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Tag: Hezbollah

  • Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s top military chief

    Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s top military chief

    • Jewish state threatens return to war with  Lebanon

    Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s highest-ranking military commander on Sunday, marking the most significant escalation between Israel and the Lebanese resistance group since the ceasefire between both sides first took effect a year ago.

    Following an airstrike on a residential apartment in the Haret Hreik neighborhood in Beirut’s southern Dahiya district, the Israeli army announced that it had killed Hassan Ali Tabtabai, describing him as “Hezbollah’s chief of staff.” Hezbollah later confirmed that Tabtabai had been killed and that he was one of its senior military commanders.

    Following the signing of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in November of last year, Israel has engaged in a series of escalating airstrikes against what it claims are Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, which have also claimed the lives of Lebanese civilians and members of the Lebanese army and security forces.

    The most recent escalation comes amid a fast-approaching “deadline” that the U.S. has set for the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah. Due to pressures from the U.S., coupled with continuous demands by Lebanese parties not to provoke a new confrontation with Israel, Hezbollah has not responded to any of Israel’s numerous violations.

    Before the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel had killed over 4,000 Lebanese citizens amid cross-border exchanges of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah. The Lebanese group had launched what it called a “support front” meant to dissuade Israel from continuing its genocidal war on Gaza. Israel then launched a wave of massive strikes on Lebanese cities in September 2024, which was preceded by the remote detonation of hundreds of pagers in Lebanon.

    But whereas that round of escalation led to the November ceasefire, the current hostilities a year later might yield different results. Deputy chief of Hezbollah’s political council, Mahmoud Qamati, told the media in front of the targeted apartment in Beirut on Sunday that “all possibilities are on the table” in answering a question regarding whether the group would respond to the Israeli strike.

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    The Israeli army also announced that it was making preparations for a wider confrontation with Hezbollah, including the strengthening of air defenses near the border with southern Lebanon.

    The assassination of Tabtabai comes after weeks of tensions concerning Hezbollah’s alleged attempt to rebuild, of which Israel has accused the group.

    Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Naim Qassem, stated earlier in November that the party had adhered to the ceasefire and withdrawn its forces from the south of the Litani River, emphasizing that the question of disarmament remained an internal Lebanese issue that should not be dictated by outside powers. Qassem warned that even if Hezbollah has not responded to Israel’s provocations in the interest of maintaining the ceasefire, “everything has a limit.”

    In the wake of Tabtabai’s assassination, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that “Israel will not allow Hezbollah to rebuild its capabilities.”

    Israel has been insisting on the disarmament of Hezbollah, which it considers a part of Lebanon’s obligations under the ceasefire agreement. Although the Lebanese army has taken control of most positions held by Hezbollah in the south of the country, Israel has been demanding, through U.S. mediators, that the Lebanese army raid southern Lebanese villages, homes, and private property.

    Meanwhile, Israel maintains five military positions in south Lebanon, from which Lebanon officially demands Israel to withdraw as part of the deal.

    In June, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack proposed a “route-map” to defuse the situation and avoid the implosion of the fragile ceasefire, based on a so-called “step-for-step” strategy in which Israel would withdraw from one of the five positions in occupies in southern Lebanon in exchange for every phase in Hezbollah’s disarmament.

    Hezbollah rejected the proposal, maintaining the position that disarmament was a purely internal Lebanese matter which could only be discussed within the framework of a larger national defence strategy.

  • Hezbollah rocket hits near Tel Aviv after Beirut airstrike

    Hezbollah rocket hits near Tel Aviv after Beirut airstrike

    Lebanon’s Hezbollah fired heavy rocket barrages at Israel yesterday, with Israeli media reporting that a building had been hit near Tel Aviv, after a powerful Israeli airstrike killed at least 20 people in Beirut the day before.

    Israel also struck Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, where intensified bombardment over the last two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in U.S.-led ceasefire talks.

    Hezbollah, which has previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it had launched two precision missiles at military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby.

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    There were no reports from Israel of damage to the sites, but broadcaster Kan showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire in Petah Tikvah, east of Tel Aviv. Footage broadcast by the medical service MDA showed cars ablaze in Petah Tikvah.

    Hezbollah fired 170 rockets at Israel yesterday, according to the Israeli military, which said many had been intercepted, but at least four people had been injured by rocket shrapnel.

     Video obtained by Reuters showed a projectile exploding on impact as it smashed into the roof of a building in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.

    Israel warned on social media that it planned to target Hezbollah facilities in southern Beirut before strikes which security sources in Lebanon said demolished two apartment blocks.

  • Hezbollah reports clash with Israeli forces in southern Lebanon

    Hezbollah reports clash with Israeli forces in southern Lebanon

    The Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement has said its fighters clashed at dawn on Wednesday with Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

    The militia added in a statement that its fighters had confronted an Israeli infantry force that had attempted to infiltrate the town of Adaisseh in southern Lebanon and forced it to retreat.

