Lebanon says expanded Israel airstrikes kill mayor in south

Lebanon said Israeli airstrikes on the southern town of Nabatieh killed six people including the local mayor, as Israel resumed attacks on Beirut in the latest escalation of its conflict with Hezbollah.

Interior Minister Bassam Al Mawlawi said the strikes hit a municipality building during a meeting to coordinate relief efforts for the area, adding that members of the civil defense organisation were among the dead. The Israel Defence Forces said it hit dozens of targets in the area including military warehouses, which it said were located near civilian buildings.

Israeli jets also struck Beirut for the first time in almost a week, just hours after Lebanon’s prime minister said the United States had assured him that Israeli attacks on the capital would ease. 

The air force targeted an underground weapons-storage site in the southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group that it said had fired around 50 projectiles over the border overnight.

The mounting campaign comes after the United States linked its military support to Israel to the provision of aid in Gaza, warning Israeli ministers it may by law have to limit military support if they don’t allow more help to reach the besieged Palestinian territory. Fifty trucks of aid were let into northern Gaza on Wednesday, the IDF said on X.

The US wants a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon but has no “active call” for a ceasefire there, US State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday.

At least 1,600 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel started its air campaign against Hezbollah nearly a month ago, according to health officials there. The death toll likely includes some Hezbollah fighters, although officials usually don’t differentiate between combatants and civilians.

The government also announced its first confirmed cholera case since the Israeli invasion. Lebanon reported 18 cases of cholera and two probable deaths in the north of the country in 2022, the first outbreak in nearly three decades, according to the World Health Organisation.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, Israel has told people in a quarter of Lebanon’s territory to move, with 1.2 million people displaced by the conflict. Even more – around 1.9 million – have been displaced in Gaza by the war with Hamas, another Iran-backed militant group. 

Israel has also stepped up attacks on Hamas in Gaza in recent days, and 65 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. 

Hezbollah and Hamas, whose deadly raids into Israel last year triggered the war in Gaza, are considered terrorist organisations by the United States. Israel stepped up its offensive against Hezbollah after a year of cross-border skirmishes with the group, which has been firing rockets and missiles into Israel in solidarity with Hamas.

Iran Diplomacy

Iran, the main backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah, is on a diplomatic push to gather regional support as it braces for Israel’s response to its firing of 200 ballistic missiles at the country on October 1. 

Israel and the United States have been conferring regularly on how to retaliate, a dilemma that’s jangled nerves across the Middle East and in energy markets. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the country is free to act as it chooses in a counter-strike, while Washington is urging it to avoid nuclear and energy facilities.

The Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “emphasized the need for collective action by the countries of the region” to stop Israel and prevent the expansion of the war in a meeting with his Jordanian counterpart in Amman on Wednesday, according to a ministry statement. He also plans to visit Egypt and Turkey.

Jordan helped to thwart Iran’s last missile and drone barrage against Israel, shooting down several projectiles that flew over its territory in April.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation sees an attack on the country’s nuclear sites as “very unlikely,” spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told Nour News on Wednesday, warning that it was no longer possible for such strikes to set back its atomic programme.