Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged for the first time, on Sunday, November 10, having given the green light to the pager attack against Hezbollah in September, his spokesman, Omer Dostri, announced to Agence France-Presse (AFP). ).
In his speech during the Council of Ministers, Netanyahu claimed to have authorized this operation that had not been previously claimed.
Booby-trapped transmission devices (pagers, walkie-talkies) used by Hezbollah members were exploded on September 17 and 18 in the southern suburbs of Beirut, as well as in southern and eastern Lebanon, strongholds of the movement. Islamist. These explosions left 39 dead and nearly 3,000 injured, according to Lebanese authorities.
If this spectacular operation bore the mark of Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Israel had never openly commented on it.
Forty-one dead on Sunday in Lebanon
On Sunday, the Israeli army continued its attacks in Lebanon, killing at least forty-one people. In the center-west of the country, the Israeli Air Force attacked the town of Aalmat, in the region of Jbeil (Byblos), “causing twenty-three deaths, including seven children, and six injuries”the Ministry of Health specified, adding that the number of victims is likely to increase even further, “human remains” having been pulled from the rubble. The attack targeted a house, shortly after the arrival of a Hezbollah member who had come to visit the displaced, a security source told AFP, adding that he had succumbed to his injuries in hospital.
At least twelve people were killed in the east, during attacks in the Baalbeck region, and another three in the village of Al Qasr, in the Hermel region, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced. The Baalbeck region, where Hezbollah is heavily present, has been periodically bombed by Israel for several days, forcing thousands of residents to flee.
In the south of the country, three Hezbollah-affiliated rescue workers were killed in a bombing of their center in Adloun, according to the ministry.
At least nine people, including a Hezbollah commander in Syria, were killed on Sunday in an Israeli attack on an apartment belonging to members of the Lebanese movement south of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
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In support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah confronted Israel on October 8, 2023, firing daily into Israeli territory from southern Lebanon.
These hostilities degenerated into open war on September 23, with a campaign of intense Israeli attacks, mainly against the strongholds of the Lebanese movement, to which was added, from September 30, a ground offensive. More than 2,700 people have died in Lebanon since September 23, most of them civilians, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
Twenty-five dead in Jabaliya, Gaza
The conflict also continues in the Gaza Strip, where an Israeli bombardment hit a house at dawn, in Jabaliya, north of the enclave, one of the most densely populated areas of the Palestinian territory. According to the Palestinian civil defense, thirteen children were killed in this bombing, which left at least twenty-five dead in total.
The building was razed, an AFP correspondent at the scene confirmed. The attack occurred around 6 in the morning (5 in the morning, in Paris) “at a time when the residents here wake up and have breakfast”testified one of the few surviving relatives. “There was a huge explosion to the point that, when we arrived, all the bodies were in pieces.”he added.
For its part, the Israeli army claimed that it had attacked a site in an area of Jabaliya “where the terrorists operated”representative “a threat” for his troops. “Prior to the attack, numerous measures were taken to limit the risk of harming civilians.”a military spokesman told AFP. According to a relative interviewed by AFP, people who were protecting themselves from the bombings lived in the house.
In a statement, Hamas condemned the “massacre” of Jabaliya, stating that the house “It was filled with more than fifty innocent civilians.”. The majority were children and women, including people “who had been forcibly displaced by the occupation of the Jabaliya refugee camp”according to the Palestinian movement.
Another Israeli attack hit a house in Gaza City, also in the north, killing five people, according to the civil defense.
Since October 6, Israeli troops have been carrying out an air and ground offensive against the northern Gaza Strip, particularly in Jabaliya, where Hamas is seeking, according to them, to regroup its forces.
Since the start of the war, Israel has besieged the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents, most of whom have been displaced and are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.
“A large proportion of the more than two million people suffer from acute malnutrition and live in unimaginable conditions”lamented German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Sunday.