    There were casualties on the Israeli side, it claimed. The Israeli military initially did not comment on the alleged ground fighting.

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    Lebanese state news agency NNA reported that Israel’s military was shelling Adaisseh and other surrounding areas with artillery and attacking from the air.

    In several villages, Israel’s military had fired flares, which can help make combat areas more visible during overnight ground operations.

    Ground troops can also use flares to signal their location to other units or aircraft.

    (dpa/NAN)

  • Israel, Iran, Hezbollah and World War III

    Israel, Iran, Hezbollah and World War III

     In the past few weeks, and up till the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut strike, Israel has almost completely decapitated the leaderships of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. But in doing so, it has made the imminence of all-out regional war in the Middle East nearly inevitable. Shiites in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza will probably unite against Israel, deploying indiscriminate force. For the Iranian-led axis of resistance, success will, however, be qualified. Iran itself will be more calculating, undoubtedly chastened by how the ’empire’ it was attempting to carve out in the region is being taken apart. If it miscalculates, it could also become a direct victim, particularly its armament programme, including its nuclear bomb project. After the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israel learnt its lessons from the one-month war and began to prepare for the next conflict in Lebanon they knew would be unavoidable. The effort bore fruits in the manner it penetrated the Hezbollah leadership and dismantled it in a matter of weeks.

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    Iran has sounded the bugle for its regional allies to join forces in eradicating Israel. Only its allies will heed the call, perhaps taking cognisance of the Sunni-Shiite divide. The other powers in the region deeply distrust and loathe Iran’s regional ambition. While they may sound concerned about Israeli aggression, they will only pay lip service to the mustering of a countervailing force. For them, Israel wants to defend its territory, while Iran wants to be the dominant regional power influencing and meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. They will choose carefully, just as they feigned neutrality during the Iran-Iraq war. They are wary enough to know that it’s all about politics, not strictly religion or territorial dispute.

    Could the all-out war in the region lead to World War III? It is unlikely, even if the United States is sucked in. What is happening is that Iran is being baited to be destroyed, particularly if it joins the fray directly. Should it take up the gauntlet, it may in fact take Yemen down with it, but the crisis will in the end be contained. The Israeli-Gaza-West Bank-Hezbollah affair will in the years ahead recrudesce if no solution is found after this round of fighting, while the Middle East, and particularly Lebanon, will change in profound ways reminiscent of the era when the United States blundered into Iraq in the long-running Shiite-Sunni battle for regional supremacy.   

  • Fighting escalates in south Lebanon after Hezbollah fighters killed

    Fighting escalates in south Lebanon after Hezbollah fighters killed

    Two pro-Iranian Hezbollah fighters were killed  yesterday in an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon, escalating an already tense situation in the area.

    The Israeli army said it attacked members of Hezbollah in Houla in southern Lebanon.

    It added that military targets in other places along the border with Israel also struck.

    The Lebanese Health Ministry had earlier said that two people had been killed in an Israeli attack in Houla.

    Hezbollah later said, in a statement, that the dead were two of its fighters.

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    The group usually does not elaborate on when, where and how its members die.

    Hezbollah  yesterday claimed several attacks on Israeli troops and military positions in northern Israel, including a drone strike on a base and an attack on Israeli soldiers.

    Hezbollah claimed that the soldiers were trying to “infiltrate” the Lebanese border.

    Since the war in the Gaza Strip began more than eight months ago, there have been daily military confrontations between the Israeli army and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

  • Hezbollah claims victory in Lebanon vote

    Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed victory on Monday after elections it said legitimised its military branch, leaving Saudi-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri as the main loser.

    The two main protagonists of the country’s first legislative polls in almost a decade did not wait for official results to comment on the implications of a vote which was also marked by low turnout.

    Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called the vote “a great political and moral victory for the resistance option that protects the sovereignty of the country.”

    The Iran-backed Shiite movement and its allies look set to secure a parliament bloc large enough to thwart attempts for it to disarm, a longstanding demand of its political enemies.

    “The make-up of the new legislative chamber represents a guarantee and a great strength to protect this strategic choice and to protect the golden equation — the army, the people and the resistance,” Nasrallah said.

    The man who has led calls internally for Hezbollah to lay down its arms is Hariri, whose Sunni-dominated Future Movement — less dominant since it lost Saudi Arabia’s lavish support — lost a third of its seats.

    Hariri told reporters his party had won 21 seats, a drop from the 33 it controlled in the outgoing legislature.

    “We were betting on a better result,” the premier said.

    – Swing vote –

    The number of Hezbollah lawmakers in the 128-seat parliament may not increase from the current 13 but astute pre-electoral tactics have secured it enough allies to withstand challenges on strategic issues.

