The Fate of the Mideast: The UN Foreign Minister’s Letter to Lebanese President David Lammy and Israeli Airstrikes in Lebanon
On Saturday, David Lammy, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, said in a post on X that he had spoken with the Prime Minister of Lebanon.
Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement condemning the killing of Nasrallah, saying it “is fraught with even greater dramatic consequences for Lebanon and the entire Middle East.” Moscow called on Israel to stop hostilities aimed at Lebanon.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned what he called an Israeli massacre in Lebanon, and vowed that the fate of the Mideast will be determined by “the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront.” Iran has announced five days of mourning.
In Syria, where Hezbollah has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s brutal civil war, people in Idlib province celebrated on the streets, Syrian journalist Fared Al Mahlool told NPR. People are happy to hear about it. … Many people have been displaced, killed, and lost their loved ones because of Nasrallah’s support. He said they helped destroy several cities and evict many people.
Hezbollah fires dozens of rockets toward northern Israel, most of which were shot down, and Israel carries out more than 200 airstrikes against Lebanon, killing another 92 people and wounding more than 150. Over 700 people have been killed in Lebanon in Israeli airstrikes over the last week. Tens of thousands of Lebanese are displaced while fleeing Israel’s constant bombardment. Lebanese officials say it is the country’s largest displacement in decades.
Sept. 25: Early in the morning, Hezbollah launches a long-range missile that reaches Tel Aviv airspace before being shot down by Israeli forces — the first time the militant group has launched a missile like this toward central Israel. Israel continued its airstrike campaign across much of southern Lebanon, killing at least another 72 people and injuring about 400, according to Lebanese health officials. The Israeli military also announces it is calling up two additional brigades of reserves for the north, saying that it must “prepare very strongly” for a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.
The announcement came after an eventful and deadly 12 days in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — including the killing of several other high-ranking Hezbollah officials and more than 1,000 people in Lebanon after a series of near-synchronized explosions followed by thousands of Israeli airstrikes over several days. These attacks left thousands more wounded and displaced tens of thousands of people.
It described Nasrallah as “a great martyr, a heroic, bold, brave, wise, insightful, and faithful leader,” and would remain, despite his death, “still among us with his thought, spirit, line and sacred approach.”
Biden said that the Hezbollah leader’s death was a measure of justice for victims of his four-decade reign of terror.
To highlight the attack’s potential to ignite an even wider Middle East conflict, the semiofficial Iranian news agency, Mehr, reported that an operational head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, had also been killed in the strike. Iran has supplied missiles and weapons to Hezbollah, as well as financing the group.
There are a number of blasts in southern Lebanon after the Israeli PM finished his speech. The strikes demolished multiple residential buildings in southern Beirut, which Israeli officials almost immediately label the headquarters of Hezbollah, even as the smoke and debris clouds from the explosion rose above the city.
In his first public remarks on Friday’s attack, Netanyahu said the assassination of Nasrallah, who he described as “the architect” of a plan to “annihilate” Israel, was an “essential condition” for Israel to achieve its war goals.
The Israeli military ordered limitations on public gatherings in central Israel in a sign that the country was preparing for possible retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah or other Iran-supported militias.
Israel’s actions in the wake of the September 27 terror attack: The war against Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Middle East
“Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a ‘northern front’ against Israel,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden noted the operation to take out Nasrallah was within the larger context. Hamas is attacking Israel.
The US, France, the U.K. and other countries have called for a 21-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah, even as it’s unlikely that there will be one.
The conflict has spread across the Middle East region since last October, and Israel’s killing of Nasrallah represents another dramatic new development.
Hezbollah and Israel trade fire over the course of the night and into the morning. In southern Lebanon, residents described huge explosions that lit up the night sky. The Israeli military said it hit some 290 targets, including Hezbollah rocket launchers, while some of Hezbollah’s rockets hit deeper into Israel than they have previously in this war.
The projectiles launched from Lebanon into Israel were hit near Tiberias in Israel’s north.
The Israeli military said in a post on X that it had continued to attack with force and damage Hezbollah’s military capabilities.
In a statement on the messaging app Telegram, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its air forces targeted “buildings where weapons and military structures of the organization were stored.”
