SVE NEWS & FRANCE24.COM Sharing Series — G7 defence ministers concerned over ‘threats’ to UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

Iran’s United Nations mission said Saturday that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, armed and financed by Tehran, was behind a drone attack on the residence of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

“This action was taken by the Lebanese Hezbollah,” the mission said in response to a question about Iran’s role in the attack, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Israeli strikes on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed at least 10 people on Saturday, medics and Hamas-affiliated media said.

Dozens were also wounded in the strikes that hit several houses in Beit Lahiya, the medics added.

The Israeli military has launched an investigation into the death of a Hezbollah detainee while in its custody in Lebanon, Israel’s Army Radio and N12 News reported on Saturday.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Saturday, reviewing posture adjustments of United States forces, including the recent deployment of an anti-missile system to reinforce Israel’s defenses against regional threats, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Austin also told his Israeli counterpart that he was relieved that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was safe after a drone attack reportedly targeted his holiday home in Caesarea, the Pentagon said.

Israel’s foreign minister said Saturday the “true face” of Iran had been exposed by what he called an assassination attempt by Iran-backed groups against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The Iranian proxies who attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Netanyahu and his family today have once again exposed Iran’s true face and the evil axis it leads,” Israel Katz said in a statement on X, after Netanyahu’s office said a drone targeted the premier’s residence in the town of Caesarea earlier on Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the attempt of Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate him and his wife on Saturday was “a grave mistake,” after his spokesman said a drone was launched from Lebanon at his holiday home.

None of the groups firing on Israel over the last year, including the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, have claimed responsibility for that attack.

The United States would like to see Israel scale back some of its strikes in and around Beirut, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday.

“The number of civilian causalities have been far to high,” he said. “We would like to see Israel scale back some of the strikes in and around Beirut and we would like to see a transition to negotiations that would allow civilians on both sides to return to their homes.”

The Israeli military said its air force struck Hezbollah weapons stores and an intelligence centre on Saturday in the group’s southern Beirut stronghold.

The Israeli Air Force “conducted a strike on a number of Hezbollah weapons storage facilities and a Hezbollah intelligence headquarters command centre in Dahiyeh,” the military said in a statement.

Gaza health officials said Israeli forces surrounded and shelled the Indonesian Hospital in the territory’s northern town of Beit Lahia at dawn on Saturday, while the military reported troops were operating near the facility.

“Israeli tanks have completely surrounded the hospital, cut off electricity and shelled the hospital, targeting the second and third floors with artillery,” said the facility’s director, Marwan Sultan.

“There are serious risks to medical staff and patients.”

An adviser to al Qaeda’s likely current leader is calling for Hamas to release its Israeli hostages held in Gaza, according to an American jihadist monitoring organisation, SITE.

The online declaration was made Friday by Mustafa Hamid, also known as Abu Walid al-Masri, who is father-in-law to Saif al-Adel, the man widely believed to now head al Qaeda, according to SITE.

In it, Hamid claimed the attention given to recovering the Israeli hostages, both dead and alive, was overshadowing the fate of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel.

Israeli planes dropped leaflets over southern Gaza on Saturday showing a picture of the dead Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar with the message that “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza”, echoing language used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The move came as Israeli military strikes killed at least 32 people across the Gaza Strip and tightened a siege around hospitals in Jabalia in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said.

“Whoever drops the weapon and hands over the hostages will be allowed to leave and live in peace,” the leaflet, written in Arabic, read, according to residents of the southern city of Khan Younis and images circulating online.

The leaflet’s wording was from a statement by Netanyahu on Thursday after Sinwar was killed by Israeli soldiers operating in Rafah, in the south near the Egyptian border, on Wednesday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Saturday more than 400 Palestinians were killed in the north of the territory over the past two weeks during an ongoing military assault Israel says is aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping.

The Israeli military launched a sweeping air and ground assault targeting northern Gaza on October 6. Since then, it has tightened its siege, which has displaced tens of thousands of people.

At least two Israeli airstrikes hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Saturday, a Hezbollah stronghold, a security source told AFP.

AFP footage showed plumes of smoke rising over the area, less than an hour after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired dozens of rockets and several drones into northern Israel on Saturday killing one person, with one drone directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home, according to his spokesman.

The volley from the Iran-backed Lebanese group came as health officials in Gaza, where Israel has been battling Palestinian militant group Hamas for more than a year, said Israeli strikes had killed more than 30 people across the territory.

Pledges from Israel and its enemies Hamas and Hezbollah to keep fighting in Gaza and Lebanon have dashed hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might hasten an end to more than a year of escalating war in the Middle East.

Lebanon state media said four people including a mayor were killed on Saturday in an Israeli strike on a town in the eastern Bekaa Valley region.

The strike hit a residential building in the town of Baaloul, killing four, the official National News Agency said, adding that the dead include Haidar Shahla, the mayor of the nearby town of Sohmor.

The Israeli military on Saturday called on residents to leave parts of southern Beirut, a warning usually followed by strikes on those areas of the Lebanese capital.

“Urgent warning to residents of the southern suburb (of Dahiyeh), specifically those in …Haret Hreik neighbourhood: You are located near facilities and interests belonging to Hezbollah, against which the IDF (Israeli military) will be operating in the near future,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote in Arabic on X.

Hezbollah said it fired rockets the northern Israeli town of Safed on Saturday, after the Israeli army reported 115 projectiles launched from Lebanon targeting the country amid the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Hezbollah said it “bombed the occupied city of Safed… with a rocket salvo,” shortly after announcing rocket attacks on Haifa in northern Israel.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Saturday that at least 42,519 people have been killed in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants, although the toll did not incorporate a strike that killed 33 people overnight.

The toll includes 19 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 99,637 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

Sources from: FRANCE24.COM