Israel continues its raids against Hezbollah in Lebanon and is considering a response against Iran, but the Hebrew state also suffered Lebanese and even Iraqi strikes this Thursday, October 17. Iran, for its part, promises to hit Israel “painfully” in the event of an attack.
The essentials
- This Thursday, October 17, several strikes targeted Israel: rockets fired from Lebanon hit the north of the Hebrew state, while the Iraqi Islamic Resistance group, another supporter of Iran, announced that it had launched a drone attack on the town of Eliat in the far south of Israel.
- Israeli raids also continue against Lebanon. UNIFIL, a UN peacekeeping force located in southern Lebanon, denounces “direct and visibly deliberate fire” emanating from Israeli forces while a previous strike by the Jewish state was condemned by the international community .
- Israel continues to consider the response against Iran after the rain of 200 missiles launched by Tehran on October 1. An attack on military bases has been mentioned, but this Thursday, October 17, Iran is warning the Jewish state and warning that it will strike “painfully” if a response is carried out. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will hit you again painfully,” declared General Salami, head of the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- If the conflict has moved to Lebanon, Israel continues to strike Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Islamist group with which negotiations have been underway for months has closed itself to the idea of a ceasefire after the extension of the conflict in Lebanon. “The two fronts are so complicated and intertwined that it is not easy to achieve a permanent ceasefire or a permanent solution to this conflict without resolving the original conflict, which is taking place in Gaza,” said to the Reuters agency a senior Hamas official, Basem Naim. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that “we simply cannot start negotiating new conditions” for a ceasefire.
Latest updates
11:47 – Israel hit in the north by Lebanon, in the south by Iraq
Mutual strike exchanges continue between Israel and Lebanon. The Israeli army announced that it had eliminated a Hezbollah officer thanks to a raid carried out in southern Lebanon, while around thirty rockets coming from Lebanon targeted Israel according to the IDF. Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for the attack, but said it hit Israeli army soldiers in IDF-occupied territory along the Lebanon-Syria border.
In the Hebrew state the sirens also sounded, but this time it was an Iraqi Islamist group, also supporting Iran, which claimed responsibility for a drone attack. Iraq took a stand in the conflict, but never took part in it. The strike by a group called Islamist Resistance appears to be the first to come from Iran’s neighboring country.
11:10 – Iran vows to hit Israel “painfully” in case of retaliation
While Israel discussed and began to specify the form that a possible response against Iran would take, after the rain of 200 missiles launched by Tehran on October 1, at the beginning of the week, Iran warned the Jewish state consequences that this would imply: “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will hit you again painfully” declared the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hossein Salami. A statement made during the funeral of a Guards general killed by an Israeli strike at the same time as the former leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
10/16/24 – 11:02 p.m. – Shock in Washington after the revelations in the New York Times on the practices of the Israeli army
END OF LIVE – In an investigation published by the New York Times, it is claimed that different units of Israeli soldiers simply forced Palestinian civilians to carry out tasks deemed dangerous, in order to protect IDF men. Thus, civilians would have been forced to search for explosives or to scout certain Hamas tunnels at their own risk. “If the facts presented in this article are accurate, they are completely unacceptable,” responded Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the State Department, on Wednesday evening, insisting that “nothing can justify the use of civilians as human shields” and that this would be “a violation not only of international humanitarian law, but [aussi] of the Israeli army’s own code of conduct.
10/16/24 – 9:52 p.m. – Great first in Egypt in twelve years, the head of Iranian diplomacy received
This has not happened since 2013. This Wednesday evening, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghtchi, arrived on Egyptian soil, “with the official welcome of the country’s officials”, specifies the IRNA agency on Telegram. The meeting is unprecedented. As recalled The Worldthis visit comes as Iran consults extensively since its attack on Israel and while the Jewish state threatens to retaliate at every moment.
10/16/24 – 8:33 p.m. – In an interview with Le Figaro, Benyamin Netanyahu settles his accounts
Without tongue in cheek, the Israeli Prime Minister confided in a long interview given to Figaro. The opportunity to return to tensions with Emmanuel Macron. Regarding the French president’s call for an arms embargo on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu believes that the “friends” of the Jewish state in Europe, “like France, should stand by him. Because it is our common civilization that we are defending in the seven-front war we are waging against the Iranian axis of terror.” “I find this call shameful,” clearly stated the Israeli Prime Minister, who “hopes that France will change its policy, so that we can work together for the stability of Lebanon, as well as on other regional issues.”
What about UNIFIL? “We have absolutely nothing against UNIFIL. It is true that Hezbollah often hides behind UNIFIL posts to launch missiles against us […]. In almost twenty years, how many Hezbollah missiles has UNIFIL stopped? Zero, alas!” lamented Benyamin Netanyahu, while many voices have been raised for several days to denounce the Israeli strikes against the UN peacekeepers. Finally, while he is the subject of a mandate international judgment, the Israeli Prime Minister considered this action “scandalous”. “It is as if Churchill had been indicted for war crimes after the Second World War at the same time as the Nazi leaders. famine as a weapon of war in the Palestinian peninsula, he even denounced a “flagrant slander”.
10/16/24 – 7:30 p.m. – Cholera: WHO sounds the alarm in Lebanon
A first case of cholera has been confirmed in northern Lebanon. In this context, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned “against the very high risk of spread” of cholera in the land of cedar. If the infected patient is not a displaced person, but a resident of the north, the WHO is concerned that the many people fleeing the conflict are now arriving in the north of the country. However, these populations “have not been immunized against cholera over the last thirty years, and the risk of spread is very high”.
42,409. This is the number of deaths in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas terrorist offensive on October 7, 2023 in Israel. A figure communicated by the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government on Monday October 14, 2024 and which reveals the intensity of the fighting which has lasted for more than a year now. Over the months, tensions intensified, and as of October 27, 2023, Israel extended its ground operation to Gaza. The objective for Netanyahu and the IDF is clear: to “annihilate” Hamas. A one-week ceasefire nevertheless took place in November 2023. After a significant leap forward, on April 13, 2024, Iran launched its first massive attack on Israel. Hamas ally, Iran then fired nearly 350 explosive drones and missiles at the Jewish state. An attack in response to missiles fired at the embassy in Damascus, Syria on April 1, in which 11 people lost their lives, including seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Tuesday September 17, 2024, a new kind of attack broke into the war. Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies explode. Twelve deaths and nearly 3,000 injured have been recorded in Lebanon. Since its coordinated explosions, Israel has continued to strike Lebanon with air or ground raids. More than 1,000 people are killed in IDF strikes and thousands of Lebanese are forced to be displaced. On October 1, 2024, Iran responded by sending nearly 200 ballistic missiles directly to Israel. Since then, the two countries have been waging a merciless war. On October 8, 2024, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, threatened Lebanon with “destruction and suffering like those we see in Gaza” if the population of the country does not ” “liberated” not from Hezbollah. Comments described as “provocation” by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot.
Monday October 14, 2024, Lebanese Hezbollah threatened Israel with new attacks in a press release. As a reminder, Hezbollah had struck Haifa two days earlier, killing four Israeli soldiers and injuring no fewer than 60. At the start of the week, the terrorist organization indicated that “the resistance (…) promises the enemy”. The raid carried out “south of Haifa is only a foretaste of what awaits him if he decides to continue his attacks against our people”, she threatens. According to Palestinian doctors cited by Associated Press, the courtyard of a hospital in the Gaza Strip was then bombed by the Israeli army, killing at least four people and causing a fire in a camp for displaced people.