Israel will respond to Iran’s missile attack based on its “national interest”, the Prime Minister said on Tuesday 15 Benjamin Netanyahuafter the President of the United States, Joe Bidencalled on the country to avoid bombings against nuclear and oil installations.
O Iranwho claims to be willing to “defend” himself from Israel, organized the funeral of the general this Tuesday in Tehran Abbas Nilforushanmurdered on September 27 alongside the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallahin an Israeli attack near Beirut.
On October 1, Iran launched nearly 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killings.
On Tuesday morning, in front of a crowd displaying Iranian, Palestinian and Israeli flags, Hezbollah in Tehran’s Imam Hossein Square, Esmail Qaani, commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard unit, reappeared in public following press reports that he had been the target of Israeli attacks on October 4 in south Beirut.
Israel, at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, continues to prepare a response to the attack by Iran, an ally of the two Islamist movements.
“We listen to the views of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest,” Netanyahu said of the response to Iran.
The statement appears to contradict the newspaper’s information Washington Post that Netanyahu reportedly stated, during a telephone conversation with Biden last week, that the eventual response to Iran will be limited to military installations.
Violent night in Baalbeck
After almost a year of armed clashes with Hezbollah on the Israeli-Lebanese border and after weakening Hamas, in mid-September the Israeli army changed the focus of the war to Lebanon, where it intensified attacks against the strongholds of the Shiite movement.
The objective is to remove Hezbollah from the border regions between Lebanon and Israel and end rocket launches, to allow the return of almost 60 thousand displaced Israelis to their homes.
The Israeli army carried out several attacks this Tuesday in the south of the country and in the Bekaa region (east), where it left a hospital in the city of Baalbeck out of service, according to the official Lebanese news agency YEARS.
“It was a violent night in Baalbeck, we haven’t had a night like this since the 2006 war” between Israel and Hezbollah, said Nidal al Solh, 50.
Hezbollah, which claims to act in support of Hamasopened a front against Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Despite being weakened, Hezbollah continues with attacks against Israel and this Tuesday stated that it launched rockets against the north of the country.
Hezbollah carried out a drone attack on Sunday against a military base in Binyamina, northern Israel, which killed four soldiers and injured more than 60, according to emergency teams, the movement’s most violent action on Israeli territory.
At least 1,315 people died in the Lebanon since September 23, when the Israeli offensive against the pro-Iran militia began, according to an AFP survey based on official data. Almost 700,000 have been displaced, according to the UN.
The fighting in Lebanon also hit the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, the Unifiland Netanyahu called on the UN secretary-general on Sunday to put the peacekeepers out of harm’s way “immediately.”
Unifil denounces “shocking violations” by Israel against its positions and guarantees that it will remain in the region, according to the head of UN peacekeeping forces, Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
In the Gaza Strip, Civil Defense indicated that a bombing on Monday in the city of Deir al Balah (center) killed four people in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital complex, which houses displaced people.
The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil killed 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and which includes hostages killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 42,344 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.
