Israel suffered one of the deadliest days of its ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Wednesday when six of its soldiers were killed in fighting near the border.
“The soldiers were martyred during fighting in southern Lebanon,” the army said in a statement. Their deaths mean that 47 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting with Hezbollah since September 30, when Israel launched ground troops into Lebanon. Had sent.
This announcement of the army comes after the statement of Israel’s new Defense Minister Israel Katz in which he said that there will be no relaxation in the war against Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared an image of the “Golani” brigade emblem on an
Since September 23, Israel has intensified its bombing campaign in Lebanon, primarily targeting south Beirut and Hezbollah strongholds in the east and south of the country. On 30 September, it sent ground forces.
This comes after almost a year of cross-border firing, which was launched by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas after the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the Gaza war.
Earlier on Wednesday, an Israeli strike hit Aramoun, a densely populated neighborhood south of Beirut that lies outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, killing eight people, the health ministry said.
Lebanese state media reported a third wave of Israeli raids on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold in 24 hours the same day.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said it had intercepted “five projectiles” that came from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
Katz, on his first visit to the border area since his appointment last week, told senior military commanders that Israel “will not make any ceasefire, we will not remove our foot, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of our War Objectives”.
Katz said: “We will continue to attack Hezbollah everywhere.”
Israel’s objectives include disarming Hezbollah and pushing its operatives beyond the Litani River, which flows into southern Lebanon.
Following Katz’s address, another airstrike hit a Beirut suburb on Wednesday evening after Israel’s military warned residents to evacuate.
‘No time left’
Hezbollah said on Wednesday it fired ballistic missiles at the Israeli army headquarters in the commercial hub Tel Aviv, which is also home to the Defense Ministry.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military’s spokesman for the unit said it would “not respond to Hezbollah’s allegations”.
Lebanese officials say more than 3,360 people have been killed since October last year, when cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel began.
On Tuesday, a rocket attack from Lebanon killed two residents of the northern Israeli city of Nahariya. The number of civilians killed in northern Israel as a result of rocket attacks from Lebanon has risen to 45.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, an affiliate of Hamas, released a video on Wednesday of an Israeli hostage taken in Gaza, identifying himself as Sasha Trupanov.
When Hamas operatives attacked on October 7, they took 251 hostages in the Gaza Strip. Some were already dead. 97 of them are still hostages, while 34 have been confirmed dead but their bodies remain in Gaza.
Trupanov’s mother, Lena, urged the immediate release of the hostages in a statement published by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group. He has no time left.”
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Wednesday that at least 43,712 people have been killed in the more than 13-month war between Israel and Palestinian activists.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
