Since then, Israel’s retaliatory operation in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health officials.
Meanwhile, Israel carried out its worst strike in the besieged West Bank since the Gaza war began, hitting a cafe in the Tulkarem refugee camp. At least 18 Palestinians were killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. Relatives said a family of four, including two children, was among the dead. The Israeli military said a number of Hamas terrorists, including the group’s leader, were killed in the camp.
The Israeli military said on Friday that terrorists in Gaza fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time that Israel has seen rockets fired from the area in over a month.
The military said one of the rockets was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system and the other landed in an open area near a kibbutz across the Gaza border.
