Arab states strongly condemned Israel for the escalating hostilities with Hezbollah, which have intensified to levels unseen in nearly a year.

The war erupted after Hamas and other Palestinian militants launched the unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, drawing in Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups.

Israel said it killed a “large number” of Hezbollah militants when it hit about 1,600 sites in southern and eastern Lebanon, including a “targeted strike” in Beirut in what the Israeli military called “Operation Northern Arrows.”

Hezbollah said Ali Karake, its third-in-command, was alive and had moved to safety after a source said the strike on the capital targeted him.

The group said early Tuesday it had launched “volleys” of missiles at Israeli military sites, after state media reported new raids in eastern Lebanon.

People in Israel’s coastal city of Haifa were seen running for cover on Monday when air raid sirens sounded.

Lebanon’s health ministry said the strikes killed 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and wounded 1,645 others. Health Minister Firass Abiad said “thousands of families” had been displaced.

Explosions near the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon sent smoke billowing into the sky.

“We sleep and wake up to bombardment… that’s what our life has become,” said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the southern village of Zawtar.

‘Most Difficult Week for Hezbollah’

Global powers urged Israel and Hezbollah to step back from the brink of all-out war, as the violence shifted from Israel’s southern border with Gaza to its northern frontier with Lebanon.

France and Egypt called on the United Nations Security Council to intervene, while Iraq requested an urgent meeting of Arab states on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi said the strikes hit combat infrastructure Hezbollah had been building for two decades.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Monday “a significant peak” in the operation.

“This is the most difficult week for Hezbollah since its establishment – the results speak for themselves,” he said.

“Entire units were taken out of battle as a result of the activities conducted at the beginning of the week in which numerous terrorists were injured.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was acting to change the “security balance” in the north.

Hezbollah Wave of Rockets

Hezbollah, which has been trading near-daily fire with Israel in support of Hamas, said it was in a “new phase” of confrontation.

The group said it launched rockets at Israeli military sites near Haifa and two bases in retaliation for Israeli strikes on the south and the Bekaa.

The attack came after an Israeli strike on southern Beirut on Friday killed its elite Radwan Force commander, Ibrahim Aqil, and coordinated communications device blasts that Hezbollah blamed on Israel killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Since the cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah began in October, tens of thousands of people on both sides have fled their homes.

An Israeli military official, who cannot be further identified under military rules, said the operation seeks to “degrade threats” from Hezbollah, push them back from the border, and then to destroy infrastructure.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the United Nations and world powers to deter what he called Israel’s “plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns.”

‘Full-Fledged War’ Nearing

US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier, said Washington was “working to de-escalate in a way that allows people to return home safely.”

The Pentagon said it was sending a small number of additional US military personnel to the Middle East after thousands were deployed earlier alongside warships, fighter jets, and air defense systems.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity at the UN General Assembly, said that Washington opposed an Israeli ground invasion targeting Hezbollah and had “concrete ideas” on how to de-escalate the crisis.

G7 foreign ministers said in a joint statement that “no country stands to gain” from escalating conflict, warning of “unimaginable consequences” if a regional war broke out.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warned that Israel and Hezbollah were “almost in full-fledged war,” ahead of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

UN chief Antonio Guterres was “gravely alarmed” by civilian casualties in Lebanon, his spokesman said.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon warned “any further escalation of this dangerous situation could have far-reaching and devastating consequences.”

Qatar, a mediator in Gaza ceasefire talks, said Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon “puts the region on the brink of the abyss,” while Turkey said the strikes threatened “chaos” and Jordan urged an immediate end to the escalation “before it is too late.”

The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the strikes and ordered Palestinian medical staff in Lebanon to provide support for the wounded.

Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, accused Israel of seeking “to create this wider conflict.”

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages also seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,455 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

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The military said that “approximately 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon” shortly before 5:00 am (0200 GMT), followed by a barrage of “approximately 85 projectiles” launched from Lebanon after 6:00 am (0300 GMT).

“Hundreds of thousands of people had to take refuge in bomb shelters at that time across northern Israel,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told AFP.

The military in an earlier statement said the rocket fire sparked fires, while Israel’s medical emergency service said at least four people suffered “shrapnel injuries,” three of whom in the area of the northern Israeli city of Haifa.

Israel’s civil defense agency has ordered all schools in the country’s north closed following the rocket fire, the latest escalation in nearly a year of cross-border exchanges throughout the Gaza war.

When you see sirens sounding alerts, picture this.

