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The Israeli military launched attacks against Hezbollah commanders in Beirut and expanded a bombing campaign to the Lebanese-Syrian border, despite last-minute diplomatic efforts to seek a ceasefire to prevent all-out war.
The attack came after Israeli officials quickly dashed hopes of a breakthrough through a joint U.S.-French plan to halt the escalating hostilities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York on Friday where he is due to address the United Nations General Assembly and vowed that Israel would continue its offensive.
“Our policy is clear: we will continue to attack Hezbollah using all available means. [our] “We are doing everything in our power and we will not stop until we achieve all our objectives, the first of which is the safe return of northerners to their homes,” he said. “This is the policy. Nobody should be misled.”
The Israeli military said the attack in Beirut killed Mohammed Suroor, the head of Hezbollah’s air command and a former commander of its surface-to-air missile forces.
Residents said they heard three explosions in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Dahieh. Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the Israeli claims. Lebanese authorities said the attack killed two people and wounded 15.
The attack was part of a major escalation of fighting launched by Israeli forces in Lebanon in recent days that has forced 90,000 people to flee and raised fears that a year of hostilities between Israel and Lebanese militias is on the verge of escalating into a wider regional conflict.
In an attempt to ease tensions, U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a 21-day ceasefire between the two sides on Wednesday.
U.S. officials hope the ceasefire will allow time to negotiate a more permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as pressure Hamas to accept the terms of a hostage-free ceasefire agreement with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
But the proposal drew heavy criticism in Israel, where Israel’s ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the operation “should end with a scenario in which Hezbollah is destroyed and its ability to harm the people of the north.”
“We must not give the enemy time to recover from the devastating blow he has suffered and regroup to continue the war within 21 days,” he wrote to X on Thursday morning.
Their comments were echoed by other far-right members of the Israeli government, with Settlements Minister Orit Strzok saying there was “no moral obligation to a ceasefire, whether for 21 days or 21 hours.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is relying on far-right members of his ruling coalition to stay in power, and ministers in his Likud party have also voiced opposition to the plan.
The US-French proposal, backed by the G7, the EU, Australia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, does not set a deadline for the two countries to respond, but US officials have previously said they expected the Israeli and Lebanese governments to respond “within the next few hours”.
According to people familiar with the matter, the United States hopes that Prime Minister Netanyahu will announce at the United Nations that Israel’s war in Gaza has entered a new phase, and persuade Hezbollah, which has insisted it will not stop attacking Israel until the Gaza war is over, to agree to a temporary ceasefire.
The increased diplomatic activity comes after Israel launched a major offensive against Hezbollah, the militant group which began hostilities on October 8 last year by firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, which launched attacks on Israel the previous day.
But Israel has assassinated a series of senior Hezbollah commanders over the past week and launched a major bombing campaign on Monday targeting the militant group’s suspected arms depots in Lebanon, killing more than 600 people.
The Israeli military chief on Wednesday ordered troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon, and the army announced Thursday morning that it had carried out further overnight strikes, hitting 75 Hezbollah positions in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 20 people were killed, including 19 Syrian nationals, in an Israeli attack on a building in the town of Younin in the Bekaa Valley. The attack was the deadliest of the day’s bombings, although seven people were killed in another bombing in southern Lebanon, according to a Financial Times tally of health ministry statements.
Until this week, Israel had largely avoided targeting Hezbollah’s stronghold in the Bekaa Valley along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, concentrating most of its attacks in the south.
The IDF said it had also struck targets on the Lebanese-Syrian border in connection with Hezbollah arms transfers, and a Lebanese minister said at least one of the attacks landed on the Syrian side of a bridge connecting the two countries.
Hezbollah has also launched attacks on Israel, firing its first ballistic missile at Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv on Wednesday, only for it to be shot down by Israel’s air defenses, and unleashing a barrage of rockets and attack drones on various locations in northern Israel on Thursday.
Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in Jerusalem
Data Visualization by Steven Bernard and Alan Smith
