BEIRUT: As Iran and its allies prepare to respond to well-known killings attributed to Israel, more and more people called for foreigners to left Lebanon on Sunday.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah motion, which has traded near-daily blaze with Israeli troops since the Gaza conflict broke out in October, announced its soldiers had fired a storm of missiles at Israel’s north immediately.
The Israeli army said 30 weapons were launched from Lebanon, with most of them intercepted.
According to doctors and police, two people were killed on Sunday in a piercing attack in a Tel Aviv district as Israel was on high alert and was anticipating significant military activity from Tehran-aligned armed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
The aggressor, a Arab from the occupied West Bank, was “neutralised” by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Witnesses and Hamas-ruled officials in the besieged Gaza Strip reported that Israeli forces continued to bombard the area, with no resolution in sight for the roughly 10-month conflict that was sparked by the Palestinian militant team’s attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The most recent governments to call on their members to keep Lebanon included France, Canada, and Jordan.
” In a very dangerous safety context”, French citizens were “urgently asked” to prevent travelling to Lebanon, and those already in the nation” to make their plans now to abandon… as soon as possible”, the foreign government in Paris said.
Similar instructions had been issued by the United States and Britain.
Airlines to the area have been suspended by a number of American airlines.
The Doha-Beirut course will only be operated during light hours, at least until Monday, according to Qatar Airways ‘ statement on Sunday.
The shooting Wednesday of Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after the Jewish death of Hezbollah’s military commander in Beirut, has triggered vows of retribution from Iran and the so-called” axis of weight” of Tehran-backed military groups.
Israel, accused by Hamas, Iran and others of carrying out the attack that killed Haniyeh, has not immediately commented on it.
Displacement houses
According to an AFP count based on Jewish official figures, Israel has pledged to eliminate Hamas in retaliation for its exceptional attack on October 7 that killed 1, 197 people, mostly civilians.
Extremists also seized 251 captives, 111 of whom are also held hostage in Gaza, including 39 the army says are useless.
Israel’s battle against Hamas has killed at least 39, 550 individuals in Gaza, according to the state’s health department, which does not provide details of civil and violent deaths.
Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, was the group’s lead negotiator in efforts to end the war.
Regarding the viability of Qatari, Egyptian, and US mediators ‘ efforts to broker a truce and hostage exchange, his death raised questions.
On the ground in Gaza, fighting continued on Sunday.
Following an Israeli airstrike, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported that eight bodies had been recovered from a residential building in the Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza.
At least five people were killed and 16 were hurt in an Israeli drone strike on tents housing displaced Palestinians at the hospital, according to doctors at the central Gazan hospital Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, and three people were killed and injured in a separate attack on a house in the same area in an identical attack.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a school turned displacement shelter killed at least 17 people, the civil defence agency said. Israel said the facility was used by militants.
Israeli airs and artillery shelling were reported early on Sunday in and around Gaza City, according to an AFP correspondent, while witnesses claimed there were additional shelling, gunfire, and at least two airstrikes in the south of the country.
In the past 24 hours, Israel’s air force reported hitting “approximately 50 terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip.”
“war without restrictions”
In order to protect US personnel and defend Israel, Israeli ally the United States announced that it would send warships and fighter jets to the area.
Tehran said it anticipates Hezbollah hitting deeper inside Israel and not just its military targets, as analysts have reported to AFP.
US President Joe Biden, asked by reporters if he thought Iran would stand down, said:” I hope so. I do n’t know”.
On Sunday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi will visit Tehran to meet his Iranian counterpart, his ministry said.
In a report released on Saturday, the International Crisis Group ( ICCG) think tank stated that Haniyeh’s killing “has brought the Middle East to its moment of greatest peril in years.”
” The risk of a spiralling conflagration is high”, with the potential for a miscalculation that would trigger a war “without constraints… likely greater now than it was in April”, it added.
After a strike at Tehran’s consulate in Damascus resulted in the death of Revolutionary Guards, Iran launched its first direct attack ever on Israeli soil on April 13. It launched a barrage of drones and missiles, the majority of which were intercepted.
The ICG claimed that” the best way to significantly lower tensions in the region is to secure a long overdue ceasefire” in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of prolonging the conflict in order to protect his ruling hard-right coalition by Hamas officials, analysts, and protesters in Israel.
Netanyahu stated to his cabinet on Sunday that he would “make every effort” to bring the hostages back and that he would “go a long way” in doing so.
