Page 4 - Lebanon

Israeli strikes kill 12 in Lebanon, Iran hits Bahraini desalination plant

Israel has struck southern Lebanon and Beirut again early Sunday and killed 12 more people, the Lebanese health ministry said, as the war in the Middle East keeps escalating. Israeli officials said the strikes targeted commanders of the Lebanese branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised "many surprises" for the next phase of the conflict. Meanwhile, two border guards in Kuwait were killed when a swarm of missiles and drones hit the Gulf country. On Saturday, an Israeli attack hit an oil storage facility in Tehran, which sent up pillars of fire that could be seen in Associated Press video as a glow against the night sky. It appeared to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war. The war, which erupted on Feb 28 after joint US-Israeli strikes hit Iran, has so far killed at least 1,230 people in the Islamic Republic, more than 300 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials.

Israel renews assault on Lebanon after Netanyahu warns of 'many surprises'

Israel renewed its assault on southern Lebanon on early Sunday, including targeting commanders of the Lebanese branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised "many surprises" for the next phase of the conflict. The Israeli military said in a statement that it would "not allow Iranian terrorist elements to establish themselves in Lebanese territory." The latest strikes in Lebanon followed an Israeli attack Saturday on an oil storage facility in Tehran, which sent up pillars of fire that could be seen in Associated Press video as a glow against the night sky. It appeared to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war. State media blamed "an attack from the US and the Zionist regime" at the site that supplies the capital and neighbouring provinces in the north. Elsewhere, Kuwait authorities said two border guards were killed when the Gulf country was hit by a swarm of missiles and drones. The .

Israeli minister warns Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah or face 'heavy price'

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Saturday told residents of a northern Israeli city close to the border with Lebanon to evacuate and head south

At least 41 killed, 40 wounded in Israeli airstrikes in eastern Lebanon

Lebanese health officials said on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others in overnight Israeli airstrikes in the mountain town of Nabi Chit. The Lebanese Health Ministry offered the figure. The Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with an Israeli force that landed late Friday in the mountains of eastern Lebanon. Israel has yet to comment on the fighting there.

Israel strikes Beirut's suburbs after issuing blanket evacuation order

Israel launched a series of strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday after ordering all residents of the densely populated area to evacuate. Traffic was gridlocked in Lebanon's capital on Thursday as panicked residents tried to flee after Israel's military issued an evacuation notice telling residents to "save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately," and specified which routes they should take to escape. Hours later, strikes began to hit the Beirut suburbs. Since the resurgence of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, Israel has struck sites in Beirut's suburbs and issued a blanket warning for residents south of the Litani River - an area in southern Lebanon stretching to the border with Israel - to evacuate their homes, but had not previously issued a blanket evacuation order for Beirut's southern suburbs. After the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran triggered a new war in the Middle East, Hezbollah launched missiles and dro

At least 102 killed, over 600 injured in Lebanon in Israel-Hezbollah war

At least 102 people in Lebanon have been killed since the onset of the latest conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, Lebanon's health ministry said in a statement. At least 638 others were wounded, the ministry said Thursday. The latest conflict between the two sides was sparked by Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel early Sunday. Israel has been striking large swaths of the country in response. Chaos sown by Iran's attacks across Persian Gulf is key to its strategy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For years, Iran's theocratic government warned it would blanket the Middle East with missile and drone fire if it felt its existence was threatened. Now, it's doing just that. Since the US and Israel launched the war Saturday, Iran has unleashed thousands of missiles and drones at Israel, American military bases and embassies, and energy facilities across the Gulf. Its basic strategy is to instill fear about the

'We've just begun,' says Centcom as US, Israel intensify strikes on Iran

Israel's Defence force said that in the past 24 hours, hundreds of fighter jets and aircraft had been striking hundreds of targets simultaneously in Iran and Lebanon

Beirut strikes spark backlash against Hezbollah from Lebanon's leaders

Lebanese civilians fled the country's south and Beirut's southern suburbs Monday, seeking refuge in Lebanon's capital following a new and deadly escalation between Israel and the Iran-allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that left more than 50 people dead. The Hezbollah missile and drone attacks on northern Israel after midnight Sunday triggered waves of Israeli airstrikes and also brought the harshest criticism yet to the Iran-backed group from the country's leaders. Lebanon's Health Ministry reported at least 52 people were killed and 154 wounded in overnight strikes in the Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon. The Ministry of Education said that schools will also be closed Tuesday because of the situation. During the day, Israel's military carried out dozens of airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs as well as southern and eastern Lebanon. Shortly after sunset, an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut neighbourhood caused widespread damage and the Israeli military said it targeted a

Iranian-backed militias enter conflict as war widens across region

Iran fired missiles at Israel and Arab states Monday and the war expanded to include militias Tehran backs in the Middle East with an attack by Hezbollah on Israel, which struck back against the group in Lebanon and with the United States pounded targets in Iran. As the American and Israeli airstrikes kept hitting the country, top Iranian security official Ali Larijani said on X: "We will not negotiate with the United States." Trump, who a day earlier had encouraged Iranians to "take over" their government, signaled Sunday that he was open to dialogue with Iran's new leadership. Meanwhile, Iran's foreign minister suggested earlier that military units were acting independently from any central government control after being pressed about attacks on Gulf Arab nations that have served as intermediaries for Tehran in the past. More than 200 people have been killed since the start of the strikes that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders, Iranian .

Israeli strikes on Lebanon's capital kill 31 after Hezbollah attack

Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Lebanon's capital, Beirut, after the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired missiles across the border early Monday. It was the first time in more than a year that Hezbollah has claimed a strike against Israel. The Israeli military said it intercepted a projectile that crossed the border and that several others fell in open areas. No injuries or damage were reported. Hezbollah said in a statement that the strikes were carried out in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and for "repeated Israeli aggressions.

