Tensions heightened in the Middle East Sunday with Israel’s military and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon launching hundreds of strikes against each other and then, as the barrage seemingly ended, vowed to continue the fight.
Hezbollah described its return attacks against Israel as the first stage of retaliatory strikes for the Israeli assassination last month in Beirut of Fouad Shukur, a Hezbollah commander Israel blamed for an attack that killed 12 children and teenagers on a football field.
Hezbollah said new attacks would target sites deeper into Israel but that military operations for today have been completed.
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered two aircraft carrier strike groups to be positioned in the Middle East, the Pentagon said Sunday, strengthening the U.S. military presence amid the regional tensions.
The announcement, made in a summary of a call between Austin and Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant, represents a shift.
The Pentagon had initially deployed the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the region with a plan to replace the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, is on a visit to the region that is expected to take him to Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
The Israeli and Hezbollah attacks did not appear to ignite a broader Mideast war, but old issues remained unresolved.
In Cairo on Sunday, Egypt was hosting new high-level negotiations to try to reach a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas militants to end more than 10 months of fighting in Gaza and an agreement on the release of 100 or so hostages Hamas is holding.
The cease-fire talks have been stalemated for months.
In the Sunday fighting, Israel said it launched a wave of airstrikes across southern Lebanon in what it called a preemptive strike on Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group then said it fired hundreds of rockets and drones in retaliation for Shukur’s killing.
As the barrage of attacks appeared to end by mid-morning, Israel said no military target was hit, but one soldier with its navy was killed and two others were wounded either by an interceptor for incoming fire or by shrapnel.
Hezbollah said two of its fighters and a militant from an allied group, Amal, were killed.
Netanyahu said the Israeli military destroyed thousands of short-range rockets, all of which were intended to harm our civilians and forces in the Galilee. He said around 100 Israeli aircraft took part in Sunday’s strikes.
Air raid sirens were reported throughout northern Israel, and Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport closed and diverted flights for about an hour due to the threat of attack.
Israel’s Home Front Command raised the alert level in northern Israel and encouraged people to stay near bomb shelters. Hezbollah said its attack involved more than 320 Katyusha rockets aimed at multiple sites in Israel and a large number of drones.
It said the operation was targeting a qualitative Israeli military target that will be announced later as well as enemy sites and barracks and Iron Dome [missile defense] platforms.
VOA / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Israel is doomed and they know it, that is why the act so desperate, killing scores of civilians accusing the opposition, like Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq for teh war crimes.