RSS
Israel Hits Syria in Heaviest Strikes on Iran Proxies in Months, Says It Killed Hezbollah Commander in Lebanon
A warplane carries out a bombing run above Syria near the Israeli-Syrian border as it is seen from the Golan Heights, July 24, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel carried out its deadliest strikes in months on northern Syria’s Aleppo province early on Friday and said it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, stepping up its campaign against Iran’s proxies in parallel with its war in Gaza.
Israel has ramped up airstrikes in Syria against both the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist group and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) since the Iranian-backed terrorist faction Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and in recent days its pilots have resumed regular practice for “deep” raids into Lebanon.
Tehran and its proxies have entrenched themselves across Syria, including around Aleppo and the capital Damascus.
The Israeli military said on Friday it had killed Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, deputy commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missiles unit, in an airstrike in the area of Bazouriye in Lebanon.
It said he was one of the Iranian-backed militia’s leaders in heavy-warhead rocket fire and said he was responsible for conducting and planning attacks against Israeli civilians.
Israel and Hezbollah have also been trading fire across Lebanon’s southern border in the biggest escalation since they fought a month-long war in 2006, as Hezbollah has tried to show its support for Hamas with volleys of rockets into Israel.
About a dozen Israeli troops and half a dozen civilians have been killed in northern Israel, while nearly 270 Hezbollah fighters and 50 civilians have been killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.
Israel has repeatedly struck international airports in both Damascus and Aleppo over the years to disrupt weapons flows to Iran’s allies in the region, but strikes since Oct. 7 have been deadlier and prompted Iran to withdraw some of its top officers from Syria.
Syria’s defense ministry said Israeli strikes hit several areas in the southeastern part of Aleppo province around 1:45 am (2245 GMT on Thursday), killing a number of civilians and military personnel.
It said the airstrikes coincided with drone attacks carried out from Idlib and western rural Aleppo that the ministry described as having been conducted by “terrorist organizations” against civilians in Aleppo and its surroundings.
The Israeli military declined comment. In a post on X/Twitter, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Israel‘s attacks on Syria were a “blatant and desperate attempt” to expand the war, without saying if there were Iranian casualties.
Three security sources told Reuters that 33 Syrians and five Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the strikes. One of the Hezbollah fighters was a local field commander whose brother had been killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon in November, one of the sources said.
It represented the single highest death toll in Israeli strikes on Syria since Oct. 7.
ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER FIGHTING
An Israeli strike on southern Lebanon on Friday killed a Hezbollah fighter, security sources in Lebanon said.
The head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, met Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut in February to discuss the risk if Israel were to launch a full offensive against Hezbollah, and received an assurance that the group did not want to drag Iran into war with Israel, sources have said. The US has designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
Hezbollah has said it would stop firing into Israel if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza. Israeli and US officials, however, have said a ceasefire in Gaza would not automatically extend to Lebanon.
Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilots have stepped up practicing long-range strikes across the northern border as normal training activities have resumed in recent weeks after being suspended at the start of the Gaza war, the military said this week.
“The training program will focus on increasing the IAF’s readiness for war in the northern arena and in other arenas during prolonged combat,” it said in a statement.
The drills include rehearsing for “massive, long-range strikes, flying deep into enemy territory”, it added.
The post Israel Hits Syria in Heaviest Strikes on Iran Proxies in Months, Says It Killed Hezbollah Commander in Lebanon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login