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IDF kills Hezbollah southern district commander; rocket fire from Lebanon wounds 4
[IsraelTimes] Residents of northern Arab town treated for minor injuries; EU ministers say they back expanding UNIFIL’s rules of engagement, but need IDF to withdraw from Lebanon first

The IDF said that it killed a Hezbollah district commander in southern Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
on Wednesday as rocket fire from the terror group persisted, injuring four people in northern Israel.

Four people were lightly maimed by shrapnel following the latest rocket barrage from Lebanon toward the Galilee, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said. Three men and a woman in her 50s were treated for their wounds at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, according to MDA.

A home in the Arab town of Majdal al-Krum near Karmiel suffered a direct hit from a rocket, Ynet reported.

The IDF said that around 30 rockets were fired in the barrage from Lebanon and that while most of them were intercepted, some impacted sites in the Galilee.

Later Wednesday, the IDF said it killed Hezbollah’s Kafr Qana district commander Jalal Mustafa Hariri in an Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM!...
in southern Lebanon. Hariri was responsible for planning and carrying out terror activities against Israel and was killed alongside commanders responsible for artillery fire and anti-tank fire in the area, according to the army.

Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, bullets whapped! around Butch as he tried to tie his scarf around his shoulder as a tourniquet......
Hezbollah said its terror operatives in southern Lebanon were locked in festivities with Israeli troops "at point-blank range," in the vicinity of the al-Qawzah village, as the IDF continued its raids targeting Hezbollah posts in south Lebanon. Troops killed dozens of Hezbollah terror operatives in the area, and uncovered two warehouses in civilian areas filled with weapons including shells, mortars, cornet missiles and anti-tank guided missiles, according to the military.

Furthermore, troops uncovered four entrances into tunnels hiding weapons and used them as shelters for terrorists, the IDF said Wednesday. During the operations, gunnies launched an anti-tank missile at troops and then fled, the military said. The air force then launched a strike targeting the terrorists.

Earlier Wednesday, the IDF said its forces destroyed the elite Radwan Force’s headquarters in southern Lebanon.

The IDF says its operations have targeted Hezbollah posts but their proximity to UN peacekeepers and members of the Lebanese army has led to several accidental strikes on the latter two groups. In the latest incident, UNIFIL reported that peacekeepers at a position near southern Lebanon’s Kfar Kela observed an Israeli Merkava tank firing at their watchtower on Wednesday morning. Two cameras were destroyed, and the tower was damaged, UNIFIL said in its statement.

"Yet again we see direct and apparently deliberate fire on a UNIFIL position," it added.

The IDF later released a statement saying "UNIFIL infrastructure sites and forces are not a target."

Sixteen EU defense ministers issued a joint statement Wednesday expressing "the shared will to exert maximum political and diplomatic pressure on Israel" to prevent further "incidents" against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. Italia and La Belle France organized a video conference involving the 16 EU countries that participate in UNIFIL, where the ministers "strongly condemned" attacks the mission has blamed on Israel, the statement adds. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told RAI television that changing UNIFIL’s rules of engagement or increasing troop numbers could happen if Israel stopped its operations.

"The message we want to send to Israel is that if you stop your army, the UN can also change its approach in that part of Lebanon, so that we can peacefully achieve what you’re now trying to do by attacking Hezbollah’s bases militarily," he said.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that the activities of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, near the border, are of "great importance" and that the force could play a vital role when the war with Hezbollah ends.

"Israel places great importance on the activities of UNIFIL and has no intention of harming the organization or its personnel," Katz said in a statement posted on X, adding: "Israel views UNIFIL as playing an important role in the ’day after’ following the war against Hezbollah."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has angered European allies in recent days by insisting that the international peacekeeping force UNIFIL leave its posts in southern Lebanon to avoid getting caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that any negotiation to end fighting in Lebanon must be conducted "under fire." Meeting with commanders of the reservist 146th Division near the northern border, Gallant said the recent capture of Hezbollah terror operatives in southern Lebanon proves "the IDF’s success and Hezbollah’s predicament," according to a Defense Ministry statement.

"We are learning things through questioning that we would not have learned any other way, and they will be useful for us soon," Gallant said, adding that the ongoing ground operation will allow evacuated residents of northern Israel to return to their homes.

The World Health Organization warned that the risk of cholera spreading in Lebanon is "very high" after a case of the acute and potentially deadly diarrhoeal infection was detected in the conflict-hit country.

Lebanon’s health ministry said a cholera case had been confirmed in a Lebanese national who went to hospital on Monday suffering from watery diarrhea and dehydration. The patient, from Ammouniyeh in northern Lebanon, had no history of travel, the ministry said.

Lebanon suffered its first cholera outbreak in 30 years between 2022 and 2023, mainly in the north of the country.

Earlier Wednesday, Israel confirmed striking Beirut overnight, after several days without targeting the Lebanese capital amid Washington’s concerns over the scope of the bombing campaign in recent weeks. AFP witnesses said Israeli jets carried out at least two strikes in south Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburb, the terror group’s stronghold, some five hours after Hezbollah fired a rocket barrage at Safed in northern Israel. In a statement, the IDF said Israeli Air Force fighter jets, guided by intelligence operatives, struck an underground weapons cache belonging to Hezbollah.

The military said it took steps to avoid civilian casualties ahead of the strike, including issuing an evacuation order for the area.

The IDF said its planes also struck dozens of Hezbollah targets, including weapons stashes and command centers, around southern Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh, where Hezbollah and its ally Amal hold sway. The strike killed 16 people and maimed 52, the Lebanese health ministry said, without differentiating between civilians and combatants. Lebanese security sources say that the mayor of Nabatiyeh was among those killed in the strike.

Courtesy of Elmerert Hupens2660:
'Israeli Army Finds The Most Modern Russian Weapons At Hezbollah Bases - Netanyahu
A pair of interesting videos can be seen at the link.
[MSN] Israeli military forces discovered Russian weaponry during searches of Hezbollah militants' bases in southern Lebanon. The found weapons are described as state-of-the-art, according to an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The head of the Israeli government emphasized in his conversation with the media that, according to a UN Security Council resolution from 2006, only the Lebanese army is allowed to possess weapons in the area south of the crucial Litani River.

"However, in this area, Hezbollah has dug hundreds of tunnels and caches, where we have just found a quantity of state-of-the-art Russian weapons," Netanyahu stated.

He added that a new civil war in Lebanon would be a tragedy.

"It is certainly not our aim to provoke one. Israel does not intend to interfere in Lebanon’s internal affairs," the Israeli prime minister assured in his conversation with Le Figaro, discussing the IDF's operations in Lebanon.

According to Netanyahu, the sole aim of the Israeli side is to allow our citizens living along the Lebanon frontier to go home and feel safe.

WHAT WEAPONS WERE FOUND AT HEZBOLLAH BASES
In this interview, the Israeli prime minister did not specify which particular Russian weapons were discovered by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Hezbollah's tunnels in Lebanon.

However, on October 16, the Israeli military command released footage of a weapons cache located in a civilian residential building in southern Lebanon.

Additionally, in the released footage of the Russian weapons found with Hezbollah, the Kornet anti-tank guided missile systems and Igla MANPADS can be seen. The production dates on them range from 2018 to 2021.

Posted by: trailing wife 2024-10-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=720574