News Mania Desk /Piyal Chatterjee/ 1st October 2024
After two weeks of catastrophic airstrikes targeting Hezbollah’s headquarters and weapons sites, Israel announced on Tuesday that its troops had begun conducting raids inside Lebanon.
The elite 98th division, which was transferred two weeks ago from Gaza, where they had been fighting for months, sent paratroopers and commandos to Lebanon, according to the Israeli military. The operations started on Monday night.
Throughout the last year of hostilities, the army of Lebanon has refrained from firing on the Israeli force, continuing a tradition of staying out of major wars with Israel.
The incursion into Lebanon signifies a deepening of the Middle East confrontation between Israel and terrorists supported by Iran, which currently poses a threat to the United States.
The village of Aita al-Shaab, which borders Lebanon, was hit hard by shelling, and nearby residents heard helicopters and drones flying overhead. Over the border town of Rmeish in Lebanon, flares were fired frequently, lighting up the night sky.Lebanon’s armed organization Hezbollah said on Tuesday it had attacked Israeli troops across the border in Metula twice with artillery and rocket fire but made no mention of Israel’s commencement of foot operations into Lebanon.
According to two Palestinian security officials, an Israeli strike in Lebanon early on Tuesday targeted Mounir Maqdah, leader of the Lebanese branch of the armed component of the Palestinian Fatah movement, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
According to the sources, the strike struck a building in the packed Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, which is located close to the southern city of Sidon. It was the first attack on the biggest Palestinian camp in Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began cross-border warfare almost a year ago.
In Syria, three civilians were killed and nine others injured in an Israeli airstrike on the capital Damascus, Syrian state television claimed on Tuesday quoting a military source. The Israeli military stated that it does not respond to stories published by international media.
Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon comes after two weeks of airstrikes, the detonation of booby-trapped Hezbollah pagers that proved deadly, and the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, which delivered the organization one of its worst blows in decades.
The Lebanese government claims that although the heavy airstrikes have killed numerous Hezbollah commanders, they have also killed about 1,000 civilians and driven one million people to abandon their homes.According to a security source, strikes struck Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight. About an hour after the Israeli military ordered people to leave areas near buildings it claimed had Hezbollah infrastructure south of the capital, a Reuters correspondent saw a flash of light and several thunderous explosions.
A plan put up by the United States and France to establish a 21-day ceasefire along the border with Lebanon in order to facilitate the diplomatic process leading to the repatriation of displaced civilians from both sides was turned down by Israel last week.
The UN special coordinator to Lebanon Jeanine Hennis wrote on X: “Amid the firing of missiles and rockets, dropping of bombs, and conduct of raids, the machinery of war fails to address the underlying issues. And thus the risk of dooming another generation to the same fate is very real, yet again.”
