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Israel mounted further air strikes on Beirut’s suburbs and southern Lebanon on the eve of the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, as Iran temporarily cancelled all flights at the country’s airports “amid fears of an imminent Israeli attack.”
Iran is worried about a counterattack after it sent nearly 200 missiles into Israel last Tuesday night in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and top Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan in Beirut on Sept. 27.
In the early evening on Sunday, an Iranian English-language news service reported that Iran’s Aviation Authority would cancel all flights from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. Monday. Flight restrictions were lifted early, however, after state media said the government had ensured safe conditions, according to Reuters.
In Gaza, the Israeli military announced a new air-and-ground offensive in Jabaliya, in the north of the territory. Israel has seen militants regroup in the city after striking it several times during the past year. Palestinian officials, meanwhile, said an Israeli strike on a mosque in central Gaza killed at least 19 people.
On Monday morning, Israeli police said Hezbollah rockets hit Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, and there were reports that 10 people were injured in the country’s north. Hezbollah said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with a salvo of missiles. Two rockets hit Haifa on Israel’s Mediterranean Coast and five others hit Tiberias 65 kilometres away, media reports said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops near the Lebanese border on Sunday for the first time since the invasion started and declared that Israel would “emerge victorious” in the conflict. On the same day, an Israeli border police woman was killed, and 10 others wounded, in a stabbing and shooting attack in the southern city of Beersheba. The attacker, who was not identified, was killed.
Early Sunday, an intense Israeli bombardment of southern Beirut was described by Lebanon’s National News Agency as the city’s “most violent night yet” since the Beirut assassination of Mr. Nasrallah.
Shortly after midnight on Sunday, Beirut’s mostly-Shia southern suburb lit up with flashes of orange and red as Israeli warplanes sought Hezbollah targets. The fireball eruptions lasted half an hour and were visible several kilometres away. Some residents said the attacks felt like an “earthquake.”
By morning, parts of the suburb were still shrouded in smoke as fires burned. The area is comprised of four municipalities that lie immediately north and northeast of Beirut’s Rafic-Hariri International Airport, the only international civilian airport functioning in the country and the only site of evacuation flights for foreigners. The runways extend into two southernmost municipalities.
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Lebanon’s Public Health Ministry’s emergency operations centre said on Sunday morning that the attacks on southern and northern Lebanon had killed 23 people and injured 93 others.
Lebanese health authorities on Sunday were readying for an influx of casualties in the expectation of attacks and counterattacks by Hezbollah and Israel in the lead-up to the Oct. 7 anniversary. Any influx would put pressure on the Lebanese hospital system, which is on the precipice of breaking down.
The Lebanese Red Cross was struggling to cope with the crisis on the weekend. “When there is bombing in the area, we cannot send ambulances in for security reasons,” Ayad Mounzer, the Red Cross’s communications director, told The Globe and Mail. “We need to protect our volunteers.”
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At least four hospitals in Lebanon have closed because of nearby air strikes. One of them was the Sainte Therese hospital in southern Beirut that was damaged by an air attack on Friday. About six other hospitals in the suburb were still operating over the weekend, but with severely limited services.
On Oct. 3, the World Health Organization said that at least 28 on-duty Lebanese medics were killed in the previous day as Israeli air strikes intensified. There wasn’t a more recent figure by Sunday evening. On the same day, Lebanon’s Health Minister, Firas Abiad, said that 97 Lebanese paramedics had been killed in fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in the past year.
Late on Friday night, the Israel Defence Forces issued a statement saying that Hezbollah was using medical vehicles to transport fighters and weapons. The IDF warned that it would strike any vehicle it suspected of military deployment. The day before, a Lebanese Red Cross convoy that was escorted by Lebanese troops and had been co-ordinated with the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, was attacked, the Associated Press reported. A Lebanese soldier was killed and four Red Cross volunteers were wounded.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the past 12 months. Shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Hezbollah, an Iran-backed political and military group, began launching rockets into Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas. Most of the Lebanese casualties have come in the past two weeks, when Israel intensified its campaign against Hezbollah and killed Mr. Nasrallah in a massive air strike in southern Beirut.
Mr. Nasrallah’s funeral has yet to be held, and may not be, given the relentless Israeli attacks on southern Beirut in the past week. His potential successor, Hashem Safieddine, has reportedly been out of contact since Friday, when an Israeli airstrike near Beirut’s airport was said to have targeted him. Some media reports in the Middle East said he had been killed.
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World leaders grew increasingly worried that Lebanon would be destroyed as Israel steps up its campaign against Hezbollah.
On Saturday, in an interview with France Inter public radio, French President Emmanuel Macron urged countries to cease providing weapons to Israel for its war against Hamas in Gaza and said Lebanon should not be allowed to “become the new Gaza,” adding that “the priority is that we return to a political solution.”
In a visit Sunday to Lebanon, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, pleaded for more international support to prevent Lebanon’s humanitarian crisis, where more than one million people have been displaced by the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, from engulfing the whole country.
“I’ve witnessed today the tragic toll this war is taking on entire communities,” Mr. Grandi said. “International humanitarian law must be respected and cannot be ignored. Families have been left homeless, stranded in the open air with traumatized children unable to understand what’s happening. They all told me how desperate they are to feel safe, and for the air strikes to stop so they can return to their towns and villages.”
With reports from Reuters and The Associated Press
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