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2024-10-04 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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IDF officer killed in Lebanon; strike hits Hezbollah commander behind rocket attack on kids
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[IsraelTimes] IDF warns Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah smuggling Iranian arms through civilian border posts; IDF chief vows to keep Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon border area for the future
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday stepped up its offensive on southern Lebanon, warning it was determined to stop Iran from resupplying the Lebanese terror group with arms through border crossings and promising that it would keep Hezbollah out of the southern Lebanon border area for the future.
The army broadened its ground operation and also conducted waves of airstrikes at Hezbollah targets, including eliminating a top commander responsible for killing 12 children in a rocket strike on Israel earlier in the year.
The Iran-backed group responded by firing more than 200 rockets into northern Israel on Thursday, keeping residents near bomb shelters.
The military also announced the death of an officer killed during fighting in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, bringing the IDF’s toll in the ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to nine. He was named as Cpt. Ben Zion Falach, 21, of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion, from Nitzanei Oz. Falach was killed in a separate incident on Wednesday, and not in the battles in which eight other soldiers were killed.
The IDF on Thursday accused Hezbollah of smuggling Iranian weapons through Lebanon’s Masnaa Border Crossing, which tens of thousands have used to flee to Syria in recent days. Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, said that since the military struck other border crossings between Lebanon and Syria last week, which were used by Hezbollah to smuggle arms, the terror group began to use Masnaa as its main route for weapon shipments. The terror group has also been attempting to repair the other damaged crossings following the Israeli strikes, according to the IDF.
Adraee said that this past week, the IDF struck a truck ferrying “sensitive weapons” to Hezbollah via one of the crossings. The IDF published footage of the strike. The military warned that it would not allow weapon shipments to Hezbollah via the civilian crossing.
“The state of Lebanon is responsible for its official border crossings and its ability to prevent Hezbollah from [using] these crossings. The IDF urges the Lebanese state to carry out a strict inspection of the trucks passing through the civilian crossings and to return the trucks and vehicles containing weapons to Syria,” Adraee said.
“If necessary, [the IDF] will not hesitate to act, just as it has done during the entire war,” he added.
Pushing back on the allegations, Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamiya, a member of Hezbollah, said that all border crossings with Syria were being secured according to international law.
VERY DETERMINED
Also Thursday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi vowed the military will not allow Hezbollah to re-establish itself in southern Lebanon.
“Today I met the commanders and troops of the 98th Division and 36th Division, who are fighting in Lebanon, for a very important goal: creating security in the north and returning the residents to their homes after more than a year of being evacuated,” Halevi said in a video statement from northern Israel.
“[To] return the residents, [we must] destroy the terror infrastructure that Hezbollah built near the border to raid our towns on the day that the order is given [and] kill Israeli civilians. We are very determined to destroy these infrastructures and kill whoever is there,” he continued.
“We will not allow Hezbollah to position itself in these places in the future. The severe blows to Hezbollah in all areas, in Beirut, in the [Beqaa] Valley, in south Lebanon, will continue,” he said.
The army said Thursday that it had killed about 60 Hezbollah operatives in the previous day, including a commander responsible for the rocket that killed 12 children in Majdal Shams in northern Israel in July. The IDF said Khader Shahabiya, commander of Hezbollah’s Mount Dov region, was killed in an airstrike Wednesday. Shahabiya was responsible for the rocket fire on Majdal Shams and numerous other anti-tank missile and rocket attacks on IDF posts in the Mount Dov, Hermon, and northern Golan Heights area, the military added.
In addition, the IDF said it struck more than 200 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the past day, including more than 15 in the capital Beirut. The targets in Beirut included operatives in Hezbollah’s intelligence division, surveillance equipment, headquarters, weapon manufacturing sites, weapon depots, and other infrastructure, the military said.
Syria’s state-run SANA news agency also reported Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, near the capital Damascus. It said air defenses were confronting “hostile targets,” code for Israeli strikes, in the western part of the Rif Dimashq Governorate, close to the border with Lebanon. Israel rarely comments on operations in Syria.