    “Hariri’s loss will be the distinguishing mark of these elections, which will have consequences on the battle to form a new government,” the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar daily wrote earlier on Monday.

    Hezbollah, which was created in the 1980s to fight against Israel and currently battles in Syria alongside regime forces, is listed as a terror organisation by the United States.

    The group, whose arsenal outguns the army’s does not derive its dominant status on the Lebanese scene from the ballot box but the new breakdown of parliament will increase its political legitimacy.

    Lebanon’s unique brand of sectarian-driven, power-sharing politics mean rival factions often end up in the same government, as is the case now where Hezbollah is represented in Hariri’s cabinet.

    The constitution stipulates that parliament is equally split between Muslims and Christians, whose biggest party, led by President Michel Aoun has been a Hezbollah ally.

    “The biggest swing vote will be President Aoun’s group, which will move among the other blocs. Hezbollah will benefit from the lack of a broad coalition against it,” political analyst Imad Salamey said.

    Lawmakers had extended their own mandate three times since 2009, ostensibly over security concerns linked to the war in neighbouring Syria and political divisions that led to long and crippling institutional crises.

    – Civil society –

    A higher turnout than the 49.2 percent announced overnight had been expected after the long electoral hiatus but the new pre-printed ballots used Sunday appeared to confuse some voters.

    Some voters also said the sometimes absurd web of local alliances that saw some parties work together in one district and compete in others had put them off.

    Senior political leaders, including Hariri himself and Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk whose task it was to supervise the vote, admitted that new voting rules tested for the first time had been perplexing for the electorate.

    Lebanon has often been a scene where the rivalry between the region’s two heavyweights Iran and Saudi Arabia has played out, but their political clients in this election seemed content to maintain the status quo.

    In line with the “national pact” dating from independence in 1943, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shiite.

    Nabih Berri, who heads the Shiite party Amal and was allied with Hezbollah, looks certain to keep the position of speaker he has held since 1992.

    And the Lebanese Forces party of former warlord Samir Geagea were set to score significant gains, with a projected 15 seats.

    Despite the disappointing turnout among an electorate that included around 800,000 people who were too young to vote in the previous general polls, the new electoral law that allows smaller parties to run helped a civil society list break into parliament.

    At least one of two women in the movement was expected to enter parliament, where they have pledged to extend their feisty campaign against political dynasties they charge are incompetent, self-serving and corrupt.

  • ‘Jihadists’ blamed for Hezbollah commander’s death

    Hezbollah’s top military commander in Syria, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, was killed in artillery fire by jihadists, the Lebanese group said.

    Badreddine’s death near Damascus airport was announced on Friday and initially blamed on Israel, Hezbollah’s chief enemy, the BBC reports.

    Badreddine was believed to have run all Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria since 2011.

    Thousands of Hezbollah troops are supporting President Bashar al-Assad.

    This has pitted it against several groups of anti-Assad rebels – from so-called Islamic State (IS) to the al-Nusra Front.

    Without naming any group, the Hezbollah statement said: “Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus International Airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups in the area.”

    Takfiri is used to describe militants who believe Muslim society has reverted to a state of non-belief.

  • Top Hezbollah commander Badreddine killed in Syria

    The man believed to be Hezbollah’s most senior military commander in Syria’s war has been killed in Damascus.

    Mustafa Amine Badreddine died in a large explosion near Damascus airport, the Lebanon-based militant group said in a statement on its al-Manar website.

    Badreddine is charged with leading the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, in Beirut in 2005, the BBC reports.

    Hezbollah supports Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has sent thousands of fighters into Syria.

    The United States treasury, which imposed sanctions on Badreddine last July, said at the time he was “responsible for Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria since 2011, including the movement of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon to Syria, in support of the Syrian regime.”

    Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV had earlier said that Badreddine, 55, died in an Israeli air strike. Israel has not commented on the claim.

    Announcing Badreddine’s death, Hezbollah said in an initial statement: “He took part in most of the operations of the Islamic Resistance since 1982,” referring to the group’s military wing.

    The second statement, on al-Manar’s website, said: “The investigation will work on determining the nature of the explosion and its causes and whether it was a result of an air, missile or artillery attack.

    “We will announce further results of the investigations soon.”

    Al-Manar said he would be buried in Beirut on Friday afternoon.

  • Key Lebanese militant killed in Syria

    Key Lebanese militant, Samir Qantar, has been killed in a rocket strike near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Hezbollah has said.

    The Lebanese Shia militant group blamed Israel for the air strike, the BBC reports.

    Qantar was jailed in Israel in 1979 for a notorious deadly attack, and freed as part of a controversial prisoner swap with Hezbollah in 2008.

    An Israeli minister welcomed his death but did not confirm that Israel was responsible.

