Israel said it had targeted the intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah in Lebanon overnight and was assessing the damage on Friday (Oct 4) after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group that Iran’s Supreme Leader dismissed as counterproductive.
Israel has been weighing options in its response to the Iranian ballistic missile attack on Tuesday, which Iran had carried out in response to Israel’s military action in Lebanon.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
The air attack on Beirut, part of a wider assault that has driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes, was reported to have targeted the potential successor to the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated by Israel a week ago.
Hashem Safieddine’s fate was unclear and neither Israel nor Hezbollah have offered any comment.
A blast was heard and smoke was seen over Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Saturday, Reuters witnesses said, shortly after the Israeli military issued two alerts for residents of the area to immediately evacuate.
The first alert warned residents in a building in the Burj al-Barajneh neighbourhood and the second in a building in Choueifat district.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday he would think about alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields if he were in Israel’s shoes, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
Biden was asked at a White House press briefing if he thought that by not engaging in diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to influence the Nov 5 US election in which Republican former president Donald Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Whether he is trying to influence the election, I don’t know but I am not counting on that,” Biden said in response. “No administration has done more to help Israel than I have.”
The government in Lebanon says more than 2,000 people have been killed there in the past year, most in the past two weeks.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday the toll on civilians “totally unacceptable”.
“All parties must do whatever they can at all times to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and ensure that civilians are never put in harm’s way,” he told reporters in New York.
The Lebanese government has accused Israel of targeting civilians, pointing to the dozens of women and children killed. It has not broken down the overall figure between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel says it targets military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
The latest bloodletting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from an attack by Palestinian Hamas militants on Oct 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly Gaza’s entire population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations that Israel denies.
The Israeli military said some 70 projectiles were launched from Lebanon into Israeli territory on Friday evening and were either intercepted or fell into open land.
Israel sent ground forces into Lebanon this week after the Iranian missile attacks. It has said its ground operations are “localised” in villages near the border, but has not specified how far into Lebanon they would advance or how long they would last.
Israel says the operations aim to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments that forced them to evacuate from its north.
