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Israeli Strikes Deep in Lebanon Kill 60 Hezbollah Terrorists
An explosion takes place as Israeli strikes hit southern Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Zibqin, Lebanon, Aug. 25, 2024, in this still image obtained from a video. Photo: Reuters TV via REUTERS
JNS.org — Sixty Hezbollah terrorists were killed over the past day in Israeli airstrikes on 20 targets north of Lebanon’s Litani River, including in Baalbek, the Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday morning.
Among the targets hit was the launcher used in Wednesday’s rocket barrage on central Israel, the largest on the center since the war began over a year ago. Weapons storage facilities and terrorist infrastructure were also destroyed.
Strikes were also conducted on Hezbollah targets in Nabatieh and the Dahieh area south of Beirut on Wednesday, according to the IDF.
Among the targets hit in Dahieh, a Hezbollah stronghold, were command centers, weapons storage facilities, and terror infrastructure, according to the military.
“All of the targets were embedded in the heart of a civilian area, an additional example of Hezbollah’s cynical exploitation of Lebanese civilians as human shields,” the IDF said.
“Prior to the strikes, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk to civilians, including using precise munitions, surveillance, and issuing advance warnings to the population in the area.”
According to Lebanese media reports, slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s uncle and his family were killed by an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on his bunker in Beirut on Sept. 27.
Israeli ground forces continued to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, including a weapons storage facility and a rocket launcher.
Israel hits Hezbollah target at Beirut Airport
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Israel conducted an airstrike on a Hezbollah target “within yards’ of runways at Beirut-Rafic Hariri Airport, according to The Daily Telegraph.
According to the British newspaper, which published a video of the strike, up to three missiles were fired at a building located between two runways at Lebanon’s only international airport. The IDF had previously issued an evacuation notice for the area.
The Telegraph noted that all scheduled passenger flights had departed or arrived prior to the attack.
One of the 10 rockets launched at central Israel by Hezbollah shortly before noon on Wednesday hit a parking lot at Ben Gurion Airport, temporarily halting flights at the country’s main international airport. There were no injuries reported.
The IDF said on Thursday morning that overnight the Israeli Air Force struck Hezbollah command centers and terrorist infrastructure sites in the Beirut area.
Hezbollah rocket kills Israeli soldier
Hezbollah launched 170 projectiles into Israeli territory in total on Wednesday, one of which killed an IDF soldier in the country’s north.
The soldier was identified on Thursday morning as Sgt. Ariel Sosnov Sasonov, 20, of the 605th Combat Engineering Battalion, from Jerusalem.
Sasonov was killed by one of 50 rockets launched at the moshav of Avivim near the border in the Upper Galilee, with over 10 reportedly scoring direct hits. Three other soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack.
His death brings the IDF’s casualty toll on all fronts since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023, to 781.
Hezbollah said on Thursday that the attack on Avivim was carried out using “Noor-1” rockets, which caused widespread property damage, with 12 homes and agricultural facilities hit.
The rocket strikes ignited fires that took 15 crews hours to get under control.
“Large parts of the moshav were destroyed,” Eyal Peretz, a community board member, told Ynet. “Homes, property, packing houses, and farmland — the damage is heartbreaking.”
Amid Sofer, head of the Merom HaGalil Regional Council, told Ynet: “I don’t understand how residents are expected to even consider returning when rockets are still falling. Security means no sirens, no rockets.”
On Wednesday evening, Sivan Sadeh, 18, of Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk, south of Acre, was killed by a Hezbollah rocket in the Western Galilee.
Magen David Adom first responders discovered Sadeh’s body in an agricultural field near the kibbutz. He had suffered severe shrapnel wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Initial reports had suggested that the victim was a foreign worker, but local authorities later confirmed his identity.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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