Calls to leave Lebanon, strengthening of the American military presence in the region and suspension of air links… Concerns about a military escalation in the Near and Middle East are growing after the multiplication of threats from Iran and its allies against Israel. Iran, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, accused the Hebrew State of the death Wednesday of the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, killed in his residence in Tehran. His assassination came a few hours after a strike claimed by Israel which killed the military leader of the Lebanese movement, Fouad Chokr, Tuesday evening near Beirut.
Key information to remember
⇒ France calls on its nationals to leave Lebanon “as soon as possible”
⇒ Two dead and two injured after knife attack near Tel Aviv
⇒ Hezbollah claims to have launched “dozens” of rockets at Israel
Knife attack near Tel Aviv: two dead, two injured
Two people were killed and two others injured in a stabbing attack near Tel Aviv on Sunday, August 4, Israeli emergency services said. “This was a complex and difficult terrorist attack, with the victims in three different locations, approximately 500 meters from each other,” Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said in a statement.
Shortly after the stabbing attack in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, a 66-year-old woman and a man in his 80s died of their injuries, Wolfson Hospital said. According to the Israeli media Ynetit was a couple. Among the injured, a 68-year-old man was seriously injured and another, aged 26, is in moderate condition, according to Magen David Dom.
The suspect in the “alleged terror attack,” a resident of the occupied West Bank, was quickly “neutralized” by a police officer who arrived at the scene, police said in a statement, without giving further details. Shamir Medical Center in Holon said the attacker arrived at the hospital shortly after the incident in critical condition and was pronounced dead.
France calls on its nationals to leave Lebanon “as soon as possible”
France called on its nationals this Sunday to leave Lebanon “as soon as possible”, following the United States and the United Kingdom, due to fears of a conflagration in the Near and Middle East. “In a very volatile security context, we once again draw the attention of French nationals, particularly those passing through, to the fact that direct commercial flights with stopovers to France are still available, and we invite them to make arrangements now to leave Lebanon as soon as possible”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in its travel advice sheet for this country.
It is estimated that more than 23,000 French people live in Lebanon, including 21,500 French nationals and their beneficiaries registered on the consular lists. In addition, many dual nationals pass through Lebanon every summer. At the end of July, this was the case for around 10,000 of them, according to a diplomatic source to AFP. This new recommendation comes as the airlines Air France and Transavia France decided on Saturday to extend the suspension of their flights to Beirut until at least August 6 inclusive “due to the security situation”.
Hezbollah claims to have launched “dozens” of rockets at Israel
Hezbollah said Saturday night it had launched “dozens” of rockets at northern Israel, in “solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza and in response to Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon. “The Islamic Resistance added the new settlement of Beit Hillel (north) to its list of targets and bombarded it for the first time with dozens of rockets,” the pro-Iranian movement said in a statement.
The Israeli army, for its part, assured that “30 projectiles were identified coming from Lebanon” during the night from Saturday to Sunday, “most of them having been intercepted”. “No injuries were reported”, according to the armed forces, which specified that they had “struck” the Hezbollah site from where the missiles had been fired in southern Lebanon.
Gaza: Civil Defense announces at least 17 dead in Israeli strike on school
The Gaza Civil Defense announced on Saturday that an Israeli strike on a school compound in Gaza City had left at least 17 dead. “There are 17 martyrs and several wounded following an Israeli bombing on the Hamama school” in Gaza City, the Gaza Civil Defense said in a statement. In a previous report, it had reported ten dead.
The Israeli army confirmed the strike, saying it had “hit terrorists operating in a Hamas command and control center,” which in the past was “known as the Hamama school in the northern Gaza Strip.” “It was from there that various terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers were planned and carried out. In addition, Hamas weapons were manufactured and stored in the compound,” the army added in a statement.