Israel said Monday it struck around 300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over 24 hours, ramping up its offensive to hit the group’s finances, as the United States called for the war to end “as soon as possible”.
The strikes on Hezbollah’s financial arm mark an expansion of the nearly month-long war in Lebanon, and came as Israel continued pounding Gaza more than a year into the war there.
Israel’s military said that an underground vault with tens of millions of dollars in cash and gold was among nearly 30 targets belonging to Hezbollah-linked financial firm Al-Qard al-Hassan hit since Sunday night.
The money in the vault was “being used to finance Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
Another bunker, yet to be targeted, is estimated to hold “at least half a billion dollars in dollar bills and gold,” he added.
The military vowed to carry out further attacks on Monday evening, including in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of capital Beirut which has been pummelled by strikes in recent weeks.
Shortly after Israel’s military told residents to evacuate parts of the capital, the more central Ouzai neighbourhood was hit for the first time during the conflict, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Hezbollah-affiliated rescuers told AFP they were looking for survivors amid the devastation in Ouzai.
“They did not leave any room for people to escape. The strike came closely after the warning,” one said.
Other strikes hit Hreik neighbourhood near Lebanon’s largest public hospital, the NNA added.
Two plumes of smoke rose above Beirut’s southern suburbs, AFPTV footage showed.
Also on Monday evening, Hezbollah said it had launched a volley of rockets at an army intelligence base in the suburbs of the main Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
– US calls for end to violence –
The United States, Israel’s top ally and main arms supplier, wants to see the conflict in Lebanon end “as soon as possible”, US envoy Amos Hochstein said while visiting Beirut.
Hochstein said that while UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, should be the basis for a new ceasefire, the parties had not done enough to implement it since then.
Under Resolution 1701, only the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeeping force UNIFIL should have been able to deploy in areas south of Lebanon’s Litani River near the Israeli border.
But Iran-backed Hezbollah remained in south Lebanon, and started launching low-intensity cross-border strikes into Israel last year in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to begin another tour of the Middle East in Israel on Tuesday, on a new push for an elusive ceasefire as fears persist of even wider war.
Israel has vowed to respond to an Iranian missile attack on October 1 — itself retaliation for the killings of top militants — putting the region on tenterhooks.
The war has also drawn in other Iran-aligned armed groups, including in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Syria’s government said two civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike on an embassy district of the capital Damascus on Monday.
– ‘Indescribable panic’ –
Last month, Israel expanded the scope of its war from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to keep fighting Hezbollah until it secures its northern border to allow for the return of people displaced by rocket fire.
Lebanon’s health ministry said six people, including a child, were killed when an Israeli strike hit a building in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek on Monday.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said the Israeli strikes targeting the financial firm Al-Qard Al-Hassan caused “extensive damage” to civilian property and infrastructure.
The attacks also triggered “indescribable panic and another wave of displacement among residents of those areas”, the office said.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan is sanctioned by the US, which accuses Hezbollah of using it as a cover to mask the group’s financial activities.
The NNA reported that the Israeli army blew up houses in the border village of Aita al-Shaab on Monday, adding that there had been heavy clashes in south Lebanon.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired around 170 “projectiles” into Israel on Monday.
Nearly a month of all-out war has killed at least 1,489 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
In Gaza, the war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed 42,603 people, a majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.
– ‘We will die of hunger’ –
Israel launched a major air and ground assault in northern Gaza earlier this month, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in the area.
After the Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, two Hamas sources told AFP that he would not be replaced by a new chief, but a Qatar-based ruling committee.
Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have fled the assault on northern Gaza, and according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees around 400,000 people were trapped in northern Gaza last week.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said four Palestinians were killed in strikes on Monday, while several homes were blown up in the northern area of Jabalia, a focus of the recent fighting.
The UN has warned of the risk of famine in Gaza, its figures showing that 396 aid trucks have entered the territory so far this month — far below the 3,003 seen in September.
A displaced resident said Jabalia “is being wiped out”.
“If we don’t die from the bombing and gunfire, we will die of hunger,” said 42-year-old Umm Firas Shamiyah, demanding aid be sent to the north.
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