12 killed in Israeli strikes on Hezbollah command centres in Lebanon

The strikes were among the deadliest since the November 2024 US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon

Israeli strikes in Lebanon kill at least 12, intensifying regional tensions

At least 12 people were killed and 24 wounded - including three children - in Israeli strikes in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley Friday, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. Another two people were killed by an Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp earlier in the day. Israel said it had hit "command centers" of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in Bekaa Valley. There was no immediate statement from Hezbollah. Local television footage from the scene of one of the strikes in the Bekaa showed the targeted site appeared to be an apartment building, and emergency crews were fighting a fire and searching in the rubble for survivors. Earlier Friday, another Israeli strike had hit a Palestinian refugee camp in the port city of Sidon, killing two people. The Israeli military said it hit a "Hamas command center" in the Ein el-Hilweh camp. Hamas acknowledged that two of its members had been killed in the strike but called the claim that a command center was struck a "flimsy pretex

Cash-strapped Lebanon weighs using vast gold reserves to revive economy

Tiny Lebanon sits on one of the largest gold reserves in the Middle East and its government is weighing whether it can use that stockpile to restore a crippled economy while its citizens are looking at gold as a way to protect their battered assets. Lebanon's economy hobbled into 2026 with ongoing inflation and state decay, and no reforms to combat corruption in sight. Its banks collapsed in late 2019 in a crippling fiscal crisis that evaporated depositors' savings and plunged about half its population of 6.5 million into poverty, after decades of rampant corruption, waste, and mismanagement. The country suffered some USD 70 billion in losses in its financial sector, further compounded by about USD 11 billion in the 2024 war between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group. The price of gold recently soared to an all-time high of USD 5,354, before dropping back below USD 5,000, sparked by geopolitical instability and questions surrounding US President Donald Trump's desire to lower ..

Israel carries out strikes across Lebanon ahead of key disarmament meeting

Israel's air force struck areas in southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday and early Tuesday, including in the country's third-largest city. A strike around 1 a.m. Tuesday leveled a three-story commercial building in the southern coastal city of Sidon, a few days before Lebanon's army commander is scheduled to brief the government on its mission of disarming militant group Hezbollah in areas along the border with Israel. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said the area was in a commercial district containing workshops and mechanic shops and the building was uninhabited. At least one person was transported by ambulance and rescue teams were searching the site for others, but there were no immediate reports of deaths. On Monday, the Israeli army hit several sites in southern and eastern Lebanon saying they held infrastructure for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas. Those strikes took place nearly two hours after Israel's military Arabic language spokesman Avichay Adra

IDF kills senior Hezbollah leader, 2 others in strike in southern Lebanon

In a separate post, the IDF stated that in the Yater area, it killed a Hezbollah operative who was involved in attempts to re-establish the group's terrorist infrastructure

As tensions flare on Israel-Lebanon border, communities struggle to rebuild

Ilan Rosenfeld walks through the burnt-out shell of his former business, stepping over crackling pieces of clay plates that used to line his cafe and past metal scraps of Hezbollah rockets littering the rubble. It's all that's left for him in this small, war-ravaged town the northernmost in Israel, surrounded on three sides by Lebanon. Everything I had, everything I saved, everything I built it's all burned, he said as he scanned the damage of the business he'd run for 40 years in Metula, which has long been at the crosshairs of flare-ups along the volatile border. Every day I wake up, and all I have left are tears. Rosenfeld was among tens of thousands of people forced from their homes when war broke out between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in October 2023, following Hamas' attack in southern Israel. One year into a shaky ceasefire on this heavily fortified border, Israel's government says most of those displaced have returned to their homes in the north, where they .

Iraq retracts terror label for Hezbollah, Houthis, cites publication error

Iraq's government on Thursday retracted a terror designation for Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group and Yemen's Houthi rebels, just weeks after imposing the measure it now says was a mistake. The government's retraction came hours after reports first circulated about the designation, which was an error made before reviewing," according to a statement. The initial decision, published in the official Iraqi gazette on November 17, had placed the two groups both allies of Iran and also Iraq's Shiite militias among 24 organisations targeted under a national asset freeze order, accusing them of participating in committing a terrorist act. Iraq is under increasing pressure from the United States to clamp down on local Iran-backed militias. Baghdad is also struggling to balance its relations with Washington and Tehran, amid fears of a new Israel-Iran war that could spill over into neighbouring countries. The names of Hezbollah and the Houthis will be removed" in a corrected publication o

US offers support to Lebanon army to enforce plan to disarm Hezbollah

The US officials, in a meeting with Lebanon's President Aoun, expressed readiness to help the war-battered country stabilise security in the south, where Israel has been regularly carrying out strikes

Two Hezbollah leaders killed by Israel's targeted strikes in Lebanon

Israel Air Force said that the two operatives worked for Hezbollah and were killed within an hour of one another

Lebanon president urges talks with Israel, says war brought no gains

Lebanon's president said Monday that his country and Israel should negotiate to solve pending problems between them since war didn't lead to any positive results. The comments by President Joseph Aoun came after U.S. counterpart Donald Trump brokered a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the more than two-year war, which started when the Palestinian militant group led an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. A day after the Israel-Hamas war began, Lebanon's Hezbollah started attacking Israeli military posts along the border in what it called a backup front for Gaza. The Israel-Hezbollah conflict intensified into full-blown fighting nearly a year later, during which the Lebanese group suffered heavy losses and many of its political and military commanders were killed. Since the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in November, Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes on Lebanon that left .