Hundreds of thousands of people yesterday sought shelter from Hezbollah rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, the military said, as a UN official warned of imminent regional “catastrophe” from the worsening violence.
Israel has signaled its intention to turn its focus to Iran-backed Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border fire that began with the outbreak of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Further exchanges of fire came after military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari late on Saturday said that dozens of Israeli warplanes were “widely” striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
Photo: AFP
Hezbollah — which said it is acting in support of ally Hamas — has been dealt a serious blow this week.
Deadly attacks targeted its communications and devastated the leadership of its elite unit, although its ability to fight has not been crushed, analysts said.
An Israeli airstrike on Friday killed the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil, whose funeral in Beirut was yesterday expected to draw large crowds.
Photo: Reuters
“With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert wrote on social media.
The death toll from Friday’s attack on a densely populated Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut rose again yesterday, reaching 45, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said.
The Israeli army said more than 100 projectiles had been fired from Lebanon early yesterday.
“Hundreds of thousands of people had to take refuge in bomb shelters” across northern Israel, military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said.
The military said it launched strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response to the rocket fire and “to prevent a larger-scale attack,” Shoshani said.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers yesterday raided al-Jazeera’s office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and issued a 45-day closure order, the Qatari-based broadcaster said.
Israel’s government last week announced it was revoking the press credentials of al-Jazeera journalists in the country, four months after banning the channel from operating inside Israel.
“There is a court ruling for closing down al-Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli soldier told al-Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari, the network reported, citing the conversation which was broadcast live.
“I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment,” the soldier said, according to the footage, which showed heavily armed and masked troops entering the office in Ramallah.
The broadcaster said the soldiers did not provide a reason for the closure order.
Al-Omari said the closure order accused the network of “incitement to and support of terrorism,” al-Jazeera said.
“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” the bureau chief said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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