The Israeli military said Hezbollah fire hit the sensitive air traffic control base on Mount Meron on Saturday but air defences were not affected because backup systems were in place. It said that no soldiers were hurt and all damage would be repaired.
Nonetheless, it was one of the most serious attacks by Hezbollah in the months of fighting that has accompanied Israel's war in Gaza and forced tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese to evacuate communities near the borders.
Hezbollah described its rocket barrage as an “initial response” to the assassination, by Israel, of a top Hamas leader in Beirut last week.
The Israeli military chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said the army pressure on Hezbollah was rising and it would either be effective “or we will get to another war.” Military spokesman Daniel Hagari asserted that Israel’s focus on Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force was pushing it away from the border.
Beirut airport on Sunday came under a cyberattack, Lebanon's state news agency said, with footage shared by local media showing anti-Hezbollah messages had replaced screen displays at its terminal.
Media reports said the airport message urged the powerful group Hezbollah not to "drag the country into war".
Lebanon's National News Agency said, "The cyberattack on the departure and arrival screens at the airport disrupted the BHS baggage inspection system."
"Hassan Nasrallah, no one will support you if you drag the country into war," the message said, addressing the group's leader, also saying "we will not fight on behalf of anyone."
Local media circulated images of the message criticizing Hezbollah, displayed onscreen alongside the emblem of the Christian "Soldiers of God" group.
The group has declined to comment when contacted by AFP. It later released a video statement appearing to deny involvement in the cyberattack, describing it as "the work of the devil".
The increase in fighting across the border with Lebanon as Israel continues its war on in Gaza gave new urgency to U.S. diplomatic efforts as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to visit Israel on his latest Mideast tour.
“This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering,” Blinken told reporters after talks in Qatar, a key mediator.
In a joint news briefing with Blinken, Qatar’s government acknowledged that the assassination of the senior Hamas leader in Lebanon could affect the complicated negotiations for the potential release of more captives held by Hamas in Gaza but “we are continuing our discussions with the parties and trying to achieve as soon as possible an agreement.”
Ten people died in Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, including a Palestinian man killed by attackers while driving a car, and a young girl shot as Israeli police fired at a car that rammed a checkpoint.
Inside Gaza, the Israeli war entered its fourth month on Sunday.
Biden administration officials have urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders.
Israel has killed more than 22,800 Palestinians, with the wast majority being children and women, and injured more than 58,000 since the war began.
An airstrike near the southern city of Rafah killed two journalists on Sunday, including Hamza Dahdouh, the oldest son of Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera's chief correspondent in Gaza, according to the Qatari-owned channel and local medical officials. Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Dahdouh weeping and holding his son's hand.
Al Jazeera strongly condemned the killings and other “brutal attacks against journalists and their families” by Israeli forces.
Israel has killed Dahdouh's wife, two children and a grandchild in an Oct. 26 airstrike, he was wounded in another Israeli strike last month that killed an Al Jazeera camerman.
“The world is blind to what’s happening in the Gaza Strip,” he said, blinking back tears.
Another airstrike hit a house between Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, killing at least seven people whose bodies were taken to the nearby European Gaza Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the facility.
One man hurried in carrying a baby and later walked the blanket-wrapped child to the morgue.
“Everything happening here is outside the realms of law, outside the realms of reason. Our brains can’t fully comprehend all this that is happening to us,” said a grieving relative, Inas Abu al-Najja, her quavering voice rising. Men worked the rubble with picks and bare hands.
On Sunday, officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies of 18 people, including 12 children, killed in an Israeli strike late Saturday on a home in the Khan Younis camp set up decades ago to house refugees from the 1948 war.
Israeli forces pushed deeper into the central city of Deir al-Balah, where residents in several neighbourhoods were warned that they must evacuate.
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by the French acronym MSF, said it was evacuating its medical staff from Deir al-Balah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital.
A bullet penetrated a wall of the hospital’s intensive care unit on Friday, and Israeli drone attacks and sniper fire were just a few hundred meters from the hospital over the past couple of days, said Carolina Lopez, the group’s emergency coordinator there. She said the hospital received between 150 and 200 wounded people daily in recent weeks.
The International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians said they also were forced to withdraw from the hospital. “The amount of injuries being brought in over the last few days has been horrific,” surgeon Nick Maynard with the IRC medical team said.
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