Arbaco 16-Octo-2024 {HMC} Israeli forces carried out airstrikes Wednesday on Beirut’s southern suburbs, sending plumes of smoke rising from at least two neighborhoods.
The Israel Defense Forces said its fighter jets struck a Hezbollah underground weapons warehouse.
The attacks followed Israel’s latest evacuation order that warned people to leave areas in Beirut that the Israeli military said were near Hezbollah facilities.
Israel also reported more than 50 projectiles were fired from Lebanon Wednesday, while Hezbollah said it launched missiles at an area in northern Israel.
The latest Israeli strikes in the area of Lebanon’s capital came a day after the United States said it expressed concerns about such attacks to Israeli officials.
“When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
Meanwhile, the United States is demanding that Israel boost its humanitarian aid to famished Palestinians in Gaza within the next month or face the possibility that the United States would cut its military aid supporting Israel’s year-long war against Hamas militants.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told top Israeli officials in a letter Sunday that Washington has “deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory.”
Miller said the message was meant to be a private diplomatic communication but confirmed its veracity.
For months, even as Israel’s fight against Hamas has raged on, the U.S. has repeatedly pressed Israel to ramp up its humanitarian assistance — food, water, medical supplies, fuel and other goods — to Palestinian civilians. But the humanitarian effort has waxed and waned, the effort hampered by the theft of goods by the militants, continued fighting near drop-off sites and disputes over entry points into Gaza.
While some left-wing U.S. lawmakers have urged the administration of President Joe Biden to cut off military aid to Israel to pressure it to reach a cease-fire deal to halt fighting, the United States has continued to supply it, most recently on Sunday when Biden said he ordered the Pentagon to send Israel an advanced.
Source VOA
