As Israel escalated its fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Saturday, much of the Middle East was on edge, with many expecting an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iran as payback for its missile barrage on Israel earlier this week.
Fighting expanded across the region, with the United States Central Command striking Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen and Israeli forces warning residents in two areas in the central Gaza Strip to evacuate, presumably in preparation for stepped up military action there.
In Lebanon, a huge strike earlier in the week reportedly targeted Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who was recently assassinated by Israel. It was not clear whether Mr. Safieddine had been killed.
Israeli strikes appeared to hit the Dahiya, an area south of Beirut, where Hezbollah holds sway and where the Israeli military late on Friday again issued evacuation warnings for civilians. At least four hospitals across southern Lebanon are now out of service as a result of Israel’s bombardment, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The Saint Therese Medical Center near the Dahiya has also suspended services, saying that Israeli strikes inflicted “huge damage.”
Hezbollah on Saturday fired more rockets into northern Israel, though most seem to have been intercepted by Israel’s air-defense system.
Concern has been building over whether the broadening war would further draw in Iran, which supports both Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Friday that Iran could carry out additional attacks on Israel “if necessary.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived in Syria early Saturday, according to Iranian state media. The trip came a day after Israel struck near a border crossing on a highway in central Lebanon that links Beirut and Damascus, the capital of Syria, saying that Hezbollah had used a tunnel there to transport weapons. Mr. Araghchi appears to be on a diplomatic tour, and in a news conference on Friday in Beirut conveyed Iran’s readiness to support a joint cease-fire in Lebanon and Gaza.
President Biden, in a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, said that Israel had not decided how to respond to Iran’s recent attacks but that if he were the Israeli leader, “I would be thinking about other alternatives” to attacking Iran’s oil facilities.
Israel’s systematic targeting of the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran’s regional proxies appeared to reach deep into the country. The armed group Hamas, which is based in Gaza and is an ally of Hezbollah, said that one of its commanders had been killed early Saturday in an Israeli strike in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, near the country’s northern edge.
In recent years, Hamas has been developing a branch of its military wing in Lebanon, which has occasionally launched rockets at Israel.
The Israeli military also announced a new evacuation warning for residents of the Nuseirat and Al-Bureij neighborhoods in the central Gaza Strip, in what appeared to be the first such order in Gaza in several weeks. More than a dozen orders in August displaced as many as 250,000 people in Gaza, but Israeli military activity, including evacuation warnings, was largely focused on Lebanon in September.
Across the Red Sea, the United States Central Command said on social media on Friday that it struck 15 Houthi targets in Yemen, including “Houthi offensive military capabilities,” in an effort to secure international waterways. The Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has been striking ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Hamas since last year, disrupting commercial shipping. Ships have been hit and sustained damage, and some sailors have been abducted and held captive for many months, while others have died or been injured in the Houthi attacks.
“These actions were taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for U.S., coalition, and merchant vessels,” the central command’s post said.
The Houthi-affiliated al-Masirah TV reported four strikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, seven on the port city of Hodeidah and at least one strike on Dhamar, south of the capital.
The latest strikes by the United States come as tensions in the Middle East have risen significantly following Israel’s killing of Mr. Nasrallah, its expanded operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and an escalating conflict with Iran. Iran launched a salvo of about 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for the assassinations of Mr. Nasrallah and the Hamas political leader, Islam Haniyeh, when he was in Tehran.
Given the restrictions on journalists amid the fighting, it was difficult to assess the scale of the damage or the deaths from the bombardment, described as the heaviest of the rapidly escalating war in Lebanon.
What was clear from the twisted mangles of concrete and destroyed buildings across the Hezbollah stronghold of the Dahiya, along with Israel’s widening ground invasion in the south, is that Israel is determined to take the fight against Hezbollah to a new scale. It’s doing so not just in the south, where its ground invasion is seeking to halt Hezbollah’s rocket fire into northern Israel, but also with its systematic targeting of Hezbollah’s remaining leadership, whose movements Israeli intelligence can apparently still track.
Many people in Lebanon and the broader Middle East had long feared that such a war was coming, even before the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Hezbollah began firing on northern Israel soon after the massacre of 1,200 Israelis, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah last fought an inconclusive war with Israel in 2006 and, given Iran’s support for Hezbollah, concern had built over time that they would soon be at war again.
Hamas said an Israeli airstrike near the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli killed a commander in its military wing. In a statement, the military wing, known as the Qassam Brigades, identified the commander as Saeed Ali and said the strike hit his home. His wife and two daughters were also killed, the statement said. The Israeli military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The State Department said it was aware of and “alarmed” about reports of the death in Lebanon of Kamel Ahmad Jawad, an American citizen. His family said in a statement this week that Mr. Jawad, who was from Dearborn, Mich., had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Reporting contributed byEphrat Livni, Ismaeel Naar, Adam Rasgon and Kate Selig.
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