Hezbollah first launched a powerful rocket attack on a major Israeli air force base on Tuesday, while prisoner outreach groups reported the detention of at least 12 more Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces in military raids in the occupied West Bank.
Strikes on major Israeli air force base for first time
Hezbollah announced on Tuesday that its target was the Hahotrim base, a key Israeli Air Force facility that houses equipment, transport formations and an engine factory.
The base is located south of the occupied city of Haifa, about 40 kilometres from the Lebanese-Palestinian border.
Hezbollah said the attack was part of a series of Khaybar operations that target secret Israeli intelligence bases and other strategic sites.
In addition to the operation, Hezbollah launched a swarm of attack drones at the Ramim Brigade command centre in Hunin narracks, successfully hitting the targets with high accuracy. The group also struck a 146th Division logistics base located north of the village of Sheikh Dannun, east of Nahariya.
Resistance forces also launched a missile strike on a Shraga base north of the occupied city of Akka. As part of these operations, Hezbollah also struck Tel Nof airbase south of Tel Aviv.
Residents of northern Lebanon fear that Israel is targeting displaced people
Tattered clothes, dusty broken table legs, tattered copies of the Quran, a red “I love you” teddy bear and a book on Aristotle among a pile of socks – all this and more lie among the rubble in the northern Lebanese village of Ain Yaaqoub in Akkar after a deadly Israeli air raid.
Red Cross rescuers say at least one body remains under the rubble of a two-storey residential building. A few metres away, charred, unrecognisable body parts lie on the ground.
At least 14 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Ain Yaacoub in this remote northern corner of Lebanon on Monday night, according to Walid Semaan, head of the Lebanese Red Cross.
It was the second Israeli attack on Akkar, Lebanon’s northernmost province, since Israel stepped up its deadly bombardment of Lebanon in late September. A previous strike a week earlier destroyed a bridge connecting two remote villages in the mountainous region. No one was killed that time.
But Monday’s attack further north was nothing short of a ‘massacre,’ according to residents of Ain Yaacoub: not only a residential building was destroyed, but also many houses around it.
A child is among 12 Palestinians arrested by the Israeli army in the West Bank
At least 12 more Palestinians have been detained by Israeli troops in military raids in the occupied West Bank.
A child was among those detained in the raids, which took place in several towns in the occupied territory, including Ramallah, Jenin, Qalqilya, and Nablus, the Detainees Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said in a joint statement. It also added:
The raids were marked by abuse, threats against detainees and their families, and acts of vandalism and destruction on citizens’ homes.
The new arrests bring the number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in the West Bank since October last year to more than 11,700, including those released after arrest, according to Palestinian figures.
This figure does not include those arrested from the Gaza Strip, who number in the thousands.
The Israeli military has regularly carried out raids in the West Bank over the past few years, which have intensified since the Gaza war began on October 7, 2023. Palestinians have also been subjected to brutal attacks by illegal Israeli settlers.
Since then, more than 780 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,300 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the health ministry.
The escalation follows a landmark ruling by the UN International Court of Justice in July that declared Israel’s decade-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
