Israel and Hizbullah have accused each other of violating the Lebanese ceasefire, which took effect this week with the aim of ending almost 14 months of fighting.
Hizbullah member of the Lebanese parliament Hassan Fadlallah accused Israel of infringing the truce by firing on civilians returning home to their villages along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. After Israeli troops opened fire on villagers at a number of locations, the Lebanese army urged residents of the south not to approach areas where Israeli forces are located.
The Israel Defense Forces prohibited movement between the Litani river and villages in southern Lebanon for 14 hours from 5pm to 7am, warning that any movement in the direction of southern Lebanese villages would endanger residents. Civilians already situated south of the Litani, about 30km from the Israeli border in most areas, were instructed to remain in place.
The IDF also confirmed that fighter jets targeted a Hizbullah facility in southern Lebanon that it claimed contained medium-range rockets, saying “terrorist activity was identified at the site”.
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Some 10,000 Lebanese soldiers will deploy between the Israeli border and the Litani river in tandem with an Israeli military withdrawal, but the operation will take 60 days and the danger exists of clashes resuming.
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday that 3,961 people had been killed and 16,520 injured in the hostilities that began the day after the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. The IDF says more than 2,500 Hizbullah operatives have been killed since the start of the war, and that the Iranian-backed Shia militia has suffered significant losses, although it retains a fighting capacity.
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Tens of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon have already returned to their villages, and on Thursday Israeli war evacuees also started travelling north to homes they abandoned in response to Hizbullah rocket fire, even though the government has not yet called on its citizens to return to their homes. However, many residents said they still do not feel it is safe to return, predicting that another round of fighting with Hizbullah is just a matter of time.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Thursday he believed the United States would “punish” the International Criminal Court (ICC) for having issued arrest warrants for prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Israel intends to appeal the arrest warrants on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel’s war on Gaza. An ICC spokesman said in a radio interview on Thursday that the arrest warrants could be rescinded if Israel was to convince the international court that it would open a thorough investigation or successfully appeal.
Visiting the Gaza border on Thursday, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, Yitzhak Goldknopf, said “Jewish settlement here is the answer”. Some 8,000 Israelis lived in the Gaza Strip until the 2005 disengagement when Israel withdrew from the area. Mr Goldknopf was shown a map by settler leaders with a number of potential locations across the coastal enclave where they hope to renew settlements, even though this is not Israeli government policy.
At least 21 Palestinians were killed in clashes in Gaza on Thursday, amid unconfirmed reports that Egyptian mediators were planning a new ceasefire initiative. At least 44,330 Palestinians have been killed since the Hamas attack when 1,200 people were killed in Israel.
Israeli military strikes killed at least 26 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics said, as forces stepped up their bombardment of central areas and tanks pushed deeper into the north and south of the enclave.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has displaced nearly all the enclave’s population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins. – Additional reporting: Reuters
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