Israel widens strikes on Hezbollah as it weighs Iran retaliation
Iran renews its pledge to respond to Israel ahead of any potential attack
Jerusalem: Israel widened its strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon Saturday as the government weighed its options on how to retaliate against Iran for a missile strike earlier this week.
The Israel Defence Forces said on Saturday its air force attacked Hezbollah infrastructure across Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, adding to days of airstrikes. The attacks came as the Haaretz newspaper in Israel reported the military was preparing for a "significant" attack on Tehran after it fired about 200 missiles on Israel targets earlier this week. Gideon Saar, a member of Israel's security cabinet, said late Saturday the country has several options to retaliate against Iran but has yet to decide on what steps it will take.
"Several options are being considered. A decision on the matter has yet to be made," Saar told Channel 12 TV, while reiterating the government's position that there would be reprisal.
'Our response will be stronger and harsher'
Ahead of any potential attack, Iran renewed its pledge to respond to Israel and downplayed the prospects of a potential cease-fire between Hamas and Hezbollah - widely regarded as Iran's proxies - and Israel.
"Our response to any Israeli aggression will be stronger and harsher and they can test us if they want to," Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Damascus after talks with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. He refused to give details on any cease-fire efforts, adding that it's "not time" to get into those details.
A wider conflict
The risk of a wider conflict in the region has soared since Israel ramped up its attacks on Hezbollah in recent weeks, detonating pagers and walkie-talkies, targeting the militant group's commanders and sending troops into south Lebanon for the first time since a 2006 war.
Saturday's attack struck a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon for the first time, the Associated Press reported, and two senior officials with Hamas were killed in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Western allies have been racing to shape Israel's response to Iran's missile barrage this week. US President Joe Biden, on Friday acknowledged that Israel would respond in some fashion, while seeking to discourage Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a strike on Iranian oil facilities. The US president had previously said Israel shouldn't strike Iran's nuclear facilities either.
'Our homes are gone'
Hezbollah said Saturday its fighters were confronting Israeli troops in Lebanon's southern border region, where the Israeli military said it struck militants inside a mosque.
The Israeli military said its forces were engaged in "limited, localised" raids in southern Lebanon, though the scale of their operations was not immediately clear.
The army reported frequent rocket fire from Lebanon, some of which was intercepted by air defences, as Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel's Ramat David air base, some 45 kilometres from the frontier.
In the first reported Israeli air strike on the northern Tripoli region in the current flare-up, Palestinian militant group Hamas said "Zionist bombardment" of the Beddawi refugee camp killed one of its commanders, Saeed Attallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.
In downtown Beirut, Ibrahim Nazzal, who is among hundreds of thousands displaced by the violence, said: "We want the war to stop... all our homes are gone."
Arriving in Lebanon, the head of the UN's refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, said "Lebanon faces a terrible crisis" and warned "hundreds of thousands of people are left destitute or displaced by Israeli air strikes".
Contact lost with Hezbollah top figure
Strikes in recent weeks have taken out much of the Hezbollah command, including leader Hassan Nasrallah. An attack late Thursday on the suburbs of Beirut had targeted Nasrallah's potential successor, Hashim Safi Al Din. While neither the militant group nor the Israeli army has confirmed whether he had been killed. Safi Al Din has been out of contact since Friday, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing Lebanese security sources.
"We must continue to apply pressure on Hezbollah and do additional and continual damage to the enemy, without concessions and without respite for the organisation," the IDF's chief of the general staff Herzi Halevi said Saturday in a statement posted to Telegram.
Israel said its actions in Lebanon are necessary to end a year of cross-border rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which undertook the campaign in response to Israel's war against Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attack. Ahead of the one-year mark of the start of the conflict, the IDF on Saturday warned Palestinians to evacuate along the strategic Netzarim corridor in central Gaza, AP reported.