Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahusent a threatening message this Sunday to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, in which he warned that if it has not yet “understood the message” after the escalation of attacks in recent days, soon “will understand“.
“In recent days, we have inflicted on Hezbollah a sequence of shots that we did not imagine” Netanyahu said in Hebrew in a short video message. “If Hezbollah has not understood the message, I promise you that it will,” he added. Israel has dramatically stepped up its attacks on the Lebanese group this week, with at least 17 fighters, including two commanders, killed in a bombing in Beirut that also killed three minors and seven women, according to Lebanese authorities.
“We are determined to bring our northerners home safely,” Netanyahu continued, referring to the 60,000 Israelis who have remained evacuated from border communities for more than 11 months. “We will do everything you need to restore security,” he concluded.
From one o’clock in the morning this Sunday, and for several hours, Hezbollah sent “150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones“, according to a military statement, causing damage to some homes and fires in the Haifa district, among other places, without causing any casualties.
A few hours earlier, Israel had bombed 290 Hezbollah “targets” in southern Lebanon, including thousands of rocket-propelled grenades and military infrastructure, in an escalation of crossfire between the two since the start of the Gaza war.
The situation raises fears of an open war in the region, even though Hezbollah has acknowledged that it does not want to reach that point and has insisted that its attacks on northern Israel a ceasefire agreement would cease to be concluded in Gaza.
