Oct. 6 (UPI) — Israeli Defense Forces have ordered the evacuation of Beirut as military blasts rock the city. The IDF said its fighter jets attacked a Hezbollah intelligence headquarters in Beirut Sunday.
This was the second recent military action and was a follow up to an attack by warplanes on Hezbollah’s munitions warehouses in the Beirut area, the IDF said.
The actions are partially in response to Iran’s long-range missile attack on Tuesday, in which hundreds of missiles were fired into Israel by Iran, which backs Hezbollah.
Israel said it intercepted most of the missiles, but that “several hits were identified, and the damage is being assessed,” an Israeli security official said. Israel vowed then to retaliate.
Iran claimed the rocket attacks in Israel were in retaliation for the killing of several Hezbollah officials over the past few weeks, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,400 people in Lebanon over the past two weeks, officials have reported.
The war between Israel and Hamas started a year ago Monday, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country now faces war on 7 fronts.
Those include Iranian-backed Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, “terrorists” in the West Bank and the Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, he said.
“And we are fighting against Iran, which last week fired over 200 ballistic missiles directly at Israel and which stands behind this seven-front war against Israel,” Netanyahu said.
At least 41,825 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7 last year, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel began an all out retaliation against Hamas almost immediately, and the fighting has devolved into a full-scale war.
Palestinians have also reported an increasing death toll and have called for the end of Israeli aggression on social media.
Netanyahu has maintained his claim that the IDF will stop at nothing short of complete eradication of Hamas, despite increasing pressure from other world leaders to agree to some sort of military stand down or cease fire.
So far, those calls have fallen on deaf ears and, if anything, attacks and military conflict, and the deaths that come with them, have intensified, and Netanyahu now finds himself defending Israel on multiple fronts.