Israeli fighter jets buzz Lebanon during Nasrallah address
Just as Hassan Nasrallah was speaking, at least two fighter jets circled around where I am in central Beirut, and we heard two very loud sonic booms, when the sound barrier is broken. It was a thunderous noise that actually made people on the street here duck.
We’ve also seen images of the jets launching flares as they left the area. It’s basically a campaign of harassment of Lebanese civilians to make them nervous and scared. There are also sonic booms reported outside of Beirut.
Many people on social media are saying they’ve seen drones as well. This was all timed to coincide with Nasrallah’s speech, in which he said Israel was fully aware that 4,000 communication devices in Lebanon were rigged to explode.
“They wanted to killed 4,000 people at the same time, regardless of civilian casualties in the vicinity,” the Hezbollah leader said.
Hamas welcomes Hezbollah’s continued backing of ‘Palestinian resistance’
Hamas says it appreciates remarks by Hezbollah chief Nasrallah after he reaffirmed “the resistance” in Lebanon will not stop supporting Gaza.
In a televised speech, Nasrallah pledged to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against Israel until its nearly 12-month war on the Gaza Strip ends. The Lebanese group’s leader reiterated the only path to bring calm to the region is for Israel to also halt its assaults on the occupied West Bank.
Hezbollah’s stance “is a blow to Netanyahu and his fascist government”, Hamas said in a statement. Lebanon’s “sacrifices”, it added, will only help the fight towards Palestine’s “liberation”.
IRGC chief tells Nasrallah Israel will face ‘crushing response’
Hossein Salami, top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has told Nasrallah that Israel will face “a crushing response from the ‘axis of resistance'” after the pager and radio attacks, according to Iranian state media.
“Such terrorist acts are undoubtedly the result of the Zionist regime’s [Israel’s] despair and successive failures,” Salami said in his message to the Hezbollah chief. “We will witness the destruction of this bloodthirsty and criminal regime.”
Separately, Iranian media reported that Salami visited a hospital in Tehran where some of the 95 wounded people who had been transported from Lebanon to Iran’s capital were being cared for. Among them were three children, aged three, seven and 11.
In a clip from inside the hospital, one of the children who has extensive injuries to the eyes and the face said he was in his grandfather’s home when he picked up a beeping pager to hand it over to his father.
Salami also visited Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who was injured in a pager blast, but no footage was shown. Earlier, state media released an image that showed Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi meeting Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, a top eye doctor and former health minister who is leading the team treating the ambassador.
Blinken cautions against escalation
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has emphasised the need to prevent any actions that could escalate tensions in the Middle East.
“France and the United States are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to the Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular,” Blinken said after talks in Paris with his French counterpart, Stephane Sejourne.
“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, he added.
What ceasefire... Stop your attack dog escalating every time you mention a ceasefire. You should be telling Israel to quit massacring people. All the actions that are escalating tensions are coming from Israel.
