Important Takeaways:
- The Israeli military on Thursday warned people to evacuate a city and other communities in southern Lebanon that are north of a U.N.-declared buffer zone, signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against the Hezbollah militant group.
- Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the U.N. Security Council after the two sides fought a war in 2006.
- Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.
- The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters.
- So far, ground clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been confined to a narrow strip along the border.
- President Joe Biden said he did not expect Israel to retaliate against Iran on Thursday and rejected the suggestion that the U.S. would grant permission for such an attack.
- “First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel,” Biden said. “And nothing’s going to happen today.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s military told residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately on Thursday as it pressed on with cross-border incursions and struck Hezbollah targets in a suburb of Beirut.
- Hezbollah also carried out new strikes, targeting what it called Israel’s “Sakhnin base” for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.
- Israel says the aim of its operations in Lebanon is to allow tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from northern Israel by Hezbollah bombardments during the Gaza war to return home safely
- In Beirut’s southern suburb known as Dahiye, a dense neighborhood where Hezbollah holds sway, several explosions were heard on Thursday and several large plumes of smoke were rising after heavy Israeli strikes.
- Hezbollah said it detonated a bomb against Israeli forces infiltrating a southern Lebanese village and attacked Israeli forces near the border.
- Overnight, Israel bombed central Beirut in an attack the Lebanese health ministry said killed nine people.
- The United States has said Iran will face “severe consequences” and that it would work with Israel, while warning Iran not to act against U.S. forces in the region.
- A growing number of countries were evacuating citizens from Beirut as governments worldwide urged their citizens to get out.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel and Iran have never been closer to opening up a new and far more dangerous front in the war that has engulfed the Middle East.
- Iran threatened on Tuesday that if Israel responds with force to the nearly 200 missiles it launched on Tuesday, it will attack again.
- If that happens, Israeli officials say all options will be on the table – including strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
- Many Israeli officials point to Iran’s oil facilities as a likely target, but some say targeted assassinations and taking out Iran’s air defense systems are also possibilities.
- “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies. They will understand. We will stand by the rule we established: whoever attacks us, we will attack him,” Netanyahu said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Eight Israeli soldiers have been killed amid intense clashes in southern Lebanon after commando units were ambushed by Hezbollah fighters earlier today, the IDF has revealed.
- News of the losses came as Hezbollah declared it was ‘only the first round’ of its fight against Israel, while the IDF released video footage showing its special forces carrying out the invasion for the first time.
- Hezbollah’s media officer Mohammad Afif sought to dispel speculation that the Lebanese militant outfit had been weakened by ongoing Israeli attacks
- ‘Our forces and resistance are fully prepared to confront and resist the enemy. I tell everyone that the resistance is fine and the command and control system is fine,’ Afif declared.
- ‘What happened today in Misgav Am, Maroun al-Ras and Adaisseh today is only the beginning,’ Afif said.
- Meanwhile, Israel’s military is preparing a response to yesterday’s shocking attack by Iran that saw nearly 200 ballistic missiles streak across the Middle East and rain down on Israel last night.
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Important Takeaways:
- The White House on Tuesday said the US believes Iran is preparing an imminent ballistic missile attack against Israel.
- “The United States has indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel. We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack. A direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran,” a senior White House official said in a statement.
- “As of this moment, Israel does not perceive imminent threat from Iran,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said.
- During a short video message, Hagari said Israeli military planes are currently “scanning the sky” for any imminent threat from Iran.
- “We are on peak alert both on the offensive and the defensive,” Hagari added, warning Iran that any attack on Israel would “have consequences.” Tensions between Israel and Iran have ratcheted up significantly in recent weeks as Israel has stepped up its efforts against Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Iran-backed militant group.
- Israel on Monday launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah.
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Important Takeaways:
- Announcing the incursion in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the IDF said that “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” had begun several hours earlier.
- It said they were focused on “Hezbollah targets and infrastructure” in a number of Lebanese villages along the border that posed an immediate threat to Israeli towns on the other side of the Blue Line.
