WEST ASIA ON FIRE

| | Jerusalem/ Beirut
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WEST ASIA ON FIRE

Monday, 30 September 2024 | PTI | Jerusalem/ Beirut

WEST ASIA ON FIRE

The Israeli military said Sunday that it killed another high-ranking Hezbollah official in an airstrike as the Lebanese militant group was reeling from a string of devastating blows and the killing of its overall leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The military said Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s Central Council, was killed on Saturday. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, and it was not known where the strike took place. Hezbollah has confirmed that one of its senior commanders, Ali Karaki, died in the Israeli airstrike that killed its top leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.  Israel has killed several top commanders in the Lebanese militant group in recent weeks in a series of strikes.

The Israeli military said it carried out another targeted strike on Beirut later on Sunday. In Syria, 37 militants affiliated to the extremist Islamic State group and an al-Qaeda-linked group were killed in two strikes, the United States military said Sunday. Two of the dead were senior militants,

it said.

Hezbollah has also been targeted by a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel. A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon has killed at least 1,030 people - including 156 women and 87 children - in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon by the lastest strikes. The Government estimates that around 2,50,000 are in shelters, with three to four times as many staying with friends or relatives, or camping out on the streets, Environment Minister Nasser Yassin told The Associated Press.

Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets and missiles into northern Israel, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas. No Israelis have been killed since the latest wave of strikes on top Hezbollah leaders began on Sept. 20.

Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah going back to the 1980s and served as Hezbollah’s military commander in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel. He often appeared in local media, where he would comment on politics and security developments, and he gave eulogies at the funerals of senior militants. The United States had announced sanctions against him in 2020.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel after Hamas’ October 7 attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies that consider themselves part of an Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” against Israel.

Israel has responded with waves of airstrikes, and the conflict has steadily ratcheted up to the brink of all-out war, raising fears of a region-wide conflagration.

Israel says it is determined to return some 60,000 of its citizens to communities in the north that were evacuated nearly a year ago. Hezbollah has said it will only halt its rocket fire if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which has proven elusive despite months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

The US Central Command said it struck northwestern Syria on Tuesday, targeting a senior militant from the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group and eight others. They say he was responsible for overseeing military operations.

They also announced a strike from earlier this month on September 16, where they conducted a “large-scale airstrike” on an IS training camp in a remote undisclosed location in central Syria. That attack killed 28 militants, including “at least four Syrian leaders.”

“The airstrike will disrupt ISIS’ capability to conduct operations against US interests, as well as our allies and partners,” the statement read.

There are some 900 US forces in Syria, along with an undisclosed number of contractors, mostly trying to prevent any comeback by the extremist IS group, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking control of large swaths of territory.

US forces advise and assist their key allies in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, located not far from strategic areas where Iran-backed militant groups are present, including a key border crossing with Iraq.

 

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