Israel and Hezbollah traded barrages of attacks again on Tuesday, a day after massive Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed more than 500 people, raising fears of a full-scale war.
Six people were killed in a new Israeli air strike targeting a Hezbollah leader in Beirut on Tuesday, security sources said. ReutersWhile the Iran-backed group He said The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) fired a barrage of rockets at a military base and a city in northern Israel.
The cross-border bloodshed has dramatically heightened fears that the United States, an ally of Israel, and Iran could become embroiled in a larger regional conflict nearly a year after Israel’s war against Hamas – another group backed by Tehran – in Gaza.
Asked whether Iran would advise Hezbollah to act with restraint, President Masoud Pezeshkian said: CNN Islamic countries must come together to “formulate a response” to what is happening, and this seems to indicate that Iran is ready to join this effort.
“We should not allow Lebanon to become another Gaza at the hands of Israel,” Pezeshkian said, according to the network’s translation of his comments. “Hezbollah cannot do this alone. Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is defended, supported and supplied by Western countries, European countries and the United States of America.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said separately on Tuesday that the Biden administration had seen moments since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel where concerns about the potential for a “broader regional conflict” had “escalated.”
“Prices went up in the days following Oct. 7,” Sullivan said. MSNBC“It spiked again in April when Iran fired 300 missiles and drones and we were able to repel that attack. Now it’s spiked again — but we managed to avoid it in those previous spikes and I think we can still find a way forward to de-escalate … across that northern border between Israel and Lebanon, and find a diplomatic solution that allows people to return home.”
But so far diplomatic attempts to ease recent tensions in the region appear to have had little effect. A massive Israeli bombardment of Lebanon on Monday killed some 560 people, according to Lebanese officials, the country’s deadliest single-day loss of life since Hezbollah’s war with Israel in 2006. Some 2,000 others were wounded, and tens of thousands fled their homes in search of safety.
The strikes came a week after Hezbollah suffered heavy losses when its members’ radios and pagers across Lebanon exploded in a devastating attack. The group blamed Israel for the operation — the most serious security breach in Hezbollah’s history. Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Hezbollah’s media office claimed Tuesday that Israel dropped leaflets containing a “very dangerous” barcode on Lebanon, which if scanned, would “pull all information” from any device, according to Reuters.
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