Hezbollah on Thursday launched more than two hundred rockets and mortars, along with several drones, at northern Israel from Lebanon. There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage in the attacks. On Thursday evening, residents of the upper and western Galilee, as well as several towns in the northern Golan Heights, were ordered by the IDF to remain close to bomb shelters until further notice. Such instructions are announced fairly regularly when the military has indications of planned major rocket fire from Lebanon.
Hezbollah also said it had fended off an IDF incursion near Metula. Israel did not commented on the terror group’s claim
EVACUATIONS
Amid the fighting Thursday, the army called on civilians in 25 southern Lebanese locales to evacuate immediately and head north of the Awali River — located north of Sidon. The city of Nabatieh and other villages on the list published Thursday are located north of the Litani River — making it the first time Israel has ordered evacuations north of the body of water, which in the past has been seen as a strategic line. The military has also warned vehicles must not cross the Litani River in a southbound direction.
“Hezbollah’s activity forces the IDF to act against it. The IDF does not wish to harm you,” Adraee said in a statement on X. Similar directives were issued to more than 50 villages in the past two days.
The announcement appeared to signal that Israel would broaden the ground offensive it launched Monday night, after escalating airstrikes in the country the previous week, in a bid to end Iran-backed Hezbollah’s rocket fire on the north, which has prevented tens of thousands of northern residents from returning home after Israel evacuated them on October 7.
LEBANESE ARMY FIRES BACK
Lebanon’s army said two soldiers were killed by Israeli strikes in separate incidents in south Lebanon on Thursday, one in an attack on a military post and another in a strike on a rescue mission with the Lebanese Red Cross. Lebanon’s army said it returned fire when the military post was struck, a rare development for a force that has historically stayed on the sidelines of major conflicts between terror groups and Israel. The incident was reportedly the first time Lebanese troops have fired at Israeli forces over the past year of war.
The Lebanese Red Cross said an Israeli strike killed a Lebanese army soldier and wounded four paramedics as they were evacuating wounded people from the southern village of Taybeh, in a convoy accompanied by Lebanese troops and coordinated with United Nations peacekeepers.
An Israeli airstrike in central Beirut killed another nine people, the Lebanese health ministry said. Reuters witnesses reported hearing a massive blast, which targeted a building in the district of Bachoura a few hundred meters from parliament, the closest an Israeli strike has come to the central downtown district. A Hezbollah-linked civil defense group said seven of its staff, including two medics, had been killed in the Beirut attack.
Overnight, some 15 Hezbollah operatives holed up at the town hall of southern Lebanon’s Bint Jbeil were killed in an Israeli airstrike, the military said. According to the IDF, fighter jets struck the Bint Jbeil town hall in a joint operation with the 36th Division after several Hezbollah operatives were identified there. The military said the building was used by Hezbollah to store weapons.
In another joint operation, an IAF drone struck and killed a cell of Hezbollah operatives who were identified by troops of the 36th Division launching rockets at Israel.
On Thursday morning, two Hezbollah operatives opened fire at Golani soldiers in southern Lebanon and a short while later, artillery forces identified the pair and directed an IAF drone to strike and kill them. No soldiers were hurt in the incident, according to the IDF.
In a separate joint operation with the 98th Division, several Hezbollah operatives who launched missiles at the Ramim Ridge area on Wednesday were killed in a strike carried out by IAF fighter jets.
Meanwhile, correspondent Robin Ramaekers and cameraman Stijn De Smet, of Belgium’s VTM news outlet, were beaten up and shot at in Beirut by assailants accusing them of spying for Israel, the broadcaster said.
Since Israel escalated its airstrikes on Hezbollah Monday, more than 630 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry. At least a quarter of those killed have been women and children, according to Lebanese health officials. More than 2,000 were wounded. Israel has said that many Hezbollah operatives are among the dead.
The Lebanese government says about 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced by Israel’s attacks. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-10-04 2024-10-04 00:03||
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