Key points
- An Israeli attack in the city of Aitou killed at least 21 people, officials said.
- Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will attack Hezbollah “mercilessly, everywhere in Lebanon, including Beirut.”
- Netanyahu also reiterated his calls for UN peacekeeping forces to leave combat zones in Lebanon.
As Israel pushed its forces across southern Lebanon in an attempt to wipe out Hezbollah and its military infrastructure, tensions increased between Israel and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
The UN said so the latest allegations of Israeli violations against peacekeeping forces on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected allegations that Israeli troops deliberately harmed UNIFIL peacekeepers as “completely false” and repeated calls for them to withdraw from combat zones near the border with Israel.
He said Hezbollah uses UNIFIL positions as cover for attacks that have killed Israelis, including Sunday, when a drone strike on a military base killed four soldiers.
“Israel has every right to defend itself from Hezbollah and will continue to do so,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
He said he regretted any harm suffered by UNIFIL personnel, but added that the best way to ensure their safety was to “heed Israel’s request and temporarily remove themselves from danger.”
The force’s spokesperson said in a video posted Monday on X that the peacekeeping mission will remain.
Meanwhile, as Israel expanded its targets, an airstrike in the north killed at least 21 people, health officials said.
So far the main focus of Israeli military operations in Lebanon has been in the south, in the Bekaa valley in the east and in the .
The strike in the predominantly Christian town of Aitou hit a house that had been rented to displaced families, the town’s mayor, Joseph Trad, told the Reuters news agency.
In addition to the dead, eight people were injured, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
Local television broadcast footage of the aftermath of the attack in Aitou, showing rescuers picking through piles of rubble and medics lifting a victim, wrapped in a white shroud, into an ambulance.
Netanyahu, visiting the military base in central Israel where from a Hezbollah drone strike, said Israel would continue to attack the Iranian-backed movement “without mercy, everywhere in Lebanon – including Beirut.”
resumed a year ago, when the militant group began firing rockets at Israel in support of Palestinian Hamas militants at the start of the Gaza war and .
Israeli attacks have killed at least 2,309 people in Lebanon over the past year, the Lebanese government said in its daily update. The majority have been killed since late September, when Israel expanded its military campaign.
Israel says its operations in Lebanon aim to ensure the return of tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes in northern Israel.
The entire Middle East remains on high alert for possible Israeli retaliation against Iran in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
The United States said on Sunday it would send troops to Israel along with an advanced anti-missile system.
The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon on Monday strongly encouraged its citizens to leave “now,” warning that additional flights arranged by the government to help U.S. citizens starting Sept. 27 will not continue indefinitely.
has limited its monitoring capabilities, and U.N. sources say they fear that any violations of international law in the conflict will be impossible to monitor.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said EU member states had taken too long to condemn Israel’s attacks on UNIFIL soldiers, describing them as “completely unacceptable.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged EU members to respond to Madrid and Ireland’s call to suspend the bloc’s free trade deal with Israel over its attacks in Lebanon and Gaza.
EU countries, led by Italy, France and Spain, have thousands of soldiers in the 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission.