Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah also exchanged fire as fighting raged in Lebanon, while humanitarian groups sounded the alarm about a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Tuesday that Israel — and not the United States — will decide how it will strike back after Iran fired around 200 missiles at his country earlier this month.
The comments came as a top Iranian commander, whose absence sparked rumours that he could have been killed in an Israeli strike, appeared in public for the first time in weeks.
Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah also exchanged fire as fighting raged in Lebanon, while humanitarian groups sounded the alarm about a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
On October 1, Iran launched a volley of about 200 missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli strike in Lebanon’s capital Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan.
Israel has vowed to respond to the attack. Biden — whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier — has warned against striking Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities in order to avoid broader war.
Israel’s military launched several strikes on eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon –- including Beirut”.
Multiple Israeli air strikes hit the eastern Bekaa Valley, putting a hospital in Baalbek city out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
“It was a violent night in Baalbek, we have not witnessed a similar one since” the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, 50-year-old resident Nidal al-Solh told AFP.
Israeli strikes have targeted Hezbollah strongholds as well as other parts of Lebanon, including a northern Christian-majority village where at least 21 people were killed on Monday, according to the health ministry.
While deploying troops into Lebanon, Israel has kept up its bombardment of Gaza where it has been at war since the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed 42,344 people, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
At a school-turned-shelter hit by an Israeli strike in the central Nuseirat camp, Fatima al-Azab said “there is no safety anywhere” in Gaza.
“They are all children, sleeping in the covers, all burned and cut up,” she said.
In northern Gaza, the Israeli military announced it had effectively laid siege to the Jabalia area as it seeks to rout out Hamas fighters.
The International Committee for the Red Cross warned that “northern Gaza families are facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and tiredness”.
“People must be able to flee safely,” the ICRC’s Adrian Zimmerman said.
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