New Israeli raids hit south Beirut: Report
Lebanon’s state-run media said three Israeli air raids have hit south Beirut, the latest raids following a night of intense bombardment.
“Enemy aircraft launched three strikes on (Beirut’s) southern suburbs,” the official National News Agency reported.
Witnesses in Beirut said they heard three large consecutive explosions, Reuters news agency reported.
Israel says struck Hezbollah intelligence HQ in Beirut
The Israeli military says it hit Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut amid a flurry of strikes targeting the group’s positions in the Lebanese capital.
Israeli fighter jets “struck targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut, including terror operatives belonging to the unit, intelligence-gathering means, command centres and additional terrorist infrastructure,” the military said in a statement.
Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Thursday
Hezbollah says detonates bomb against Israeli soldiers
The Lebanese group says its fighters have detonated an explosive device against a group of Israeli soldiers near Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon.
The attack at noon local time caused deaths and injuries, Hezbollah claimed.
Hezbollah claims to have attacked Israeli military six more times
We reported earlier on more than a dozen attacks on Israeli targets by the Lebanese armed group. Since then, Hezbollah claimed to have detonated two explosive devices at dawn “when an enemy Israeli infantry force attempted to infiltrate towards the village of Maroun al-Ras” in southern Lebanon.
Fighters attacked Israeli soldiers with an Iranian-made Falaq missile east of the Sasa settlement in northern Israel, and a different group of soldiers with a rocket salvo west of the same settlement, it said.
Another attack came in the Shomera settlement of northern Israel against Israeli troops with a Falaq missile. Hezbollah also claimed two separate rocket salvos against Israeli forces – one in the Betzet settlement and another in the Avivim village in Upper Galilee.
Fighting Hezbollah a ‘reality check’ for Israel
It looks like another incident, another severe incident for the Israelis on the border. Hezbollah said it detonated explosives on the Golani Brigade, one of Israel’s elite brigades fighting on the ground there.
Israeli Telegram channels are reporting the same thing, saying that helicopters are evacuating many wounded, potentially dead, to hospitals close to Haifa in the north of Israel.
It really is giving a very quick reality check to Israel, which has been enjoying a lot of confidence and the feeling of victory and invincibility in its air campaign over the last two weeks or so. It is very difficult and different for them on the ground.
They do know this. Every single soldier who goes into this battle knows that Hezbollah is not Hamas. This is a far more formidable, trained fighting force.
So it is going to be very difficult. And I think the longer that we’re going to have this news that Israeli forces are sustaining a lot of injuries and fatalities, at some point, the tide with public opinion will change.
Israel is not making gains it expected
According to the Lebanese military, a third explosive device was detonated against Israel’s Golani Brigade in the village of Maroun al-Ras.
What we’re hearing is that the Israelis have attempted to enter that village, and they have faced stiff resistance from Hezbollah fighters who say that they have confronted them and they have used explosive devices. They claim that Israeli soldiers have had casualties, and their helicopters are currently in the south, trying to evacuate those soldiers.
That was what we were expecting when Israel mounted this ground operation, that Hezbollah was always going to resist. Israel has aerial superiority, but if Israel wants to fight, they have to get the troops across the border and try to take those villages and towns.
What we are seeing at the moment is that – at least from the Hezbollah side – the group is causing casualties on the Israeli side and Israel is not really making the gains that it expected to make.
Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli air strike on the village of Markaba, southern Lebanon, as seen from an undisclosed location along the Israeli side of the border, in northern Israel, October 3
