The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced late this afternoon that it “conducted a targeted airstrike in Beirut.” Lebanese and Israeli security sources said the target of the attack was senior Hezbollah official Ali Karaki, commander of the organization’s southern sector. Karaki was chosen to replace Ibrahim Aqil as head of Hezbollah’s operations division, after Aqil was killed along with other Radwan Force commanders last Friday. Sky News Arabic reported that Karaki was killed in the airstrike, which launched six rockets that literally pulverized the building where Hezbollah’s number 3 was temporarily staying.
The IDF also said its jets struck around 800 Hezbollah-linked targets in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, according to Israeli media reports. The targets, according to the military, included missiles, launch sites, drones and facilities used by Hezbollah to hide rockets, and the Israeli military earlier urged civilians to evacuate the Bekaa Valley area, saying: “Hezbollah missiles and drones are hidden in homes in the area. We have asked civilians to evacuate for their safety.” The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that the partial death toll from Israel’s intense bombardment of southern Lebanon has risen to 182 dead and more than 700 wounded. Previously, there were 100 dead and more than 400 wounded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, attended a situation assessment at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv. During the meeting, Netanyahu said: “We are facing complex days. I promised that we would change the balance of power in the north – and that is exactly what we are doing. We do not wait for the threat, we prevent it, and we will continue to do so.” Fears are growing that the war will spread to Lebanon, where missiles and drones have been launched daily at northern Israel for a year now, but according to an Israeli military official who spoke to Haaretz, “Israel is focusing on air operations and has no immediate plans for a ground operation and that the strikes are aimed at limiting Hezbollah’s ability to launch further attacks against Israel.”
US sends more troops
The United States thinks differently, as it is currently sending additional troops to the Middle East, in response to the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and the growing risk of a wider regional conflict, as announced by the Pentagon. Spokesman Pat Ryder did not provide details on the number of additional troops or their specific tasks. Currently, the United States has already deployed 40,000 soldiers deployed in the region. Meanwhile, the US State Department has urged US citizens to leave Lebanon due to the risk of further escalation. “Given the unpredictability of the ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel and the recent explosions throughout Lebanon, including in Beirut, the US Embassy encourages US citizens to leave while commercial options are available,” the Department said. With today’s operation, Israel has virtually eliminated the military leadership of Hezbollah and now it will be interesting to see what the leader of the movement Hassan Nasrallah will do even if the options available to him.
And what do those who wanted and provoked all this with the massacres of October 7, 2023 and everything that has happened in the last year say? The Iranian president accused Israel of trying to provoke a wider war in the Middle East, stating that “the Jewish state is setting traps to involve Iran in a regional conflict of greater magnitude.” During a meeting with some media representatives, Masoud Pezeshkian declared without fear of falling into ridicule: “Iran does not want to see the current war in Gaza or the expansion of air strikes along the border between Israel and Lebanon”: And the leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar? He has been silent for at least two weeks and no one knows where he is and in the last few hours a series of speculations have spread about his fate so much so that some media are writing that he was killed. Israel is actually investigating the highly unlikely possibility that this happened, but one Israeli official told journalist Barak Ravid: “It’s all hope and speculation based on the fact that Sinwar has been unreachable for the past few weeks.” But for him, time is up.
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