Hezbollah said Wednesday it fired a ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency near Tel Aviv, while Israeli forces carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Israel’s military said it intercepted a missile fired from Lebanon. The attack prompted air raid sirens in Tel Aviv.
The escalated conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border is set to be the focus on a U.N. Security Council meeting later Wednesday in New York.
Diplomatic efforts to contain the fighting and prevent a wider regional conflict included a meeting Tuesday between French President Emmanuel Macron and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, during which Macron’s office said he “highlighted the responsibility of Iran to support a general de-escalation and use its influence with destabilizing actors.”
Iran is a backer of both Hezbollah and the Hamas militant group that Israel is fighting in the Gaza Strip.
The conflict has also prompted some governments to urge their nationals to leave Lebanon. The United States announced it was sending more military personnel to the region to augment its existing forces, while Britain said it expected 700 of its forces to arrive Wednesday in Cyprus in preparation for potential evacuations of its nationals from Lebanon.
Lebanese health officials said Israeli attacks since Monday have killed at least 564 people and injured more than 1,800 others.
Israel said one of its strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed Ibrahim Muhammad Kobeisi, identified by Israel as a senior Hezbollah military commander who oversaw Hezbollah’s missile systems.
The United Nations refugee agency said it was “outraged and deeply saddened” by other Israeli attacks that killed two of its staff members.
Thousands of Lebanese, on their own and at the urging of Israel, have fled southern Lebanon in search of safety from the Israeli attacks, clogging roads north to Beirut.
“We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday. “The people of Lebanon, the people of Israel and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza last Oct. 7, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks have killed more than 41,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, with the Israeli military saying the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.
Hamas has been designated a terror group by the U.S., the United Kingdom, the European Union and others. Hezbollah also is a U.S.-designated terror group.
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
