Hezbollah supporters at a speech for the party's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
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Catch up on yesterday’s LIVE coverage of Day 89 of the Israel-Hamas war here.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said he “will discuss certain current topics on Friday” while vowing to not let Israel’s Tuesday attack on Beirut “go unpunished.” Nasrallah’s speech, scheduled for yesterday to mark the fourth anniversary of Iranian military general Qassem Soleimani’s assassination, went ahead after a drone strike — attributed to Israel — on Beirut’s southern suburbs killed at least seven people, among whom were three Hamas officials including the group’s political second-in-command Saleh al-Arouri.
On Tuesday evening, caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said that neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese want to be “dragged into a regional war.” UNIFIL press office vice director Candice Ardell expressed deep concern over “any possibility of escalation.” Hamas is scheduled to hold funerals for the members assassinated, the state-run National News Agency reported. The German Foreign Ministry called on its citizens to leave Lebanon claiming that “a further deterioration of the situation and expansion of the conflict cannot be ruled out.”
In the span of 24 hours, Israeli strikes killed nine Hezbollah members, only the second time that the number of daily deaths for the party reached that high since fighting began on Oct. 8. An Israeli strike on a three-story building in Naqoura killed Hussein Yazbek, Hezbollah's official in the area, along with three other members. Another airstrike on a house in Markaba killed three people, residents of the town told L’Orient Today’s correspondent amid continued border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel. Cross-border fire continued across southern Lebanon and northern Israel yesterday. Hezbollah announced the deaths of two other fighters that day, although the precise location of their death is unclear, raising the number of party members killed since Oct. 8 to 147, by our count. Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz said he discussed the “imperative of an international diplomatic effort in Lebanon” with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry condemned the explosions that killed at least 103 people in Kerman, Iran during the commemoration of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) top commander Qassem Soleimani. The Foreign Ministry, expressing its condolences to Iran and the families of the victims, described the attack as a criminal act with potentially regional repercussions. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah also expressed his condolences during a speech commemorating Soleimani, four years after his assassination by a US drone strike on Baghdad. US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller denied US or Israeli involvement in the explosions.
At least 22,313 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Hamas-Israel war, the enclave’s health ministry reported, as Israel’s assassination of Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri stalls talks for a renewed truce, according to Haaretz. Arab diplomatic sources told the Israeli publication that negotiations were interrupted following the assassination and that diplomatic efforts shifted towards the prevention of an escalation.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “Abou Obeida: Palestinian refugees’ new resistance icon in Lebanon”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz