Israeli PM orders strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday said in a joint statement that they have ordered the military to strike Beirut's southern suburbs following Hezbollah's "repeated violations" of the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Israeli troops and Hezbollah have continued to trade fire since a mid-April ceasefire. Both Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Monday that his country was facing "a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression", after Israel stepped up its offensive against Hezbollah with the capture of the medieval Beaufort Castle.

Israeli troops have captured a strategic mountain topped with the castle in southern Lebanon in the deepest incursion into the country in more than a quarter-century, the military said on Sunday. Aoun condemned the Israeli offensive in a post on X and pledged to "work to end the suffering of the Lebanese people, and people in the south in particular".

On Monday, the UN Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting on Lebanon, after Netanyahu said the castle's seizure marked a "dramatic shift" in the fighting.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Aoun and Netanyahu about the ongoing diplomatic negotiations, a senior US official told AFP on Sunday, asserting that Hezbollah must be the first to cease its attacks.

"To advance those talks, the United States proposed a clear sequence: Hezbollah must stop all attacks on Israel. In return, Israel would refrain from escalation in Beirut," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, about the conversations between the three leaders.

The fighting in Lebanon has been the broadest spillover of the Iran conflict, displacing more than 1.2 million Lebanese through Israeli strikes and evacuation orders since March 2, when Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones into Israel.

The incursion has so far killed more than 3,370 people, according to the Lebanese government. Israel says 24 of its soldiers and four civilians have been killed over the same period. Tens of thousands of Israelis in the country's north have also been displaced by Hezbollah rockets and drones.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said in a weekly news briefing on Monday that "a ceasefire in Lebanon is an essential condition for any deal aimed at ending the war" with the US.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli forces on Sunday at a concrete barrier separating the West Bank from Jerusalem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

The ministry identified him as 26-year-old Imad Haroun Ishtayeh from the village of Salem, east of Nablus. It said Israeli forces shot him in the thigh in the town of al-Ram, and he was pronounced dead at the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah.

Israeli police said the man tried to unlawfully enter Israel by crossing the barrier.

In the Gaza Strip, two Palestinians were killed and 25 others injured on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike targeting the Gaza seaport area, west of Gaza City, according to Palestinian sources.

Eyewitnesses told Xinhua that an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a gathering of Palestinians at the seaport, an area crowded with displaced people and visitors.

A medical source said ambulances transported the bodies of two victims and 25 injured people, including one in critical condition, to a hospital in Gaza City.

The Gaza seaport has become a shelter for many displaced families, with dozens of makeshift tents erected along the waterfront amid severe shortages of necessities.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.

Agencies - Xinhua