Former Mossad official warns against war with Hezbollah
The former head of Mossad’s intelligence gathering department, Haim Tomer, told Israel’s Hayom media outlet that a war with Hezbollah would mean “a threat to the Zionist vision of Israel”.
- A large-scale war with Hezbollah will undermine Israel’s ability to continue its work as a state with an economy, as a community and as an international player.
- If a war breaks out, Hezbollah rockets will paralyse Israel for weeks.
- A full-scale war will make the fate of Acre, Haifa, Tiberias and possibly Tel Aviv the same as that of Kiryat Shmona and the Galilee, where destruction and devastation are severe.
- Hezbollah has precision missiles that can blow up Israeli gas fields in seconds.
- The Israeli Air Force is no longer free to operate over Lebanon because of the detection system provided by Iran.
- Hezbollah has 100,000 to 150,000 warheads and can fire 1,500 rockets a day during the first days of the war.
Hezbollah says several Israeli targets hit
Hezbollah says it targeted the Israeli Zarit barracks. The Lebanese group also said it targeted the position of Israeli soldiers in a newly developed artillery range in the occupied Shebaa Farms.
Overnight, it said it targeted a group of Israeli soldiers with artillery shells at the Raheb site.
Israeli attack kills two people in southern Lebanon: Local media
An Israeli air raid on the outskirts of Aitaroun in southern Lebanon killed two people, Lebanese state news agency NNA reports.
Israeli forces launched two missiles targeting a cafe at a petrol station, which resulted in major damage to the shop, the station and the surrounding area, the NNA report said.
NNA identified the two casualties as the shop owner and a young man.
Israel’s military claimed in a statement that its soldiers had identified a Hezbollah fighter in the area of Aitaroun in the Bint Jbeil district and shortly afterwards an Israeli aircraft struck the individual.
The Israeli army also said that jets attacked infrastructure in the area of Khiam after tanks had earlier fired at a Hezbollah military structure in the Kfar Kila area.
Wildfires in south Lebanon after Israeli bombardment
Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon sparked massive wildfires, state media has said.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said that “Israeli artillery bombarded the outskirts of the town of Alma al-Shaab with incendiary phosphorus shells, causing fires in the forests that spread to the vicinity of some homes”.
It added that the fire had reached “large areas of olive trees”.
Lebanese authorities and several international rights groups have accused Israel of using white phosphorus rounds in its strikes on its northern neighbour. White phosphorus, a substance that ignites on contact with oxygen, can be used as an incendiary weapon. Its use as a chemical weapon is prohibited under international law, but it is allowed for illuminating battlefields and can be used as a smokescreen.
Further east, the NNA reported that “a large fire broke out at positions belonging to the Lebanese army and UNIFIL”, the UN peacekeeping mission, in the area of the border village of Meiss el-Jabal.
It is located near the UN-demarcated Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel.
