Hezbollah claimed a drone attack on northern Israel on Sunday that wounded more than 60 people, as the Israeli military expanded its bombardments of Lebanon and troops battled militants across the border.
The number of injured in Binyamina, south of the city of Haifa, is one of the largest in Israel since the Israel-Hezbollah war escalated in late September.
Lebanon’s health ministry reported meanwhile that 51 people were killed in Israeli air strikes across the country on Saturday.
As combat raged between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon’s south, United Nations peacekeepers said they were again in the firing line.
They said Israeli troops “forcibly” entered a UN position with two tanks, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the force to withdraw from the area.
Israel’s military said a tank backed into the UN post while under fire.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said late Sunday that it launched “a squadron of attack drones” at a military training base in Binyamina, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the major city of Haifa.
The strike was in response to Israeli attacks, including air strikes on Thursday that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.
An Israeli volunteer rescue service, United Hatzalah, said its teams in Binyamina assisted “over 60 wounded people” with injuries from mild to critical.
Hezbollah has been regularly firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year in support of Hamas militants in Gaza, but its strikes have reached further into the country since late September, when the Israel-Hezbollah war escalated.
Israel’s sophisticated air defences have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.
– ‘Defend this… land’ –
Israel’s recent strikes have increasingly focused on areas beyond Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in southern Beirut, and Lebanon’s south and east.
Israel said its air force hit “Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities” and other targets, while on the ground its soldiers “eliminated dozens” of fighters.
According to Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA), Israeli forces have “escalated their attacks” on southern Lebanon with “successive air strikes” pounding several border villages.
Hezbollah said its forces clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to “infiltrate” villages along the border.
Before the drone strike it had said it launched a salvo of rockets at a “base in southern Haifa”.
The group later aired an audio recording of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which he called on fighters to “defend this holy and blessed land and this honourable people”.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike in south Beirut on September 27, and several other senior commanders of the movement have also been killed.
The Israeli military said about 115 projectiles fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israeli territory by Sunday afternoon.
A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel’s military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.
– ‘Shocking violations’ –
UN peacekeepers accused Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions before dawn Sunday in south Lebanon.
It is the latest of several incidents the UNIFIL mission has reported since Thursday, leaving five Blue Helmets injured.
“Two IDF (Israeli military) Merkava tanks destroyed the position’s main gate and forcibly entered the position” in the Ramia area, before leaving 45 minutes later, UNIFIL said.
The Israeli military later said a tank “backed several meters into a UNIFIL post” while “under fire” and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.
Netanyahu had called on the UN earlier Sunday to remove peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm’s way, after the mission rejected requests to abandon its positions.
He said the peacekeepers’ presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Sunday said “attacks” against peacekeepers “may constitute a war crime”.
UNIFIL, with about 9,500 troops, is in southern Lebanon under the longstanding UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
Three Lebanese soldiers were wounded on Sunday, the country’s army said, when Israel’s military fired on military vehicles in the Marjayoun area.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, appealed to Iran to support “a general de-escalation” in Lebanon and Gaza, his office said.
– US sending more air-defences –
Hamas sparked the war in Gaza with the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The number includes hostages killed in captivity.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 42,227 people, the majority civilians, have been killed since Israel’s military campaign began there. The UN considers these figures to be reliable.
Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 1,300 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of official figures, including for Saturday.
That toll exceeds the entire Lebanese toll of 1,200 — mostly civilians — in the last Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006, when 160 people, mostly soldiers, died in Israel.
In a visit to Baghdad ahead of Israel’s expected retaliation for Iran’s October 1 missile attack on Israel, Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was “fully prepared for a war situation”.
He added: “We do not want war.”
The Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system and its US military crew to Israel to help the ally protect itself from potential Iranian attack.
In north Gaza, Israeli forces have for days essentially besieged an area around Jabalia.
“For over a week there has been no hope, no water and no means of life,” said local resident Muhammad Abu Halima, 40.
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