The sky over Tel Aviv reverberated throughout the night and day as fighter planes headed for Lebanon passed. As many as 250 Air Force military jets, according to the army, took off between Monday and Tuesday from the Tel Nof military base in central Israel and others in the Golan to hit the arsenal with which Hezbollah has been attacking Israel for 354 days north of the country and the Haifa area, with two million residents.
The mass flight of Lebanese from the south has already driven 20,000 people away from home, according to the country’s authorities. The media showed the population in endless queues on the roads to safer places. While the victims of the raids, according to a toll provided by Beirut, have risen to 558, “including 50 children”. Two staff members of the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, were also killed: it was announced by general director Filippo Grandi on X, criticizing the Israeli air strikes which are “reaping hundreds of civilian victims”.
In the early afternoon the IAF targeted a residential building in south Beirut, in the Rabiri area, headquarters of the party of God. Three floors of a building were pulverized, the target was the military commander of the missile unit and rockets from the Shiite group Ibrahim Qubaisi. Also responsible, according to Jerusalem, for the attack in 2000 in which three IDF soldiers were killed and kidnapped, whose bodies were returned in an exchange in 2004. With today’s attack, there have been five attacks in Beirut since the beginning of the war. Qubaisi was in a meeting with other military leaders, they are probably dead too. Speaking to the UN General Assembly, in his last speech as president, Joe Biden declared that “a diplomatic solution is still possible between Israel and Hezbollah”, adding that “Hezbollah, without being provoked, after the October 7 massacre, fired rockets into Israel: Nearly a year later, too many on both sides of the border remain displaced.” Then he retraced the Hamas atrocities of October 7, from the rapes to the boys killed at the festival, and invited Netanyahu and Hamas to accept the truce agreement and release of the hostages. Previously, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in New York for the United Nations assembly, spoke to CNN explaining that the party of God “cannot remain alone” against Israel: “We must not allow Lebanon to become a ‘another Gaza,'” he said.
Same sentence pronounced by UN Secretary Antonio Guterres in front of the assembly: “The world cannot afford for Lebanon to become another Gaza“. Where, however, today the fighting continued. With the IDF making it known that it had hit terrorists armed with rocket launchers, while Hamas explained that they were “9 civilians”. Meanwhile, Hassan Nasrallah’s militiamen, despite the enormous losses , they did not stand by and watch. During the day they fired a total of 270 rockets over the Galilee and the Haifa area, claiming responsibility for the launches. In an evening report, the IDF for its part said that around 400 rocket launchers had been destroyed since yesterday morning. medium-range weapons, 70 weapons depots and 80 drones and cruise missiles available to Hezbollah. Over 1,500 targets were hit in 200 different areas of the Cedar Country, firing approximately 2,000 devices.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shortened his trip to America and will speak to the UN on Thursday and not Friday, strongly warned: “Israel will continue to strike Hezbollah. Our war is not against the Lebanese – with whom we want to live in peace – but against Nasrallah’s terrorist organization. It’s taking you to the edge of the abyss,” he continued. “I told you to evacuate the houses where they put a missile in the living room and a rocket in the garage. Whoever has a missile in the living room and a rocket in the garage will no longer have a home.” Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi added: “We must not give the Shiite group any respite, we will accelerate offensive operations.”
The escalation prompted 16 airlines still operating to Tel Aviv to suspend flights, including Lufthansa, Iberia and British Airways. In the evening the attacks on Israel resumed: three drones targeted Mount Carmel in Haifa. Not all were killed.