Hezbollah reports clashes with Israeli troops along length of Lebanese border

Hezbollah claimed on Wednesday its fighters had pushed back advancing Israeli troops in clashes along the length of the border, a day after Israel said it had killed two successors to the Iran-backed Lebanese militant movement’s slain leader.

Hezbollah has been launching rockets against Israel for a year in parallel with the Gaza war and is now fighting it in ground clashes that are spreading along Lebanon’s mountainous frontier with Israel.

The group said it had fired several rocket salvos at Israeli troops near the village of Labbouneh in the western part of the border area, close to the Mediterranean coast, and had managed to push them back.

Further east, it said it had attacked Israeli soldiers in the village of Maroun el-Ras and fired missile barrages at Israeli forces advancing towards the twin border villages of Mays al-Jabal and Mouhaybib.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah fighters had fired around 40 projectiles across the frontier into Israeli territory on Wednesday, some of which had been shot down. Sirens sent Israelis rushing towards shelter.

Israel meanwhile launched airstrikes including at targets far from the border combat zone. The Lebanese health ministry said four people were killed and 10 wounded by a strike that hit the town of Wardaniyeh, north of Sidon along the coast.

The escalation in Lebanon, after a year of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has raised fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could suck in Iran and Israel’s superpower ally the United States.

In recent weeks Israel has carried out a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and launched ground operations into southern Lebanon that expanded further this week.

Israel has said that troops from as many as four divisions have operated inside Lebanon since the first announcement of the ground operation on Oct. 1. It has not confirmed that they have established a permanent presence there.

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the last two weeks, and forced 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has no choice but to strike Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they fled under Hezbollah rocket fire.

Burn victims from Israeli strikes are being treated at a specialised unit in Beirut’s Geitaoui hospital, the only one of its kind in the country. Reuters journalists saw nurses gently change the gauze on patients, some of whom were wrapped neck down because of the severity of burns.

Mahmoud Dhaiwi, a Lebanese soldier, told Reuters he was off duty and heading to the beach when his car was hit by an Israeli strike. His whole body was burned.

Overnight, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs and said it had killed a figure responsible for budgeting and logistics for Hezbollah, Suhail Hussein Husseini.

The densely-populated and thriving suburban district has been abandoned by many residents following Israeli evacuation warnings. Some Lebanese draw parallels between the warnings and those seen in Gaza over the last year, prompting fears that Beirut could face the same scale of destruction.

BIDEN-NETANYAHU CALL

U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to speak on Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Middle East has been on edge awaiting Israel’s response to a missile attack from Iran last week that Tehran carried out in retaliation for Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon. The only fatality from the Iranian attack was a Palestinian hit by debris that fell in the West Bank.

Biden has said Israel should consider alternative targets to striking Iranian oil fields or nuclear sites. An attack on oil facilities could drive up global prices.

Iran’s foreign minister was visiting Gulf Arab states. Tehran has told them would be unacceptable if they allowed use of their airspace or military bases for attacks against Iran, a senior Iranian official said.

Netanyahu said on Tuesday Israeli airstrikes had killed two successors to Hezbollah’s slain leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, himself killed in an Israeli air attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27.

Netanyahu did not identify them, but Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to succeed Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated”.

Safieddine has not been heard from since a huge Israeli airstrike late last week.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the group endorsed efforts by Lebanon’s speaker of parliament to secure a ceasefire. He conspicuously left out an oft-repeated condition of the group – that a separate ceasefire would have to be reached in Gaza before Hezbollah would agree to a truce. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on Qassem’s remarks.