Israeli jets on Thursday struck sites across the Dahiya, a densely populated area outside Beirut, a day after the military said six Israeli soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon.
The strikes were the latest in a days-long barrage that has pounded the area south of the Lebanese capital. In that time, Israel’s military says it has hit more than two dozen targets linked to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that holds sway in the Dahiya. The extent of any casualties was not immediately clear.
Lebanon’s state news media said the strikes were concentrated in two neighborhoods of the Dahiya, which has been a frequent target of the Israeli military since it stepped up its air war in Lebanon at the end of September.
Earlier on Thursday, Avichai Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, issued evacuation warnings for residents of four neighborhoods in the area. In a social media post in Arabic, he advised them to stay 500 meters away from specific buildings against which he said the military “will operate in the near future.”
The Israeli military gave no details of how the six soldiers were killed on Wednesday, one of the deadliest days for Israeli forces since they invaded southern Lebanon last month to battle Hezbollah fighters. The killings showed that Hezbollah remained a deadly adversary despite Israel inflicting severe blows. Since the invasion began, Israel has assassinated most of the group’s leaders and killed and maimed thousands of rank-and-file members, while launching airstrikes that have displaced almost a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
The offensive began after almost a year of near-daily cross-border rocket attacks by Hezbollah and Israel that also forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in northern Israel. Hezbollah began firing on Israel the day after the Hamas-led terror attack last October, and said its bombardment was a sign of solidarity with its Gaza-based ally.
On Thursday, Israel’s military said it had killed a large number of Hezbollah fighters over the past week and had “struck and dismantled” more than 140 Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon.
It also said it had intercepted several drones launched at Israel, some toward the country’s north and at least one other toward the southern city of Eilat. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which like Hezbollah and Hamas is backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for four drones that had been aimed at northern Israel. There were no reports of damage from the attempted drone attacks.
In Gaza, Israel continued to press ahead with a weekslong offensive in the northern part of the territory, which it says has become the locus of a Hamas resurgence. The military said on Thursday that it had launched airstrikes and ground raids over the past day that had killed Hamas fighters there.
Israel’s offensive in northern Gaza has drawn international criticism for its heavy toll on civilians, several hundred thousand of whom became trapped there when the operation began last month, according to United Nations agencies. Tens of thousands have since fled their homes.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch released a report that accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity for forcing nearly all of Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians to flee their homes, and often advising them later to move from the places where they had sought shelter. Israel has said it warns residents to evacuate for their own safety.
“There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times,” the report said. “Rather than ensuring civilians’ security, military ‘evacuation orders’ have caused grave harm.”
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