Smoke billows after Israeli Air Force air strikes in southern Lebanon villages, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from northern Israel, September 30, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Israeli army said on Monday (September 30, 2024) its forces “eliminated” Hamas’s leader in Lebanon, as it continued to target Iran-backed militant groups in the neighbouring country.

“Overnight … the IAF (air force) struck and eliminated the terrorist Fatah Sharif, head of the Lebanon branch of the Hamas terrorist organisation,” the military said in a statement.

Also Read: Israeli airstrike hits Lebanon on September 30, 2024 live updates

Mr. Sharif “was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives. He was also responsible for Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons,” the statement said.

“He led the Hamas terrorist organisation’s force build-up efforts in Lebanon and operated to advance Hamas’ interests in Lebanon, both politically and militarily,” it added.

Also Read: Who were the seven high-ranking Hezbollah officials killed over the past week?

Hamas said earlier on Monday that Mr. Sharif was killed in an air strike on his home in the Al-Bass camp in southern Lebanon. The group said he was killed with his wife, son and daughter in a “terrorist and criminal assassination”.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported an air strike on Al-Bass near the city of Tyre, saying it was the “first time” the camp had been targeted.

Mr. Sharif was also an employee of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, but in recent months he had been put on administrative leave.

“Sharif was an UNRWA employee who was put on administrative leave without pay in March, and was undergoing an investigation following allegations that UNRWA received about his political activities,” the agency told AFP in a statement.

“During the day he was the president of the UNRWA teachers union, and at night he was the leader of Hamas in Lebanon,” an Israeli military spokesman told AFP.

Hezbollah confirmed Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of the militant group’s Central Council, was killed Saturday, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader slain in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. They include founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades.

Hezbollah had earlier confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in Friday’s strike that killed Nasrallah. Israel says at least 20 other Hezbollah militants were killed, including one in charge of Nasrallah’s security detail.

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A surface-to-surface missile that was launched from Yemen towards Israel is intercepted by Israel’s Arrow system outside of Israeli territory according to the Israeli military, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, September 27, 2024
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel’s military says it has intercepted a missile fired from Yemen that set off air raid sirens across the country’s centre.

Air raid sirens rang out across Israel’s populous central area, including the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv.

Also read: Israel-Hezbollah conflict: All you need to know about the escalating cross-border tension

Another missile from Yemen landed in central Israel about two weeks ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday (September 26, 2024) vowed to carry out “full force” strikes against Hezbollah until it ceases firing rockets across the border, dimming hopes for a ceasefire proposal put forth by US and European officials.

Israel carried out a new strike in the Lebanese capital, which killed a senior Hezbollah commander, and the militant group launched dozens of rockets into Israel. Tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese people living near their countries’ border have been displaced by the fighting.

Netanyahu spoke as he landed in New York to attend the annual U.N General Assembly meeting, where US and European officials were putting heavy pressure on both sides of the conflict to accept a proposed 21-day halt in the fighting to give time for diplomacy and avert all-out war.

Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week as Israel dramatically escalated strikes, saying it is targeting Hezbollah’s military capacities. Israeli leaders say they are determined to stop the group’s cross-border attacks, which began after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

Israel’s “policy is clear,” Netanyahu said. “We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force. And we will not stop until we reach all our goals, chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.” Just before his comments, the Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah drone commander, Mohammed Hussein Surour, in an airstrike in the suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah later confirmed Surour’s death.

The Health Ministry said two people were killed and 15 wounded in the strike. Associated Press photos of the scene showed a gutted apartment in a residential building in Dahiyeh, the mainly Shiite suburb where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Until recently, Israel had rarely targeted sites in Beirut during the low-level conflict with Hezbollah that has been ongoing since October. However, in the past week, Israel has struck Beirut’s southern suburbs several times.

Over the past week, Israel has carried out several strikes in Beirut targeting senior Hezbollah commanders. One strike in eastern Lebanon on Thursday killed 20 people, most of them Syrian migrants, according to Lebanese health officials.

Israel hit 75 sites early Thursday across southern and eastern Lebanon and launched a new wave of strikes in the evening, the military said. Throughout the day, Hezbollah fired some 175 projectiles into Israel, the Israeli military said. Most were intercepted or fell in open areas, sparking some wildfires, though one rocket hit a street in a town near the northern city of Safed.

Israel has talked of a possible ground invasion into Lebanon to drive Hezbollah — an Iranian-backed Shiite group that is the strongest armed force in Lebanon — away from the border. It has moved thousands of troops to the north in preparation. Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the past week, streaming into Beirut and points further north.

Israeli military vehicles transported tanks and armored vehicles toward the country’s northern border with Lebanon a day after commanders issued a call-up of reservists. Several tanks arrived in Kiryat Shmona, a hard-hit town just several miles from the border.

The escalation has raised fears of a repeat – or worse – of the 2006 war between the two sides that wreaked destruction across southern Lebanon and other parts of the country and saw heavy Hezbollah rocket fire on Israeli cities.

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday over the pager blasts in Lebanon targeting militant group Hezbollah, said Slovenia’s U.N. Ambassador Samuel Zbogar, president of the 15-member council for September.

The meeting was requested by Algeria on behalf of Arab states, he said.

Earlier today, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the pager blasts targeting Hezbollah indicate “a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon and everything must be done to avoid that escalation.”

“Obviously the logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a pre-emptive strike before a major military operation,” he told reporters ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly.

He also said that it was very important not to weaponize civilian objects. Guterres “urges all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric later said in a statement.

– Reuters