Israel launches missile strikes on Beirut, ignoring pressure from US

Israel has launched a series of missile strikes on Lebanon’s capital Beirut for the first time in six days – as it faced pressure from the U.S. over aid to Gaza. The country’s military aimed the attacks on south Beirut today, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the idea of a ceasefire in Lebanon that would leave Hezbollah close to Israel’s border.

An AFP journalist saw black smoke billowing between buildings in the capital’s Haret Hreik area following two strikes, which hit shortly after an Israeli military order for residents to leave. Mr Netanyahu’s vow to keep fighting Hezbollah came as the United States ramped up pressure over Israel’s conduct of the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, criticising the recent bombing of Beirut and demanding more aid reach the Palestinian territory.

In a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr Netanyahu said he was ‘opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was’, according to a statement from his office. 

Mr Netanyahu and the Israeli military have insisted there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters. The statement said: ‘Prime Minister Netanyahu clarified that Israel would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this (a buffer zone) and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping.’

In a defiant televised speech, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the only solution was a ceasefire – while threatening to expand the scope of its missile strikes across Israel. ‘Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place’ in Israel, he said. Early today, Israel’s military said about 50 projectiles were fired from Lebanon at the country’s north, without any reports of casualties.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said it launched ‘a large salvo of missiles’ at the town of Safed. Israel’s military bombed several areas in southern and eastern Lebanon yesterday, including in the Bekaa Valley where a hospital in Baalbek city was put out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported. It also said it had captured three Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health ministry said nine people were killed yesterday evening in strikes on the country’s south, as well as five others in the east, including three children. Asked about Israeli air strikes in Lebanon in which residential buildings in central Beirut were hit last Thursday, the U.S. State Department voiced open criticism. ‘We have made clear that we are opposed to the campaign the way we’ve seen it conducted over the past weeks’ in Beirut, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

In a letter sent to the Israeli government on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also warned that the United States could withhold weapons deliveries unless more humanitarian aid was delivered to Palestinians in Gaza.

The letter made ‘clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today,’ Mr Miller said.

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