    When asked about Israeli involvement, Construction and Housing Minister, Yoav Gallant, told Israel Radio: “I am not confirming or denying anything to do with this matter.”

    But he added: “It is good that people like Samir Qantar will not be part of our world.”

    Qantar was known as the “dean of Lebanese prisoners” for the time he spent imprisoned in Israel.

    He was convicted of murder over an attack on a civilian apartment block in Nahariya in 1979, carried out when he was 16.

    Two policemen, a man and his four-year-old daughter were killed. A baby girl was accidentally smothered by her mother as she hid in a cupboard.

    He was accused of killing the four-year-old girl with a rifle butt, which he denied.

    His release in 2008 in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in 2006 was highly controversial.

    Qantar is believed to have become a key figure in Hezbollah since his release.

  • Explosion hits near Hezbollah base in East Lebanon

    A car bomb packed with explosives detonated near a Hezbollah base in eastern Lebanon Tuesday causing several casualties, officials said, the latest in a wave of deadly attacks that have targeted the Shiite militant group’s interests in Lebanon.

    However, there were conflicting reports on the source of the pre-dawn explosion and the number of casualties resulting from the blast in the remote, scarcely inhabited area was not immediately clear.

    Hezbollah agents cleared the open field around the area and sealed it off for hours following the blast, making it difficult to establish what had happened.

    Hours after the attack, at least four badly damaged vehicles, including the charred, twisted wreckage of an overturned jeep, lay strewn across the rocky field, where spots of blood mixed with patches of snow.

    It was the first such attack against a Hezbollah outpost in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa region, following a spate of bombings that targeted Hezbollah strongholds south of the Lebanese capital.

    Later Tuesday, three rockets hit just outside the northeastern region of Hermel, also a Hezbollah stronghold, without causing any damage, residents said.

    The bombing appeared to be related to a series of reprisal attacks over Hezbollah’s role in the civil war in neighboring Syria, where members of the group are fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s troops. It has received threats of retaliation from the largely Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad, and Sunni extremist groups have claimed responsibility for bombings in the past few months that have killed dozens.

    The Lebanese National News Agency said the perpetrator was a suicide bomber who detonated the vehicle near the village of Sbouba in the Baalbek region, about two kilometers (a mile) from a base belonging to the Iranian-backed group. The report said the explosion caused an unspecified number of casualties among Hezbollah members and civilians.

    A Lebanese army statement and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station said the explosion was a car bomb, with Al-Manar saying the blast caused an unspecified number of casualties near a “rotation outpost” for Hezbollah fighters.

    The station said a Hezbollah convoy of five cars was headed to the base when the group spotted a vehicle parked nearby and grew suspicious. They said several people were killed when they got out of their cars and the vehicle was detonated remotely.

    Hezbollah has been instrumental in helping Assad’s forces seize opposition-held areas in Syria, particularly in areas along the border with Lebanon and near Damascus.

    The group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to continue fighting in Syria for as long as it takes to defeat what he says are “takfiris” – radical Sunni groups – who pose a threat to Lebanon.

    Residents said the base referred to by Al-Manar may have been a logistical base for fighters traveling to and from Syria.

    At the site of the explosion, Lebanese army investigators picked through the debris of the convoy that had been traveling in an otherwise deserted and muddy open field.

    “I was still awake when I heard a very strong explosion,” said a resident of the closest nearby village, Sbouba.

    Hezbollah “removed the bodies of those killed before the army came in and took over,” the villager said at the scene, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

    The NNA report said the car was “intercepted” by a Hezbollah checkpoint and exploded after members of the checkpoint fired on it.

    A Lebanese security official could not confirm it was a suicide attack, however.

    Hezbollah’s participation in the civil war in Syria is highly divisive and unpopular in Lebanon, where many feel it has deviated from its original purpose of fighting Israel and that it has exposed the Shiite community to retaliation.

    The group’s open support of Assad has enraged Sunnis – both in Syria and in Lebanon – and left it with no shortage of enemies eager to strike at its strongholds and leadership.

    Most recently, on Dec. 4, gunmen assassinated a senior Hezbollah commander, Hassan al-Laqis, in the garage of his building in a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.

    Last month, two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, killing 23 people. An al-Qaida-affiliated group claimed responsibility, saying it was payback for Hezbollah’s support of Assad. At least two other car bombings have struck in the group’s bastion of support, south of the capital, in the past few months.

    The Syrian civil war has raised tensions in Lebanon’s Sunni and Shiite communities as each side lines up in support of their brethren in the conflict next door. That has fueled predictions that Lebanon, still recovering from its 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, is on the brink of descending into full-blown sectarian violence.

    In Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, there have been bloody street battles between rival sides nearly every day, with at least 12 people killed in a particularly violent outbreak of fighting two weeks ago.