Hezbollah and Israel troops battle at southern border

Hezbollah said Saturday its fighters were confronting Israeli troops in Lebanon’s southern border region, where the Israeli military said it struck militants from the Iran-backed movement at a mosque.

Rapidly escalating violence in recent days saw intense Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon as ground troops conducted raids near the border, transforming nearly a year of cross-border exchanges into full-blown war.

In the first reported Israeli air strike on the northern Tripoli region in the current flare-up, Palestinian militant group Hamas said “Zionist bombardment” of the Beddawi refugee camp killed a commander, Saeed Attallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.

The escalation, which this week included Iran’s second-ever missile attack on Israel, intensifying Hezbollah rocket fire and strikes claimed by Iran allies from as far away as Yemen, comes just days before the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

In downtown Beirut, Ibrahim Nazzal, who is among hundreds of thousands displaced by the violence, said: “We want the war to stop so we can go back to our land.

“All our homes are gone. I don’t know what we will go back to.”

Nearly a year into the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack, Israel has shifted its focus north, aiming to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire to return home.

Israel’s military launched an intensified wave of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon, killing more than 1,110 people since September 23.

On the ground, Hezbollah said early Saturday its fighters were engaged in clashes with Israeli troops in the border area after earlier saying they had forced soldiers to retreat.

The Israeli military said its forces had killed 250 Hezbollah fighters in the border area this week, and early Saturday struck a militant “command centre located inside a mosque” in the town of Bint Jbeil.

Peacekeepers ‘remain’

Israel’s recent attacks on Lebanon have killed an Iranian general, a host of Hezbollah commanders and, in the biggest blow to the group in decades, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivering a rare public address on Friday, said that “the resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms”, praising the “fierce defence” of Hezbollah and Hamas against Israeli forces.

As Israel mulls its response to the Iranian missile attack on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden cautioned against striking Iranian oil facilities, a day after he said Washington was “discussing” such action.

The Iranian attack, which Tehran called revenge for the killing of Nasrallah and other top figures, killed one person in the occupied West Bank.

Satellite pictures of Nevatim air base in southern Israel showed apparent damage to a structure on Wednesday, compared with a photo taken on August 3.

In Lebanon, Israeli bombardment has put at least four hospitals out of service, and on Friday, the first delivery of medical aid organised by the United Nations reached Beirut airport.

AFP correspondents heard a series of explosions in south Beirut early Saturday after the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee warned residents to evacuate part of it.

Lebanon said an Israeli strike on Friday cut off the main international road to Syria, with Israel saying it aimed to prevent the flow of weapons.

Lebanon’s disaster management unit said more than 374,000 people -- most of them Syrian refugees -- had sought refuge in Syria in the final week of September.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said that its forces “remain in all positions” despite an Israeli request on Monday to “relocate some of our positions” as the military’s ground incursions began.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon also urged commitment “in actions, not just words” to Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and stipulated that only the Lebanese army and peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.

‘Rally the world’

In a visit to Beirut on Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his government backs “efforts for a ceasefire” that would be acceptable to Hezbollah and come “simultaneously with a ceasefire in Gaza”.

Biden said the United States, Israel’s top military supplier, was working to “rally the rest of the world and our allies” to prevent the fighting from spreading even further.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a Gaza truce and secure the release of 97 hostages still held in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Israeli fire early Saturday killed at least 12 people in Gaza, said a hospital medic, the civil defence agency and the Palestinian Red Crescent separately.

The Red Crescent said a child was killed in “a missile attack” that hit a makeshift displacement camp near a central Gaza school, where the Israeli military said it targeted a militant “command-and-control centre”.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry and described as reliable by the UN.

An official with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told AFP life was becoming “impossible” in Gaza, urging greater humanitarian efforts.

“As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly,” said MSF’s president for France, Isabelle Defourny, back from a mission to southern Gaza.