Hezbollah rains rockets on Israel

Beirut, Lebanon — AFP

Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets at Israeli military positions on Thursday as Israel continued its attacks in Gaza.

The Iran-backed resistance group said its latest attack, which followed the launch of over 100 small rockets the previous day, came in response to Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon.

However, none of the small rockets caused any casualty in Israel.

Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian resistance group Hamas, have exchanged near daily cross-border fire since Israel launched its relentless genocidal attack on Gaza on October 7. Fears abound that the clashes could escalate into all-out war.

UN chief Antonio Guterres is “very worried about the escalation of the exchange of fire”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said earlier on Wednesday, warning of the risk to the wider Middle East “if we were to find ourselves in a full-fledged conflict”.

Israel on Wednesday killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Naameh Nasser, near the Lebanese coastal town of Tyre.

A source close to the group described him as the “Hezbollah commander responsible for one of three sectors in south Lebanon”. Another border sector chief was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were intercepted, causing no damage.

– Heavy battles rock Gaza –

Meanwhile, Israel’s genocidal offensive has killed at least 38,011 people, most of them women and children.

The Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory have killed at least 496 people in Lebanon, including civilians.

The Gaza war at the heart of the regional tensions has meanwhile raged on, and gun battles, air strikes and artillery shelling rocked Gaza City for an eighth day on Thursday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least five people were killed in a strike that hit a Gaza City school.

Fears of renewed heavy strikes have also surged in Gaza’s southern areas near Khan Yunis and Rafah after the military on Monday issued a sweeping evacuation order that the UN said impacted 250,000 vulnerable and already displaced people.

Witnesses reported air strikes and intense artillery shelling in western Rafah on Thursday.

– Efforts towards truce –

Israel has faced an international outcry over the soaring civilian death toll, punishing siege and mass destruction in Gaza.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, this week again called for an end to the “maelstrom of human misery”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will ‘destroy Hamas’ and bring home the remaining hostages.

US President Joe Biden, under growing domestic pressure over Washington’s support for Israel, in late May outlined a roadmap for a six-week ceasefire and exchange of prisoners.

There has been little progress since, but Hamas said Wednesday it was communicating with officials in Qatar and Egypt as well as Turkiye with an eye to ending the horrendous war.

Hamas said its Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh had “made contact with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt about the ideas that the movement is discussing with them with the aim of reaching an agreement”.

Netanyahu’s office and the Mossad intelligence service said “Israel is evaluating the (Hamas) remarks and will convey its reply to the mediators”.