Israel’s incursion into south Lebanon continued on October 3 hours after a strike on an apartment building in downtown Beirut killed 9 people while a separate action in the West Bank eliminated a Palestinian militant who was once involved in the lynchings of Israeli reservists.
The Israeli Army also urged the immediate evacuation of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon including the provincial capital, Nabatieh, a move that apparently indicates the Israeli operation against Hezbollah is about to be expanded.
Hezbollah is both an armed group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon. It is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, although the European Union has only blacklisted its armed wing.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said the strike on Beirut killed 9 people, in what was the first attack on the center of the Lebanese capital since 2006 as Iran’s military warned it would launch broader strikes if the Jewish state responds to its October 1 missile attack.
Israel said its air strike on Beirut was a precise operation, while a security source said the target was an apartment building in the capital’s central district of Bachoura near the Lebanese parliament.
A Hezbollah-linked civil defense group said seven of its members, including two medics, had been killed in the Beirut attack.
A separate missile attack on a building in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil killed 15 Hezbollah members, while another strike targeted the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed last week, according to Lebanese security officials.
Hamas media and medics, meanwhile, said Israel has killed Abdel-Aziz Salha, a West Bank militant from the U.S. and EU terrorist-designated group who had once been jailed for life for taking part in the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000 but was later deported to Gaza in a prisoner swap.
Also on October 3, Israel’s military announced that it had “eliminated” Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, along with senior security officials Sameh al-Siraj and Sami Oudeh in strikes three months ago.
Earlier, an Israeli strike on Syria’s capital, Damascus, killed four people, including Hassan Jaafar al-Qasir, Nasrallah’s son-in-law, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
The latest Israeli strikes came a day after Israel reported that eight of its soldiers were killed during its incursion in south Lebanon — the deadliest day for the Israeli military since launching the cross-border raid this week.
The Lebanese Army reported on October 3 that two of its soldiers were killed over the past 24 hours by Israeli fire, while Health Minister Firass Abiad said that a total of 1,974 people have been killed, including 127 children, and 9,384 wounded since the start of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the past year.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the German and Austrian ambassadors on October 3 after their governments rebuked Tehran over its missile attack on Israel, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.
The move came in response to “unacceptable measures” by Germany and Austria in summoning Iran’s envoys over the October 1 attack.
Tehran launched a massive ballistic-missile attack on Israel on October 1, its largest so far, in retaliation for the campaign started by the Jewish state in southern Lebanon against Iran-backed Hezbollah, prompting warnings of countermeasures from Israel and its main ally, the United States.
Israeli air defenses intercepted most of the estimated 180 missiles that were fired, though some landed in central and southern Israel.
On October 2, Iran’s military chief, Major General Mohammad Bagheri said the missile attack launched by Tehran had been limited to military targets, but claimed that in case of an Israeli response, larger Iranian strikes would follow.
“If the Zionist regime is not controlled and takes action against Iran, we will target all of its infrastructure,” he said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi also said in a message on X that the attack targeted “solely military and security sites” involved in what he said was the Israeli “genocide in Gaza and Lebanon” and was conducted by Iran in “self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.”
Bagheri’s statement came after Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian also warned Israel against retaliating and promised a strong response.
“We are not looking for war. It is Israel that forces us to react,” Pezeshkian said after arriving in Qatar for a summit with Asian countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would strike back at Iran following the October 1 missile attack as fears grow of a full-blown regional war, while Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, told CNN that the response to the Iranian attack will be “very strong, painful,” and will come “soon.”
There has been speculation that Israeli might attack sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program, but U.S. President Joe Biden said he would not support that.
Biden’s comments came after he and fellow Group of Seven (G7) leaders spoke by phone on October 2 to discuss coordinating new sanctions against Iran.
The G7 leaders “unequivocally condemned Iran’s attack against Israel” and Biden reiterated the United States’ “full solidarity and support to Israel and its people,” a White House statement said.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei on October 3 thrashed the G7 statement, saying that the West’s condemnation of its attack on Israel was “biased and irresponsible.”
