The Israeli military intercepts a missile from Yemen amid rising tensions with Hezbollah, while an airstrike in Beirut kills a key Hezbollah commander
Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire with Hezbollah and is proceeding with deadly airstrikes in Lebanon, defying its biggest ally, the US, amid mounting fears of an all-out regional war.
The US and France earlier sought to keep prospects alive for an immediate 21-day truce they proposed on Wednesday. Israel responded to the ceasefire bid, saying the report about the purported directive to ease up on the fighting in the north is the “opposite of the truth.”
- Hezbollah Drone Chief Killed: An Israeli warplane struck the edges of the capital Beirut, killing two people and wounding 15, Lebanon’s health ministry said. That took deaths overnight and on Thursday to 28 and over 600 since Monday. The strike killed the head of one of Hezbollah’s air force units, Mohammad Surur, Hezbollah said, the latest senior Hezbollah commander to be targeted in days of assassinations among the group’s top ranks.
- Netanyahu’s Snub: Ahead of his speech at the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday said the report about a ceasefire is incorrect. “This is an American-French proposal that the Prime Minister has not even responded to. The report about the purported directive to ease up on the fighting in the north is the opposite of the truth,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on X. “The Prime Minister has directed the IDF to continue fighting with full force,” it added.
- IDF Intercepts Missile From Yemen: The Israeli military said Thursday it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, as its ongoing bombardment of Hezbollah in Lebanon raised fears of all-out war in the Middle East. Sirens went off in several areas of central Israel “as a result of a missile that was fired from Yemen”, the Israeli Defense Forces said on messaging platform Telegram. “The missile that was fired from Yemen was successfully intercepted by the ‘Arrow’ Aerial Defense System. Sirens and explosions were heard following the interception and falling shrapnel,” it added.
- Support For Lebanon and Hezbollah: The leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said in a televised address earlier Thursday the Iran-backed group “will not hesitate to support Lebanon and Hezbollah” as cross-border fire between the Lebanese group and Israel intensified. Since November, the Houthis have targeted Red Sea shipping with drones and missiles, saying the actions are in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza war which was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Israel this month said it was shifting its military’s focus from Gaza to Hamas ally Hezbollah.
- ‘We will not leave’: Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas called Thursday on the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel in order to halt bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas said that Washington continued to provide diplomatic cover and weapons to Israel for its war in Gaza despite the mounting death toll there, now at 41,534 according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip.
- Mahmoud Abbas used the rostrum of the UN General Assembly as he typically does — to criticise Israel. But this was the first time he did so since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel that triggered an Israeli military operation that has devastated the Gaza Strip. Abbas strode to the podium to loud applause and a few unintelligible shouts. His first words were a sentence repeated three times: “We will not leave. We will not leave. We will not leave.”
- Lebanon Escalation: Before this week, the cross-border exchanges had killed about 600 people in Lebanon, and about four dozen people in Israel, roughly half of them soldiers and the rest civilians. The fighting also forced tens of thousands to flee homes on both sides of the border. Israel says its escalated strikes across Lebanon the past week are targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and other military infrastructure. Since Monday, strikes have killed more than 690 people in Lebanon, around a quarter of them women and children, according to local health authorities.
- The campaign opened with what is widely believed to be an Israeli attack on Sept. 18 and 19 detonating thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, killing at least 39 people and maiming thousands more, including civilians. Hezbollah in turn has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. Several people in Israel have been wounded. On Wednesday, the group fired on Tel Aviv for the first time with a longer-range missile that was intercepted.
(With agency inputs)
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