Israel intensified its attacks to target Hezbollah militants in Lebanon hitting a densely populated neighborhood in Beirut on Thursday after days of lau
Israel intensified its attacks to target Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, hitting a densely populated neighborhood in Beirut on Thursday after days of launching airstrikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital.
At least 22 people were killed and 117 wounded, according to Lebanon’s Public Health Ministry.
The White House said it was discussing the campaign with the Israelis and reiterated support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told VOA during a briefing Thursday that Israel’s operations in Lebanon ‘are indeed targeted.’
Jean-Pierre contended that the administration’s goals of preventing Lebanon from turning into ‘another Gaza’ and supporting Israel’s efforts to dismantle the infrastructure of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, are not contradictory.
‘Both things could be true and at the same time’, she said, underscoring the need for a cease-fire deal.
The Israeli military said Thursday it killed two Hezbollah commanders in its most recent airstrikes. But like its campaign in Gaza, Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon has become the target of international criticism.
‘Far too many people are paying an unimaginable price, with over 2,000 killed, many more wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced’, U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said Wednesday.
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Many disagree that the yearlong Israeli strikes are surgical in nature and say the Biden administration has not done enough to prevent the Gaza war from spreading into another front in Lebanon.
‘It’s all well and good for the Biden administration to say that they want to give Israel that space to attack Hezbollah and degrade its capability’, said Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.
‘But the problem is that also means an open-ended war against Lebanon, an open-ended war that has been harming a tremendous number of Lebanese civilians, and that’s displaced now 1 million people in Lebanon’, he told VOA.
