Israel strikes north Lebanon town as Netanyahu weighs Iran response

Israel said it was listening to US misgivings about its planned counterstrike against Iran but would act based on its own assessments, following a report suggesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could spare Tehran’s nuclear and energy facilities from any immediate reprisal.

“We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interests,” said a statement from the prime minister’s office yesterday.

The statement came after a report in The Washington Post said Netanyahu agreed to limit his retaliation for an October 1 Iranian ballistic missile salvo to military targets. The report cited two officials familiar with the matter.

Israel’s potential response to the Iranian attack has been the latest strain in its ties with the Biden administration, which has sought unsuccessfully to secure a truce in Israel’s conflicts with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both organisations are designated urbs of Beirut.  terrorist groups by the US.

A major escalation could engulf more of the Middle East in war and potentially impact next month’s US presidential election.

Israel and the US have been conferring regularly as Netanyahu prepares his nation’s response. Israel is due to receive a US-supplied and operated missile defence system, known as THAAD, that would enhance its ability to fend off any future ballistic missile salvos.

A decision to limit retaliation would be a relief for US President Joe Biden, whose administration has urged Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear or energy sites for fear of escalating the conflict.

Meanwhile, Israel has expanded its targets in its war with Hezbollah militants, killing at least 21 people in an airstrike in the north of Lebanon, the Red Cross said, while millions of Israelis took shelter from projectiles fired back across the border.

Until now, Israel’s operations in Lebanon have been concentrated in the south, the Bekaa Valley in the east, and the suburbs of Beirut.

The strike on the Christian majority town of Aitou on Tuesday hit a building that had been rented to displaced families, according to local mayor Joseph Trad.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, and it was not clear what the target was. Aitou is part of the country’s Christian heart land in the north, far from Hezbollah’s main areas of influence in the south and east.

Rescue workers searched through the rubble of the building as ambulances stood by to receive bodies. Several nearby buildings and cars were also damaged.

The strike came a day after a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Netanyahu subsequently visited the army base and soldiers injured in the attack, vowing that “we will continue to strike Hezbollah without compassion in every part of Lebanon, including in Beirut”.

Israel had ordered residents of 25 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, which flows some 60 kilometres north of the Israeli frontier.

At the Masnaa border crossing with Syria yesterday, Jalal Ferhat, his wife and five children were among those offloading belongings from buses, hoping to leave Lebanon. “There are strikes in our neighbourhood and destruction, and they [Israeli forces] hit near my house,” said Ferhat, 40, from Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon. “I have children … We tried going to another place … we had to leave again.”

In central Israel, residents rushed to shelters as sirens sounded. The military said three projectiles that had crossed from Lebanon had been intercepted. Israeli fighter jets struck the launcher from which the projectiles were fired, it added. No injuries were reported.

The conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah resumed a year ago when the militant group began firing rockets at Israel in support of Hamas at the start of the most recent Gaza war.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2309 people in Lebanon over the last year, the Lebanese government said in its daily up date, the majority since September. The toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel says its operations in Lebanon are aimed at securing the return of tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes in northern Israel.

The Israeli military said it had killed Muhammad Kamel Naim, commander of the anti-tank missile unit of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, in a strike in the Nabatieh area in the south of Lebanon. Hezbollah did not immediately comment.