At least 41 more people were killed in Lebanon today as a flurry of Israeli airstrikes struck the eastern Bekaa Valley and Israeli ground troops clashed with Hezbollah forces. Since Monday, the Lebanese Health Ministry has reported 294 people killed in the Israeli assault, and 1,023 wounded.
In the face of continuous escalation, the Lebanese Army held an emergency meeting related to the deteriorating security in the country. While noting that two of the people killed in today’s Israeli strikes were Lebanese soldiers, Army chief Rodolph Haykal warned that the army carrying out its duties was contingent on Israel stopping its attacks and ending the ongoing violation of Lebanese sovereignty.
The new Israeli war was launched alongside the joint US-Israeli war against Iran, anticipating Hezbollah retaliation for those attacks. Hezbollah was nominally forbidden from resisting Israel, but as the attacks scaled up, Hezbollah has fired some rockets at northern Israel.
Attacks on an oil refinery in the Israeli city of Haifa | image from X
A handful of Israeli soldiers were wounded in strikes by Hezbollah, including yesterday when eight were wounded in one strike and two others in a later rocket attack. Today, multiple Hezbollah rocket strikes were reported, including an attack on the Haifa oil refinery. Details of the damage are as yet uncertain, but there were no reported casualties from the strikes inside Israel today.
Clashes on the ground in eastern Lebanon were reported near the village of Nabi Chit, in Baalbek District. That is rather far from the Israeli border, but the IDF troops reportedly helicoptered into the area to search a cemetery they thought might well have contained the remains on Ron Arad, leading to a confrontation with local Hezbollah fighters.
Though there were no Israeli casualties in Nabi Chit, the conflict lead to heavy Israeli airstrikes of the surrounding area, leading to substantial casualties, including the deaths of the two Lebanese soldiers.
The IDF said they did not find any information related to Ron Arad’s remains, but the raid successfully ruled out one possibility. Arad was an Israeli Air Force pilot whose plane went down because of a bomb malfunction while attacking Palestinians in southern Lebanon in 1986. He was captured and held by the Amal Movement, and was believed to have died at some point in the 1990s, though his body was never recovered.
Arad’s widow issued a statement seemingly objecting to the operation, saying she did not want Israeli soldiers’ lives put at risk to find his remains. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, said it remains his “personal mission” to recover all missing persons.
