IDF kills Hezbollah southern district commander; rocket fire from Lebanon wounds 4
The IDF said that it killed a Hezbollah district commander in southern Lebanon on Wednesday as rocket fire from the terror group persisted, injuring four people in northern Israel.
Four people were lightly wounded by shrapnel following the latest rocket barrage from Lebanon toward the Galilee, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.
A home in the Arab town of Majdal al-Krum near Karmiel suffered a direct hit from a rocket, Ynet reported.
The IDF said that around 30 rockets were fired in the barrage from Lebanon and that while most of them were intercepted, some impacted sites in the Galilee.
Three men and a woman in her 50s were treated for their wounds at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, according to MDA.
Later Wednesday, the IDF said it killed Hezbollah’s Kafr Qana district commander Jalal Mustafa Hariri in an airstrike in southern Lebanon.
Hariri was responsible for planning and carrying out terror activities against Israel and was killed alongside commanders responsible for artillery fire and anti-tank fire in the area, according to the army.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said its terror operatives in southern Lebanon were locked in clashes with Israeli troops “at point-blank range,” in the vicinity of the Al-Qawzah village, as the IDF continued its raids targeting Hezbollah posts in south Lebanon.
Troops killed dozens of Hezbollah terror operatives in the area, and uncovered two warehouses in civilian areas filled with weapons including shells, mortars, cornet missiles and anti-tank guided missiles, according to the military.
Furthermore, troops uncovered four entrances into tunnels hiding weapons and used them as shelters for terrorists, the IDF said Wednesday.
During the operations, terrorists launched an anti-tank missile at troops and then fled, the military said. The air force then launched a strike targeting the terrorists.
Earlier Wednesday, the IDF said its forces destroyed the elite Radwan Force’s headquarters in southern Lebanon.
The IDF says its operations have targeted Hezbollah posts but their proximity to UN peacekeepers and members of the Lebanese army has led to several accidental strikes on the latter two groups.
In the latest incident, UNIFIL reported that peacekeepers at a position near southern Lebanon’s Kfar Kela observed an Israeli Merkava tank firing at their watchtower on Wednesday morning.
Two cameras were destroyed, and the tower was damaged, UNIFIL said in its statement.
“Yet again we see direct and apparently deliberate fire on a UNIFIL position,” it added.
The IDF later released a statement saying “UNIFIL infrastructure sites and forces are not a target.”
Sixteen EU defense ministers issued a joint statement Wednesday expressing “the shared will to exert maximum political and diplomatic pressure on Israel” to prevent further “incidents” against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
Italy and France organized a video conference involving the 16 EU countries that participate in UNIFIL, where the ministers “strongly condemned” attacks the mission has blamed on Israel, the statement adds.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told RAI television that changing UNIFIL’s rules of engagement or increasing troop numbers could happen if Israel stopped its operations.
“The message we want to send to Israel is that if you stop your army, the UN can also change its approach in that part of Lebanon, so that we can peacefully achieve what you’re now trying to do by attacking Hezbollah’s bases militarily,” he said.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that the activities of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, near the border, are of “great importance” and that the force could play a vital role when the war with Hezbollah ends.
“Israel places great importance on the activities of UNIFIL and has no intention of harming the organization or its personnel,” Katz said in a statement posted on X, adding: “Israel views UNIFIL as playing an important role in the ‘day after’ following the war against Hezbollah.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has angered European allies in recent days by insisting that the international peacekeeping force UNIFIL leave its posts in southern Lebanon to avoid getting caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that any negotiation to end fighting in Lebanon must be conducted “under fire.”
Meeting with commanders of the reservist 146th Division near the northern border, Gallant said the recent capture of Hezbollah terror operatives in southern Lebanon proves “the IDF’s success and Hezbollah’s predicament,” according to a Defense Ministry statement.
“We are learning things through questioning that we would not have learned any other way, and they will be useful for us soon,” Gallant said, adding that the ongoing ground operation will allow evacuated residents of northern Israel to return to their homes.
The UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said Wednesday that civilian suffering was reaching an unprecedented level after the Israeli strike on Nabatieh.
The World Health Organization warned that the risk of cholera spreading in Lebanon is “very high” after a case of the acute and potentially deadly diarrhoeal infection was detected in the conflict-hit country.
The WHO highlights the risk of cholera spreading among hundreds of thousands of people displaced since Israel escalated an air campaign against Hezbollah and launched a ground offensive intended to push the group back from its northern border with Lebanon.
“If the cholera outbreak … spreads to the new displaced people, it might spread very fast,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO’s representative in Lebanon, told reporters in an online news conference.
Lebanon’s health ministry said a cholera case had been confirmed in a Lebanese national who went to hospital on Monday suffering from watery diarrhea and dehydration.
The patient, from Ammouniyeh in northern Lebanon, had no history of travel, the ministry said.
Lebanon suffered its first cholera outbreak in 30 years between 2022 and 2023, mainly in the north of the country.
Earlier Wednesday, Israel confirmed striking Beirut overnight, after several days without targeting the Lebanese capital amid Washington’s concerns over the scope of the bombing campaign in recent weeks.
AFP witnesses said Israeli jets carried out at least two strikes in south Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburb, the terror group’s stronghold, some five hours after Hezbollah fired a rocket barrage at Safed in northern Israel.
In a statement, the IDF said Israeli Air Force fighter jets, guided by intelligence operatives, struck an underground weapons cache belonging to Hezbollah.
The military said it took steps to avoid civilian casualties ahead of the strike, including issuing an evacuation order for the area.
The IDF said its planes also struck dozens of Hezbollah targets, including weapons stashes and command centers, around southern Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh, where Hezbollah and its ally Amal hold sway.
The strike killed 16 people and wounded 52, the Lebanese health ministry said, without differentiating between civilians and combatants.
Lebanese security sources say that the mayor of Nabatiyeh was among those killed in the strike.
The escalation came weeks after Israel added to its official war aims the return home of some 60,000 displaced northern residents. Fearing a Hezbollah onslaught in the north, Israel evacuated the residents shortly after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
A day later, Hezbollah-led forces began attacking border communities and military positions on a near-daily basis, with the terror group saying it was doing so in support of Gaza.
The attacks on northern Israel over the past year have claimed the lives of 28 civilians, and 38 IDF soldiers have been killed in the attacks and ensuing ground operations in Lebanon.
The Lebanese government has said that Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,300 people in Lebanon over the last year, mainly in the last few weeks. According to the IDF, the toll includes at least 960 Hezbollah operatives.
Source » msn.com
