War in the Middle East
Updated on December 27, 2023, 11:06 p.m
Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in Kfar Kila, Lebanon.
© dpa / Ali Hashisho/XinHua/dpa
There are serious clashes on the border between Israel and Lebanon. There are already victims to mourn on both sides. Concerns about an expansion of the conflict are growing. The day at a glance.
Growing tensions between Israel and the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon are increasing concerns about further escalation in the Middle East. According to media reports, three people were killed in an Israeli attack on a Lebanese border town on Wednesday night. Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, claimed responsibility for new rocket attacks on Israel. Meanwhile, the death toll in the Gaza Strip continued to rise. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the Gaza war as a “war of extermination” and made serious accusations against the USA.
Offensive in the north is getting closer
The Israeli military is increasingly ready to significantly expand the fight against the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Today we approved a number of plans for the future and we must be ready for an offensive if necessary,” Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi said on Wednesday during a visit to the army command in the northern Israeli city of Safed. “The Israel Defense Forces and its Northern Command are at a very high level of readiness,” he added.
Since the attack by the Islamist Hamas, which operates from the Gaza Strip, on the border area in southern Israel on October 7th, the Israeli military has been engaged in constant battles with Hezbollah units in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah fired rockets at the Israeli border town of Kiriat Shmona on Wednesday. Israeli police said several buildings were damaged. People were therefore not injured. At the beginning of the Gaza war, the authorities brought tens of thousands of residents of the northern region into the interior of the country for security reasons. Israeli attacks on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon left three people dead on Wednesday, including a Hezbollah fighter, the Lebanese news agency NNA reported.
The fighting since the beginning of October represents the worst military confrontation in this location since the second Lebanon war in 2006. But experts say they still follow certain unspoken rules. Both sides have so far avoided further escalation. Hezbollah, which is equipped by Iran, essentially controls the government in Lebanon and has a missile arsenal that threatens Israel. The Jewish state, in turn, is militarily capable of inflicting untold damage on Lebanon.
Hamas authority: Death toll in Gaza war rises to 21,100
According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, 21,110 people have been killed in the coastal strip since the start of the Gaza war. More than 55,200 Palestinians were injured. A spokesman said on Wednesday that 195 people were killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip within 24 hours alone. The numbers cannot be independently verified. The Gaza war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel’s history, which terrorists from the Islamist Hamas and other groups carried out in Israel on October 7th.
Report of numerous deaths in attack near clinic in Khan Yunis
A suspected Israeli attack on a building near a hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip was reported to have left many dead on Wednesday. A spokesman for the Hamas-controlled health authority spoke of 20 dead and dozens injured. The Palestinian emergency service Red Crescent also wrote on Platform X that an attack on a residential building near Al-Amal Hospital left dozens dead and injured. All information could not initially be independently verified.
Despite international criticism and warning words from its ally the USA, Israel is stepping up its military operation in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army continued its attacks on targets in the Palestinian territory. Israel’s army chief Herzi Halevi said the war would “last many more months.”
Abbas: War in Gaza is “more than a war of extermination”
According to Palestinian President Abbas, the Gaza war is “more than a war of annihilation.” In an interview with Egyptian television channel ON on Tuesday evening, he said: “Our people have never experienced such a war, not even the Nakba disaster of 1948.” The term Nakba (catastrophe) refers to the flight and expulsion of Palestinians in the first Middle East war in 1948. At the same time, Abbas blamed the USA for the continuation of the war: “Whenever the world, the (UN) Security Council and the General Assembly… “If we want to stop the war, the United States vetoes it and refuses to end the war.” If the US wanted, it could persuade Israel to end the war. Everything that is currently happening is happening with the support of the USA.
Iran’s defense minister threatens Israel after killing general
Iran’s defense minister threatened retaliation after the killing of a high-ranking general in Syria. “At the right time and in the right place, we will give a powerful answer to the weak Zionist enemy (Israel),” Mohammed-Reza Ashtiani said on Wednesday, according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim.
On Monday, Iranian General Sejed-Rasi Mousavi, a senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus. (dpa/cgo)
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