The Lebanese Prime Minister denounced on Tuesday evening the Israeli bombing of southern Beirut, the IDF targeting a Hezbollah leader who managed to escape the air raid.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Tuesday evening denounced the Israeli raid that targeted the stronghold of the pro-Iranian militia Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital.
Najib Mikati has castigated a “flagrant aggression” of his country’s sovereignty. In a statement, he denounced a “criminal act” and called on “the international community to assume its responsibilities and exert pressure to force Israel to stop its aggression and threats and implement international resolutions.”
The Israeli army has admitted targeting a commander “responsible” for the deadly shooting on the Golan, to which Israel had promised to retaliate “with force” after the death of twelve teenagers playing a football match in Majdal Shams.
On Tuesday evening, although two people were killed in the Israeli raid, the targeted commander, Fouad Chokr, nevertheless survived.
Hezbollah is accused by Israel and the United States of being behind the deadly shooting on the town of Majdal Shams located in the part of the Syrian Golan Heights annexed by the Israeli state.
According to the US State Department, Fouad Chokr is “a senior military commander of the group’s forces in southern Lebanon” who played “a key role” in “Hezbollah military operations in Syria” but also, longer ago, in the attack that left more than 200 dead in 1983 among the American Marines in Beirut.
Fouad Chokr has been wanted by Washington since 2017, which has offered rewards in exchange for information useful in tracking down this leader.
In any case, this raid has revived fears of an extension of the conflict to Lebanon from the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered on October 7 by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil, exchanges of fire have been almost daily on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, between the Israeli army and the pro-Iranian militia.
Earlier in the day, an Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket in northern Israel, according to emergency services, and the army said it responded to a barrage of rockets by firing toward Lebanon.
She had announced earlier that she had struck “around ten terrorist targets in the Hezbollah” in “seven different areas” of southern Lebanon, and killed a member of the armed movement.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday “deeply concerned by the growing threat of generalised conflict throughout the region.”
Several airlines have suspended flights to Beirut since Monday.