An Israeli Navy corvette patrols along the coast of the northern port city of Haifa on August 3
New Delhi:
Iran said it expects Lebanon’s Tehran-backed Hezbollah group to hit deeper inside Israel and no longer be confined to military targets after Israel killed the Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israeli forces.
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A strike claimed by Israel in an overcrowded residential area of South Beirut has changed the calculus, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said. “We expect… Hezbollah to choose more targets and (strike) deeper in its response,” said the mission quoted by the official IRNA news agency. “Secondly, that it will not limit its response to military targets.”
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The strike on Tuesday killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, five civilians — three women and two children — also died.
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Israel said Shukr was responsible for rocket fire that killed 12 youth in the annexed Golan Heights, and had directed Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel since the Gaza war began.
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“Hezbollah and the (Israeli) regime had observed certain lines”, including limiting strikes to border areas and military targets, Iran’s mission said. The Beirut strike crossed that line, it added.
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Hours after Shukr’s killing, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in a pre-dawn “hit” on his accommodation in Tehran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said. Israel has declined to comment.
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The US will bolster its military presence in the Middle East, deploying additional warships and fighter jets to the region to “mitigate the possibility of regional escalation by Iran” or its proxies, the Pentagon said.
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Indian nationals in Israel have been asked to stay vigilant and adhere to the safety protocols following the escalating tension in the region. The advisory for Indian citizens in Israel comes a day after the Indian Embassy in Beirut strongly advised them against travelling to Lebanon till further notice. It also asked them to leave Lebanon.
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The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels also vowed a “military response” to the killing of Ismail. “There has to be a military response to these crimes, which are shameless and dangerous, and constitute a major escalation by the Israeli enemy,” Abdul Malik al-Huthi said in a televised speech.
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The Yemeni rebels have been launching drones and missiles at shipping in the Red Sea since November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.
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Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since October last year has killed at least 542 people on the Lebanese side, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to a tally by news agency AFP.
With inputs from AFP