• Lebanon says over 2,000 killed by Israeli aggression in around one year
• Iran and its allies will keep fighting, vows Khamenei
• Israeli airstrike in occupied West Bank claims 18 lives, including five of same family

BEIRUT / JERUSALEM: With Israel poised to attack Iran, having already blindsided friends and foes alike with its blitz against Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, all the talk is of an inexorable slide towards a new, pan-Middle Eastern war.

The Israeli military launched a wave of strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people over the course of one year, the Lebanese health ministry said. The attacks have forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic crisis.

Yet brakes remain to halt a regional fall into a wider conflagration that would lock Tel Aviv and Tehran into escalating conflict and suck in other nations.

Israel is unlikely to hesitate from launching a retaliatory attack on Iran in the coming days after Tehran sent about 180 ballistic missiles its way earlier this week.

However, experts suggest it is less likely to hit the oil facilities that underpin Iran’s economy, or its nuclear sites. These highly sensitive targets would be expected to draw an escalated Iranian response including the potential targeting of the oil production sites of US allies in the region.

But even as he defended his country’s missile strike on its arch-foe, Iran’s supreme leader vowed in a rare address on Friday that his allies around the region would keep fighting Israel.

Speaking days ahead of the first anniversary of the Oct 7 attack that triggered unprecedented Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip and drew global condemnation, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei defended Hamas’ “logical and legal” actions and hailed its “fierce defence” against Israeli forces.

Khamenei’s address came as Israel turned its sights once again on Palestinian territories, carry out a deadly airstrike in the occupied West Bank that killed at least 18 people.

Although officials claimed to have targeted senior Hamas commander Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, the strike in Tulkarm refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the area, destroyed a coffee shop and the three-storey building that housed it.

The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago, and one of the biggest since the second “intifada” uprising two decades ago.

Palestinian emergency services said at least 18 people had died in all, including a family of five in an apartment in the same building. “What happened in Tulkarm camp is just a thumbnail image of what is happening in the Gaza Strip: targeting civilians, women, elders and children, also killing them in cold blood,” said Faisal Salameh, head of the camp refugee council.

In Lebanon, Israeli bombardment has put three hospitals out of service, and on Friday, a first delivery of medical aid organised by the United Nations reached Beirut airport.

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The Israeli army on Friday said its forces had hit more than 2,000 sites during its four-day incursion into southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah positions, and claimed killing 250 of the group’s fighters during this time.

Lebanon said an Israeli strike on Friday cut off the main international road to Syria, with Israel saying that Hezbollah was transporting weapons through the country’s principal land border crossing.

US and Israeli media reports said intense bombardment overnight targeted the militant group’s potential successor, Hashem Safieddine, just a week after Nasrallah’s killing.

The Israeli military has not commented on that strike, which destroyed at least five buildings and left a huge crater in the road, an AFP photographer said.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2024