- Ground troops operating inside southern Lebanon were being assisted by air and artillery forces
- The start of the IDF’s ground offensive came some two weeks into intensified fighting with Hezbollah, and after Operation Northern Arrows was launched earlier in September to meet the recently declared war goal of bringing residents of the north back to their homes following their evacuation last October under heavy rocket fire from the Lebanese terror group.
- In its statement on Tuesday morning, the military stressed that it was “continuing to operate to achieve the goals of the war and is doing everything necessary to defend the citizens of Israel and return the citizens of northern Israel to their homes.”
- In the hours leading up to the limited raids, several European countries began pulling their diplomats and citizens out of Lebanon.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli Defense Forces carried out a “precise strike” on the central headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon
- IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the headquarters were intentionally built in the heart of the Dahieh in Beirut under residential buildings “as part of Hezbollah’s strategy of using Lebanese people as human shields.”
- Security sources in Lebanon said the attack targeted an area where top Hezbollah officials are usually based.
- It was the heaviest attack in Beirut in almost a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
- The strikes hit Beirut shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue Israel’s attacks on Iranian-backed fighters in Lebanon in a closely watched United Nations speech, as hopes faded for a ceasefire that could head off an all-out regional war.
- The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has drastically escalated over the last month as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has begun targeting the terrorist network’s hot spots and military storage units, all of which are strategically embedded within civilian villages.
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Important Takeaways:
- “There will be no ceasefire in the north,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X. “We will continue to fight against the Hezbollah terrorist organization with all our strength until victory and the safe return of the residents.”
- An Israeli warplane struck the edges of the capital Beirut, killing two people and wounding 15, including a woman in critical condition, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
- The strike killed the head of one of Hezbollah’s air force units, Mohammad Surur, two security sources said, the latest senior Hezbollah commander to be targeted in days of assassinations hitting the group’s top ranks.
- Israel has vowed to secure its north and return thousands of citizens to communities there who have evacuated since Hezbollah launched a campaign of cross-border strikes last year in solidarity with Palestinian militants fighting in Gaza.
- Israel’s airstrikes have sharply intensified since Monday, when more than 550 people were killed in Lebanon’s deadliest day since the end of a 1975-1990 civil war.
- The bombing follows attacks last week when pagers and walkie talkies exploded across Lebanon, killing scores of people and wounding thousands including Hezbollah members.
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Important Takeaways:
- A senior Israeli Air Force officer says the airstrikes carried out over the past day against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon are the most extensive the IAF has carried out in its history.
- More than 1,600 Hezbollah sites, mostly homes where weapons were stored, were struck in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley within a day, according to the IDF.
- The senior IAF officer says the widespread airstrikes are “changing the operational situation in the north, changing the reality.”
- He says Hezbollah had two main capabilities that it built up over decades: the elite Radwan Force and its arsenal of rockets, missiles, and drones.
- The top leadership of the Radwan Force, tasked with invading Israel, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday.
- Hezbollah’s rocket and drone capabilities have been targeted across Lebanon in the past day.
- The official says the IAF is working to strike “all of their rocket capabilities, all of them” and that it is “very determined” to do so.
- Hezbollah still has rocket capabilities, but they have been harmed significantly in the recent strikes, the official says.
- The official says Hezbollah has endangered Lebanese civilians twofold: first by placing the weapons in their homes, and second by telling civilians to ignore the IDF’s evacuation calls, he says.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. is sending a small number of additional troops to the Middle East in response to a sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon that has raised the risk of a greater regional war, the Pentagon said Monday.
- Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, would not say how many more forces would be deployed or what they would be tasked to do. The U.S. now has about 40,000 troops in the region.
- “In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional U.S. military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region,” Ryder said. “But for operational security reasons, I’m not going to comment on or provide specifics.”
- The State Department is warning Americans to leave Lebanon as the risk of a regional war increases.
- Ryder would not say if the additional forces might support the evacuation of American citizens if needed.
- “Given the tensions, given the escalation, as I highlighted, there is the potential for a wider regional conflict. I don’t think we’re there yet, but it’s a dangerous situation,” Ryder said.
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