Hezbollah rockets land near Tel Aviv

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A rocket fired from Lebanon hit a residential neighbourhood in Petah Tikva, central Israel.
A rocket fired from Lebanon hit a residential neighbourhood in Petah Tikva, central Israel.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has fired heavy rocket barrages at Israel  destroying houses near Tel Aviv, after a powerful Israeli airstrike killed at least 29 people in Beirut the previous day.

Israel also struck Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, where intensified bombardment over the last two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in US-led ceasefire talks.

Hezbollah, which has previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it had launched precision missiles on Sunday at two military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby.

An injured woman in an ambulance near a building hit by a rocket
Several people on the outskirts of Tel Aviv were injured after rockets were fired from Lebanon. (AP PHOTO)

Police said there were multiple impact sites in the area of Petah Tikvah, on the eastern side of Tel Aviv, and that several people had minor injuries.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a direct hit on a neighbourhood had left “houses in flames and ruins”. Television footage showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire.

Israel Defense Forces

Israel’s military said Hezbollah had fired 250 rockets at Israel, of which many were intercepted, with sirens sounding across most of the country. At least four people had been injured by shrapnel.

Israel’s military warned on social media that it planned to target Hezbollah facilities in southern Beirut before strikes that demolished two apartment blocks, according to security sources in Lebanon.

Afterwards, the IDF said it had hit command centres “deliberately embedded between civilian buildings”.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said it carried out strikes against 12 Hezbollah command centres in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh.

Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut
Lebanon says 84 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Saturday. (AP PHOTO)

On Saturday, it had carried out one of its deadliest and most powerful strikes on the centre of Beirut.

Lebanon’s health ministry on Sunday raised the death toll from 20 to 29. It said a total of 84 people had been killed on Saturday, taking the death toll to 3754 since October 2023.

The IDF did not comment on Saturday’s strike in the Lebanese capital or say what it had attacked.

Israel went on the offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in September, pounding the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs with airstrikes after nearly a year of hostilities ignited by the Gaza war.

The Israeli offensive has uprooted more than one million people in Lebanon.

Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.

Israeli soldiers stop traffic during an alert of incoming rockets
Hezbollah says it targeted two military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby. (AP PHOTO)

US mediator Amos Hochstein highlighted progress in negotiations during a visit to Beirut last week, before travelling to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, before returning to Washington.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said a US ceasefire proposal was awaiting final approval from Israel.

“We must pressure the Israeli government and maintain the pressure on Hezbollah to accept the US proposal for a ceasefire,” he said in Beirut after meeting Lebanese officials.

Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had convened a meeting of his security cabinet for Monday.

Axios reporter Barak Ravid in a post on social media cited an unnamed Israeli official saying that Israel is moving towards a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.

But a separate report from Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said there was no green light given on an agreement in Lebanon, with issues still yet to be resolved.

Diplomacy has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. It requires Hezbollah to pull its fighters back around 30km from the Israeli border, and the Lebanese army to deploy in the buffer zone.

The Lebanese army said on Sunday at least one soldier had been killed and 18 more injured in an Israeli strike that caused severe damage at an army centre in Al-Amiriya near the southern city of Tyre.

The Israeli military said it regretted the incident and was investigating, and that it was fighting against Hezbollah, not the Lebanese Army.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said the attack “represents a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire, strengthen the army’s presence in the south, and implement … 1701”.

Reuters