Lebanon’s Hezbollah fired heavy rocket barrages at Israel on Sunday, 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 US-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.

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 on Sunday, 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.

On Saturday, it had carried out one of its deadliest and most powerful strikes on the center of Beirut, killing at least 20 people, Lebanon’s health ministry said. The Israeli military did not comment on the strike or the target.

Israel went on the offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in September, pounding the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs with airstrikes after nearly a year of hostilities ignited by the Gaza war.

US CEASEFIRE PROPOSAL AWAITS ISRAEL’S RESPONSE

The Israeli offensive has uprooted more than 1 million people in Lebanon.

Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.

US mediator Amos Hochstein highlighted progress in negotiations during a visit to Beirut last week, before traveling to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, and then returning to Washington.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said a US ceasefire proposal was awaiting final approval from Israel.

“We must pressure the Israeli government and maintain the pressure on Hezbollah to accept the U.S. proposal for a ceasefire,” he said in Beirut after meeting Lebanese officials.

Diplomacy has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. It requires Hezbollah to pull its fighters back around 30 km (19 miles) from the Israeli border, and the Lebanese army to deploy in the buffer zone.

The Lebanese army said on Sunday at least one soldier had been killed and 18 more injured in an Israeli strike that caused severe damage at an army center in Al-Amiriya near the southern city of Tyre.

The Israeli military said it regretted and was investigating the incident, and that it was fighting against Hezbollah, not the Lebanese Army.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said the attack “represents a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire, strengthen the army’s presence in the south, and implement … 1701.”

Borrell said the EU was ready to allocate 200 million euros ($208 million) to support the Lebanese army. ($1 = 0.9600 euros)

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i24 News – The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, identified with Hezbollah, reported Sunday that more than 200 people had been in the Dahieh quarter of Beirut since the beginning of last September on suspicion of espionage.

Among the detainees are also foreign nationals, reportedly, and all suspects have been transferred to Lebanese state security forces.

According to the report, some of the additional detainees were arrested for drug trafficking or burglary offenses they committed in the homes of residents who had left their homes. The detainees were identified as Lebanese, Syrians, and citizens of other nationalities such as Americans, French, and Brazilians.

One of the US citizens previously worked as a US police officer and toured the Dahieh neighborhood with a Lebanese citizen. He said during his interrogation that he came to document himself touring in the war. Another French citizen was arrested filming who claimed he was a journalist – when his cell phone was checked, it turned out that he had filmed a number of buildings in the Dahieh.

The report also alleged that more than 50 Syrians were arrested, some of whom were associated with opposition organizations in their country and made use of foreign citizenships they possessed to land in Beirut and photograph buildings associated with Hezbollah in Dahieh.

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i24 News – Russia recruited hundreds of Yemenis to fight in Ukraine, according to a Financial Times report on Sunday.

The phenomenon reflects a growing cooperation between Moscow and the Houthi rebels.

Yemeni men reported that they were promised well-paying jobs and Russian citizenship, but when they arrived, they were enlisted by force into the Russian army and send to the Ukraine front.

Contracts signed by the men suggested a link to Abdulwali Abdo Hassan al-Jabri, a Houthi politician, through his company. The enlistment appears to have begun in July.

The Yemenis were told they would received $10,000 in bonus, on top of a $2,000 monthly salary, with the belief that they would work in a Russian drone factory.

The contracts were in Russian, which the Yemeni men could not read. While some had fighting experience, the majority did not.

“I signed it because I was scared,” said one of the recruits who spoke to the Financial Times. Many of them have been killed since arriving on the front, brought by “scammers who traffic in human beings.”

“It was all a lie,” he said.

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