The Israeli military has launched a new precision strike in Beirut that killed the commander of Hezbollah's drone unit.
HDN Newsroom
A new wave of Israeli precision strikes on Beirut, Lebanon, has been unleashed by the Israeli military, it announced, with strikes underway.
A source close to Hezbollah said Israeli strikes targeted a commander of the group.
Witnesses told Reuters they heard a powerful explosion in Beirut's southern suburbs on Thursday (26/09) at midday and a thick cloud of smoke rose from the area.
Emergency teams are rushing to the Beirut suburb, according to the BBC.
Two people were killed and 15 wounded in Monday's Israeli strike on the southern outskirts of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, Lebanon's health ministry said.
"The Israeli enemy's strike on Beirut's southern suburbs killed two people and wounded 15 others, including a woman in critical condition," the ministry said.
Two security sources said the Israeli strike targeted the head of Hezbollah's drone unit, Mohammed Schrour or Abu Saleh, who was killed in the strike.
Earlier, a source close to the pro-Iran group said the Hezbollah leader was the target of the new Israeli strike, but it was not yet known whether he was killed or wounded.
Israel said it had launched "precision strikes on Beirut," without elaborating.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has expressed hope that a ceasefire can be reached quickly to end the conflict between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, which has shocked his country and raised fears of a ground invasion.
The United States, France and others called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire along the Israeli-Lebanese border, also expressing support for a ceasefire in Gaza after intensive talks at the United Nations on Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who travels to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly, said he had not yet given his response to the ceasefire proposal and had ordered the army to continue fighting. Hardliners in his government said Israel should reject the ceasefire proposal and continue pounding Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, there is no respite from violence. Israeli airstrikes overnight hit 75 Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and launchers ready to open fire, the Israeli military said on Monday.
At least 23 Syrians, most of them women and children, died and 8 others were injured when Israel struck a three-storey building in the Lebanese city of Younin overnight, its mayor Ali Kusas told Reuters.
According to Syrian activists, more than 100 Syrian refugees have been killed since Israel began its massive bombardment of Lebanon in recent days, including 23 women and 32 children.
Lebanon is home to more than 1.5 million Syrians who fled the civil war there.
The Israeli military said it attacked dozens of Hezbollah targets, including terrorists, military buildings and weapons depots, in various areas this morning.
Some 45 projectiles were fired parallel from Lebanon towards the western region of the Galilee, some of which were intercepted while the rest fell in open spaces, the Israeli military added.
Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to ensuring that tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from areas in northern Israel to the Lebanese border due to Hezbollah fire can return home. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads one of the two nationalist-religious factions in the ruling coalition, said Hezbollah must be crushed and that only its surrender would make it possible to return those who fled their homes to the border.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz also rejected the proposal for a ceasefire in Lebanon: "There will be no ceasefire in the north. We will continue to fight against the terrorist organization Hezbollah with all our strength until victory and the safe return of the inhabitants of the north to their homes."
The Lebanese prime minister welcomed the call for a ceasefire but said the key to its implementation was whether Israel, which is moving troops closer to Lebanon, was committed to implementing international resolutions.
Asked if a ceasefire could be secured soon, Mikati told Reuters: "We hope so."
Mikati's interim government includes ministers selected by Hezbollah, which is widely considered the country's most powerful political force.
The ceasefire will be implemented on the Israeli-Lebanese "Blue Line," the demarcation line between the two countries, and will allow the parties to negotiate a possible diplomatic solution to end the conflict, a senior official in U.S. President Joe Biden's administration said.
U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Janine-Hennis Plaschert today welcomed the call for an immediate 21-day ceasefire to give diplomacy room to succeed.
Israel has made it a priority to restore security on its northern border and return there some 70,000 residents displaced by near-daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, launched by Lebanon's Shiite movement a year ago in solidarity with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.
Israel expanded its airstrikes in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 72 people, according to a Reuters calculation based on data released by Lebanon's health ministry. The ministry had earlier said at least 223 people were injured.
Israel's heaviest airstrikes in Lebanon in nearly two decades have intensified since Monday, when more than 550 people were killed in the country's bloodiest day since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
About half a million Lebanese have fled their homes and hospitals have been overwhelmed with wounded. The bombing follows attacks last week in which bombers and portable radios exploded across Lebanon, killing dozens of people and wounding thousands.
Israel's chief of staff has said a ground attack is likely, raising fears that the conflict could spark a wider war in the Middle East. Hezbollah and Hamas both belong to a network of Iranian-backed armed groups in the region.
Israel's U.N. ambassador Danny Dannon told reporters ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting on Tuesday that Israel would welcome a ceasefire and preferred a diplomatic solution.