The Prime Minister of Israel returned to Israel earlier than planned after it was reported that Israel was planning to attack south Lebanon.
Israel’s military carried out dozens of raids on Hezbollah targets early Sunday after unconfirmed reports stated that two Hezbollah commanders were killed following the assassination of the militant group’s leader.
In the north of Israel, there are sirens in Haifa and nearby towns. Israel said Haifa was targeted for the first time since the war began nearly a year ago.
Sept. 27: In a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu said that Israel was winning and would attack Iran and its proxies. Many of the delegates in the U.N. hall leave in a public snub at the start of his address — in which he calls the U.N. a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”
Sept. 17: Thousands of pagers — many belonging to Hezbollah members — simultaneously explode across Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 13 people, including some children, and injuring around 4,000, hundreds of them critically. Israel is not publicly credited for the attack, but it is widely believed to be. The goal of the war is to return tens of thousands of Israelis who had been displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire towards Lebanon, signalling it might take further action against the group.
Nasruddin Ammer, deputy director of the Houthi media office, said that the rebels emptied oil stored in the ports prior to the strikes. He said on X that the strikes will not stop the rebels from attacking shipping routes and Israel.
Dozens of strikes were reported in the central, eastern and western Bekaa and in the south. The death toll was expected to rise, as the strikes hit buildings where civilians were living.
Wreckage from Friday’s strike that killed Nasrallah was still smoldering. Smoke rose over the rubble as people flocked to the site, some to check on what was left of their homes and others to pay respects, pray or simply to see the destruction.
The collapse of a residential building as Israel expands attacks in Lebanon: Joe Biden and the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech from Air Force One
President Joe Biden said Sunday that he would speak soon with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and believes that an all-out war in the Middle East must be avoided. “It has to be,” Biden told reporters at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware as he boarded Air Force One for Washington.
A building swayed before collapsing as people filmed it in a video that was verified by the AP. One TV station called on viewers to pray for a family caught under the rubble, posting their pictures, as rescuers failed to reach them. The Health Ministry said 14 medics died over two days in the south.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 105 people were killed around the country in airstrikes Sunday. Two strikes near the southern city of Sidon, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Beirut, killed at least 32 people, the ministry said. In the north of the country, strikes by the Israeli army killed 21 people and wounded at least 47.
Israel says it is determined to return some 60,000 of its citizens to communities in the north that were evacuated nearly a year ago. Hezbollah has said it will only halt its rocket fire if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which has proven elusive despite months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah and served as the military commander in southern Lebanon during the war with Israel. The United States levied sanctions against him in 2020.
Hezbollah, a militant group and political party with support from Iran, rose to prominence after fighting a devastating monthlong war with Israel in 2006 that ended in a draw.
The Israeli-Hezbollah Conflict and the State of the Union: Response to a Counterattack on the Hamas Force on Lebanon’s Refugee Camps
Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes. The government estimates that there are three to four times as many people in shelters than on the streets.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kirby sidestepped questions about whether the Biden administration agrees with how the Israelis are targeting Hezbollah leaders. The United States and France called on Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a 21- day cease-fire during the UN General Assembly last week.
“I think people are safer without him walking around,” Kirby said of Nasrallah. “But they will try to recover. We’re watching to see what they do to try to fill this leadership vacuum. It’s going to be tough. … Much of their command structure has now been wiped out.”
John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said that Israel’s strikes had wiped out Hezbollah’s command structure, but warned that the group would work to rebuild it.
The commander for the militant group Hamas, which has bases in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, was killed by a strike early Monday. Hamas said Fatah Sharif and his family were killed in an airstrike on the Al-Buss refugee camp in the southern port city of Tyre.
An official with Lebanon’s Civil Defense had earlier said that a member of the al-Jamaa al-Islamiya was killed in the strike and that 16 other people were wounded, but the Sunni militant group, which fights alongside Hezbollah, has not confirmed the death of any of its members.
The airstrike hit a multistory residential building, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene. Videos showed ambulances and a crowd gathered near the building in a mainly Sunni district with a busy thoroughfare lined with shops.