The United States confirmed Monday that it is rushing additional troops to the Middle East as rapidly escalating violence between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon raised concern clashes could turn into a full-scale regional war.
Israel conducted two major waves of airstrikes on Monday, targeting over 300 Hezbollah sites. This came just a day after Israeli forces eliminated a senior Hezbollah leader and an entire class of top commanders from the terrorist organization’s elite Radwan force in Beirut.
Israel’s military says over 100 rockets have been fired into the country from Lebanon, with some landing near the northern city of Haifa.
Israel’s military said a strike on a suburb of Lebanon’s capital killed Ibrahim Aqil, a prominent Hezbollah leader.
A massive barrage of Israeli airstrikes hit Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon just after the terrorist group’s leader declared that two days of intense hybrid bombings, including the detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies targeting Hezbollah forces, amounted to a declaration of war.
Amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reiterated that the kingdom would not recognize Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Times of Israel reports. The Crown Prince made his remarks during an annual speech to the advisory Shura Council on Wednesday (September 18).
Israel has condemned an adopted United Nations resolution demanding that all Israeli forces and civilians pull out of Palestinian areas within a year. The resolution also called for an embargo on arms that Israel might use in those areas.
At least nine people have been killed and some 500 wounded in Lebanon in explosions targeting walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, deemed a terrorist organization by Israel, Israeli and Lebanese sources said Wednesday.
Amid increasingly high tensions between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, the Israeli military has announced it moved the 98th Paratroopers Division, an elite fighting battalion, from the Southern Command operating against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to the Northern Command along Israel’s border with Lebanon to face Hezbollah.
At least nine people were killed and about 2,750 wounded by exploding handheld pagers across Lebanon and Syria the Lebanese health minister has said.
At least hundreds of members of Hezbollah have been injured in southern Lebanon and the Lebanese capital, Beirut, after the handheld pagers they used to communicate exploded, Israeli and Arab sources say.
While still fighting Hamas in Gaza, Israel has told the United States that, contrary to what the Biden administration believes, an all-out war against Hezbollah in Lebanon may be necessary to ensure tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from northern Israel can return to their homes, the Jerusalem Post reports.
The Arab world was anticipating a broader regional conflict Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would inflict a “heavy price” on the Iran-aligned Houthis who control northern Yemen after they reached central Israel with a missile on Sunday for the first time.
While Israel now controversially asserts it must occupy the Philadelphi Corridor in southern Gaza to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons through it from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Egypt is reportedly in favor of deploying international Arab peacekeeping troops along this narrow stretch of land that runs alongside its border with Palestinian enclave, i24News reports.
The U.N. secretary-general has condemned Israel for attacking a school in central Gaza that killed “at least 18 people,” including staff of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Reports are emerging of an apparent Israeli Special Forces operation targeting an Iranian missile production facility in Syria that was involved in manufacturing weapons for Hezbollah according to various media sources.
Israel is understood to have been behind Sunday night’s air strikes on a target in Syria which experts believe is used to develop unconventional weapons and missiles, the New York Times reports. At least 18 people were killed and dozens injured according to Syria’s state media.
Israel’s military has released video footage of a Gaza tunnel where it says six hostages were recently killed by the Islamic Palestinian group Hamas.
While still bombarding Gaza and fighting Hamas on the ground following that Islamic terror group’s October 7 massacre against Israel, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is now “very focused” on combatting the Hezbollah Islamic terror group in Lebanon, Algemeiner reports.
Israeli negotiators believe there is now “close to zero” chance of agreeing a phased hostage-ceasefire agreement with Hamas that would see the return of 101 captives who were kidnapped to Gaza by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. Similarly, having worked to secure a new hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, the US Biden administration is understood to be “sad, upset and frustrated” at the stalling of talks.