This is the result of one of Hezbollah’s indiscriminate missile and rocket launches at Israel. This time, they hit a children’s playground. pic.twitter.com/DJJwAhnORA

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 20, 2024

Educational activities would not be permitted across northern Israel until at least Monday at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT), the military’s Home Front Command said, affecting “hundreds of thousands of children” according to Shoshani.

“In Haifa, a lot of school are closed… and offices are empty,” said resident Patrice Wolff, who works in the medical industry.

He told AFP there was “more and more pressure” coming from Hezbollah as well as from Israeli forces on the Lebanese group.

The military said it launched strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response to the rocket fire.

Shoshani said the military had hit a range of targets over the past day, mostly “rockets launchers and rocket launcher barrels.”

The Israeli strikes were meant “to prevent a larger-scale attack,” the military spokesman told an online press briefing.

A steady escalation in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah has stoked fears of all-out war.

Israeli officials this week have signaled their intention to turn the focus of military operations from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

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Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.

“Such terrorist acts, that are undoubtedly due to the desperation and successive failures of the Zionist regime, will soon be met with a crushing response from the resistance front,” Guards commander General Hossein Salami said in a message to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, quoted by state media.

The resistance front led by Iran includes Tehran-backed groups across the Middle East, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Shiite armed groups in Iraq as well as Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In April, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, after it bombed an annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

Most were intercepted by allied air forces or Israel’s own air defenses.

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The son of Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Ammar was among the dead, a source close to the group told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The source had earlier said the son of another Hezbollah lawmaker, Hassan Fadlallah, was also killed, but later confirmed that the son was alive but injured.

The blasts “killed nine people, including a girl,” minister Firass Abiad said in a casualty update.

“About 2,800 people were injured, about 200 of them critically” with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands, and stomach, he added.

The 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed in east Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when his pager exploded, her family and a source close to the group said.

Iran’s ambassador to Beirut was also wounded in a pager explosion but his injuries were not serious, state media reported.

In neighboring Syria, 14 people were wounded “after pagers used by Hezbollah exploded,” Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Israeli military said it had “no comment,” when contacted by AFP about the pager blasts.

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Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been trading near-daily cross-border fire, with the Lebanese militant group saying it is acting in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas in the ongoing war in Gaza.

“We have enough forces to deal with Gaza and we should concentrate on what is going on in the north,” Gantz said, speaking in Washington at a Middle East forum where he also said Iran and its proxies were “the real issue.”

“The time of the north has come and actually I think we are late on this,” the former army chief and centrist politician added.

Gantz said Israel had made a mistake in evacuating much of the north of the country as hostilities with Hezbollah flared following the October 7 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war.

“In Gaza, we have crossed a decisive point of the campaign,” he said. “We can conduct anything we want in Gaza.”

“We should seek to have a deal to get out our hostages but if we cannot in the coming time, a few days or few weeks, or whatever it is, we should go up north.”

“We are capable of… hitting the state of Lebanon if needed,” he said.

“The story of Hamas is old news,” he added, saying instead that “the story of Iran and its proxies all around the area and what they are trying to do is the real issue.”

Gantz left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s government in June over its lack of a post-war plan for Gaza.

The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, including some hostages killed in captivity, official Israeli figures show.

Militants seized 251 hostages during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,972 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The UN human rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also referred to the situation on the Lebanese border Sunday during a tour of the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, telling troops “we are preparing for anything that may happen in the north.”

“The shift of the center of gravity can happen quickly and can also involve you in a short period of time,” Gallant said, according to a statement issued by his office.

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“Around 150 suspected Boko Haram terrorists armed with rifles and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) attacked Mafa ward on more than 50 motorcycles around 1600 hours on Sunday,” said Abdulkarim Dungus, a Yobe state police spokesman.

“They killed many people and burnt many shops and houses. We are yet to ascertain the actual number of those killed in the attack.”

Dungus said it appeared to be a revenge attack “for the killing of two Boko Haram terrorists by vigilantes from the village.”

Bulama Jalaluddeen, a local official, added: “From these figures it has been established that at least 81 people were killed in the attack.”

“Fifteen bodies had already been buried by their relations by the time soldiers reached Mafa for the evacuation of the corpses.

“In addition to these, some unspecified number of dead victims from nearby villages who were caught up in the attack were taken and buried by their kinsmen before the arrival of the soldiers. Many people are still missing and their whereabouts unknown.”

Boko Haram and other jihadist groups have waged a 15-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria that has killed more than 40,000 people.

Central and northwest Nigeria have been plagued for years by gangs of criminals known as “bandits,” who raid villages, kill and abduct residents, and burn homes after looting them.

By working alongside these gangs, jihadist groups have increasingly established a presence in central Niger state, officials and analysts say.

