Israel continues its strikes against Lebanon this Monday, September 30 and says it is targeting Hezbollah targets. Leaders of Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and an Iranian movement died. Iran has promised retaliation, fueling fears of widespread conflict in the region.
Israeli strikes against Lebanon continue this Monday, September 30. They are going up a notch since several shots were launched on Beirut, the Lebanese capital, very early in the morning, this is a first since the attack of October 7. The strikes targeting Beirut and its suburbs led to the death of several leaders of the pro-Iranian movement: the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hamas in Lebanon Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin. An Iranian leader was also killed in an Israeli strike, Abbas Nilforoushan, the deputy for operations of the head of the Revolutionary Guards. In response, Iranian Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran’s response to Israel “will take place at the appropriate time.” Enough to fear reprisals and a possible extension of the conflict.
Israel, for its part, welcomed the results of its strikes within the movements it fights, particularly Hezbollah. If Hassan Nasrallah was the main target of the attacks carried out by Israel, the Hebrew state claimed on Telegram on Saturday to have killed in another air attack the commander of the movement’s missile unit, Mohammed Ali Ismaïl, as well as his deputy Hossein Ahmed Ismaïl, in southern Lebanon. “Other Hezbollah commanders and terrorists were eliminated along with them,” she added. On Saturday, at midday, the Israeli army assured that “most” of the senior leaders of Lebanese Hezbollah had been “eliminated”.
Arms depots and the “headquarters” of the pro-Iranian armed movement were targeted according to the Israeli army. The arms depots were, again according to the IDF, hidden under “buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut”. The Israeli army had shortly before called on the population to evacuate the area. Lebanese hospitals in the bombed areas were evacuated. France asked Israel to stop the strikes.
Towards a “total war” in the Middle East
The raid on Beirut, particularly violent and on a densely populated neighborhood, left 33 dead and 195 injured on Saturday, according to a report from the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Israel said it carried out 140 raids on Saturday against Hezbollah, and continued its action this Sunday, with “dozens” of raids in the early morning. The UN has launched food aid for a million Lebanese, while this “new escalation of the conflict this weekend underlined the need for an immediate humanitarian response”.
The Lebanese Islamist movement has denied Israel’s “allegations” about the presence of weapons depots in civilian buildings in the area. Hezbollah claimed on Saturday to have fired “salvos of rockets” in response to the town of Safed, in northern Israel, one of which hit a house, according to the Israeli army. Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian denounced a “blatant war crime”, the Iranian embassy in Lebanon, threatening the perpetrators of this “massacre” with “just punishment”.
The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken urged both parties to “stop shooting” and President Joe Biden “asked the Pentagon to evaluate and adjust if necessary the American military presence” in the Middle East, according to the White House. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati denounced a “genocidal war” led by Israel. “The shock wave” caused by the war in Gaza threatens to push the entire Middle East “into the abyss,” warned UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The Middle East is on the verge of “total war”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned at the UN.
Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon mooted
“As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no other choice,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN. These operations will continue “until all our objectives are achieved”, he added, dampening hopes of a truce proposed Wednesday by France and the United States. The Israeli army even said it was preparing for a possible ground incursion, which would be “as short” as possible, an Israeli security official assured Friday.
The Israeli army launched its strikes on Lebanon after almost a year of exchanges of fire with Hezbollah, an Islamist movement and Shiite paramilitary group considered terrorist, which has had significant power in Beirut since its creation in the 1980s. Hezbollah opened a front against Israel at the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, mainly through rocket fire from across the border, to support its ally Hamas, after the attack of October 7, 2023. on Israeli soil. By attacking in turn, Israel wants to allow the return of tens of thousands of inhabitants of the north who had fled Hezbollah fire.
More than 1,500 people have since been killed in Lebanon, in addition to tens of thousands displaced, according to Beirut. A toll heavier than that of the 33 days of war between Israel and the Lebanese formation in 2006. Unicef was particularly alarmed by the “frightening rate” at which children have been killed since the intensification of Israeli bombings this week.
09:03 – The program of Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot in Lebanon
Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived in Beirut, Lebanon on Sunday evening. He began his visit with the announcement of the delivery of “12 tons of medical equipment” to Lebanon which “will treat 1,000 seriously injured people.” Help for which he was “thanked” by the Lebanese Minister of Health, Firass Abiad. Jean-Noël Barrot must now speak with local authorities. He is the first Western diplomat to visit Lebanon since the intensification of Israeli strikes and his arrival coincides with the death of a second French national in Lebanon.
08:23 – Three-day national mourning begins in Lebanon
This Monday, September 30 marks the start of a three-day national mourning in Lebanon after the “martyr” death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “who joins the list of people killed by the perfidious Israeli aggression against Lebanon” according to the official statement from the Lebanese government.
08:19 – Israel announces that it will continue “to attack with force”
The Israeli army announced the continuation of its strikes in Lebanon on Monday. “Air Force combat planes attacked dozens of targets of the terrorist organization Hezbollah in the Bekaa region of Lebanon,” the Civil Defense spokesperson said on Telegram. “Dozens of launchers and buildings where weapons were stored” were among the targets, he added. And the IDF added that Israel “will continue to forcefully attack, damage and degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities and infrastructure in Lebanon.”
08:13 – The PFLP says it was hit by Israeli strikes
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left-wing secular Palestinian organization described as terrorist by Israel and the European Union, announced the death of three of its members in the Israeli strike launched on Beirut. Several videos relayed by local media show the targeted building destroyed by the shooting.
08:08 – Iran announces retaliation after Israeli strikes
Israeli strikes in Lebanon caused casualties within the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement, but an Iranian organization also lost a leader in the strikes as the deputy for operations of the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Abbas Nilforoushan. , died Friday in the strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. Tehran promises retaliation: “This horrible crime of the aggressor Zionist regime will not go unanswered, and the diplomatic apparatus will also use all its capabilities (…) to pursue the criminals and their supporters. The Iranian vice-president for strategic affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, for his part, declared that Tehran’s response to Israel “will take place at the appropriate time.”
08:03 – Hamas leader in Lebanon killed in Israeli strikes
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, announced that its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, was killed along with members of his family in a strike that hit a Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country, in the night from Sunday to Monday, according to the Reuters news agency.
08:00 – First strikes launched on Beirut
Israel continues to carry out airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon this Monday, September 30 and for the first time since the attack of October 7, 2023, shots were launched on the country’s capital, Beirut. In recent days, the strikes have been moving closer to the city, targeting its southern suburbs, but it was the center of the city that was hit at dawn on Monday. A Lebanese source says a drone strike targeted a Beirut apartment belonging to Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanese Sunni Islamist group that supports Hezbollah in its operations in northern Israel.