Israel pounds southern Beirut after US truce push
Israel has pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs with a series of powerful air strikes after issuing evacuation orders to residents, in the first such strikes in days targeting the dense urban area.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah facilities and assets, an assertion that it has repeated over the course of dozens of strikes over more than a month in the neighbourhood where the Iran-backed group holds sway.
The strikes early on Friday morning followed a renewed but as yet of fruitless bout of US-led diplomacy aimed at getting a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon to stop more than a year of fighting between Israel and Iran-backed groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon were moving toward understandings on what is required for implementing a long-violated UN resolution, 1701, that would be the basis for ending the current conflict.
But time is running thin to get a resolution before U.S. elections on Nov. 5 and Lebanese officials and analysts were pessimistic after reports U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein would not be heading to Beirut from Israel, where he was on Thursday.
The conflict in Lebanon has dramatically escalated during the past five weeks, with most of the 2800 deaths reported by the Lebanese health ministry for the past 12 months occurring in that period.
Lebanon’s prime minister had expressed hope on Wednesday that a ceasefire deal with Israel would be announced within days as Israel’s public broadcaster published what it said was a draft agreement providing for an initial 60-day truce.
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