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“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a Gaza truce, Netanyahu said in a statement, telling Hamas leaders that “we will hunt you down, we will catch you, and we will settle the score.”

Netanyahu said that Israel was “fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all,” mentioning a shooting attack near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank earlier on Sunday that killed three police officers.

Hamas has not claimed the attack but in a statement called it a “heroic operation by the resistance.”

According to Netanyahu, “the fact that Hamas continues to commit atrocities such as those it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything we can to ensure that it can no longer do so,” referring to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

A senior Hamas official said that several of the six hostages found dead had been “approved” for release in the event of a truce deal, which has yet to be finalized despite months of mediation efforts.

“Some of the names of the captives announced as found by the (Israeli) occupier… were part of the list of hostages to be released that Hamas had approved” in a proposed exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Israeli media reported that US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two others whose bodies had been recovered from Gaza – Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi – had been approved by Hamas to be released in the event of a truce deal.

The Hamas official said the six captives were “killed by the occupation’s fire and bombing,” an accusation denied by the Israeli military.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani in an online briefing with journalists that “according to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists.”

“We do know they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. We do know – I can tell you – there was no real-time fire engagement in the tunnel,” Shoshani said.

Claims by Hamas that the hostages were killed by Israeli forces were “psychological warfare,” he said.

The bodies were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, around one kilometer (0.6 miles) away from where troops had rescued alive another hostage, Kaid Farhan Alkadi, on Tuesday, according to Shoshani.

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With Saudi Arabia once again seen as a pivotal player for the United States as the Gaza war enters its 10th month, the State Department said it would return to weapons sales “in regular order with appropriate congressional notification and consultation.”

“Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

President Joe Biden took office in 2021 pledging a new approach to Saudi Arabia that emphasizes human rights and immediately announced that the administration would only send “defensive” weaponry to the longtime US partner.

The step came after thousands of civilians were estimated to be killed in Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, including children, in a campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have taken over much of the country.

But geopolitical considerations have changed markedly since then. The United Nations, with US support, brokered a truce in early 2022 that has largely held.

Since the truce, “there has not been a single Saudi airstrike into Yemen and cross-border fire from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has largely stopped,” Patel said.

“The Saudis since that time have met their end of the deal, and we are prepared to meet ours,” Patel said.

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“There has to be a military response to these crimes, which are shameless and dangerous, and constitute a major escalation by the Israeli enemy,” Abdul Malik al-Huthi said in a televised speech.

The Yemeni rebels have been launching drones and missiles at shipping in the Red Sea since November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.

Last month, a deadly Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv prompted Israeli air strikes on Hodeida, impoverished Yemen’s lifeline port, that killed nine people and triggered a massive inferno.

The rebel leader described the killing of the Hamas chief as “a flagrant violation of all norms and principles.”

He also condemned the killing of Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr on Tuesday in a Beirut strike claimed by Israel.

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The army said five people were killed in a drone attack on a ceremony at the Gibet base, where Burhan was overseeing a graduation ceremony.

“We will not retreat, we will not surrender, and we will not negotiate,” Burhan, who appeared unharmed, told troops at the Gibet base after the attack.

“We are not scared of drones,” he said at the Gibet base, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Port Sudan, where the army-aligned government fled after war broke out with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April last year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The United States has invited both sides to negotiations next month in Geneva, which Sudan’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said must be preceded by “more discussions.”

On Wednesday, Burhan ruled out talks with the RSF.

Any peace initiative “must recognize, invite, and consult the Sudanese state,” he said, referring to his government.

“We will not lay down our guns until we clean this country of every conspirator and every rebel,” he vowed.

Already, the war – which Burhan says the army intends to win “with our head high” – has killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimates of up to 150,000, according to US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello.

It has also caused mass human rights violations and triggered the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the United Nations.

Over 10 million people are currently displaced across Sudan, most in areas facing looming famine and worsening humanitarian conditions as fighting spreads.

Wednesday’s attack was the first on a military base in Sudan’s eastern Red Sea state, where the army, government and the United Nations have all relocated their headquarters.

The RSF controls most of the capital Khartoum, the central Al-Jazira state, nearly the entire vast western Darfur region, as well as large parts of Kordofan in the south.

It launched an offensive last month on Sennar state in the country’s southeast, claiming the state capital and displacing more than 130,000 people, according to the UN.

Paramilitaries are also besieging El-Fasher – the capital of North Darfur state and the largest city in the region not yet under the control of the RSF – cutting off food and water to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Sixty-five people, mostly children, have been killed there between Saturday and Monday during RSF bombardment, according to a statement from local activist committees.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian aid.

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