The movement Hezbollah threatened Israel this Monday 14th with more bombings if the offensive in Lebanon continues, after a drone attack on Sunday against a military base near the Israeli city of Haifa that killed four soldiers and injured more than 60 people.
This was the attack with the highest number of victims in Israel since the beginning of open war between the Lebanese armed Shiite group and Israeli forceson September 23rd.
The commander of the General Staff of the Israeli army, General Herzi Halevi, admitted this Monday that it was a “painful” event.
“We are at war and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult, the consequences are painful,” Halevi told soldiers during a visit to the stricken base.
This Monday, the pro-Iran movement announced that it attacked an Israeli naval base near Haifa, after warning in a statement that the attack south of Haifa was nothing more than the “prelude to what awaits if it decides to continue with the aggressions against our people.”
The Israeli army said four soldiers were killed and seven injured at a Golani brigade training camp in Binyamina, south of Haifa in northern Israel.
According to United Hatzalah, an organization of volunteer rescuers, the attack left more than 60 people injured.
Hezbollah explained that its fighters launched “a squadron of explosive drones” against the training camp, an operation the movement dedicated to its leader Hassan Nasralah, who died on September 27 in an Israeli bombing raid near Beirut.
‘Scandalous violations’
After weakening the Hamas In Gaza, Israel has moved most of its operations to Lebanon, where it says the objective is to allow the return of almost 60,000 Israelis displaced by the Islamist group’s projectile launches.
The operations, which began on September 23, left more than 1,300 dead in Lebanon, according to a count by AFPand almost 700,000 displaced people, according to the UN.
The fighting in Lebanon also hit the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil).
The organization accused the Israeli army of “repeated” and “deliberate” firing at its installations and denounced “scandalous violations” of its positions, after Israeli tanks “forcibly” entered one of them.
The Israeli army stated that one of its tanks, “which was trying to remove injured soldiers (…) collided with a Unifil post”.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahuhad asked the UN for the “immediate” withdrawal of Unifil soldiers from combat zones, but this Monday the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, responded that “only the United Nations Security Council can decide on the withdrawal” of peacekeepers.
“Attacks against peacekeepers violate international law…(and) may constitute a war crime“, stated the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.
The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, considered the Israeli attacks against Unifil troops “completely unacceptable”.
Tensions with Iran
Both the war between Hamas and the Israeli army in Gaza and the conflict in Lebanon were accompanied by a worsening of tension between Israel and Iran, which launched almost 200 missiles against its arch-enemy on October 1st.
The Israeli government threatens to respond to the attack, which according to the Islamic Republic was a response to the deaths of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallahand the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyehwho died in an explosion blamed on Israel on July 31 in Tehran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi stated that his country is “fully prepared for a war situation”, but reiterated that his government wants “peace”.
Araqchi met this Monday in Oman with Mohamed Abdelsalam, a high-ranking leader of Yemen’s Houthi movement.
The Houthis, who control a large part of Yemen, are part of, alongside the Palestinian group Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, the so-called “axis of resistance”, formed by pro-Iranian groups opposed to Israel.
Faced with threats from Iran, the United States government announced the sending of a THAAD high-altitude anti-missile defense system to Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, where Israel launched an intense offensive in response to the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas fighters against the south of its territory, the army announced this Monday that it had bombed a “command and control center located in a complex that houses the Shuhadah Al Aqsa hospital.”
Gaza Civil Defense said the attack left four dead and several injured. He also indicated that this was the seventh time that a bombing hit the “displaced people’s tents” inside the hospital.
In the October 7, 2023, attack on Israeli soil, Hamas militiamen killed 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to a tally by the AFP based on official Israeli figures and which includes hostages killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 42,289 Palestinians, most of them civilians, died in the Israeli offensive in the territory, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, considered reliable by the UN.
