Hezbollah ‘enters battle of reckoning’ with Israel as world powers urge restraint Israel strikes targets in Lebanon as Hezbollah launches deepest rocket attacks since start of Gaza war
Both sides engage in significant escalation in conflict, prompting UN to say region is on ‘brink of imminent catastrophe’
The fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah militants is taking place in parallel to the unrelenting conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Hezbollah has said it has entered an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel after launching a series of rocket attacks on the north of the country as world powers implored both sides to step back from the brink of all-out war.
In a significant escalation of the conflict, Israeli warplanes carried out their most intense bombardment in almost a year across southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah responded with its deepest rocket attacks into Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
The events prompted the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to warn of the risk “of transforming Lebanon [into] another Gaza”.
During a funeral for a top commander killed along with 44 other people in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, said on Sunday that an “open-ended battle of reckoning has started”. “Threats will not stop us,” he said. “We are ready to face all military possibilities.”
