Middle East updates: Hezbollah says group will fight on

Lebanese officials have said at least 45 people died in a town near the southern city of Sidon following an Israeli strike there on Sunday.

In a statement, the Health Ministry in Beirut said: "45 dead and 70 wounded in an updated toll for the Israeli enemy attack on Ain al-Delb," following a building collapse.

The ministry said a total of 105 people were killed in strikes on Sunday, which also targeted the northern province of Baalbek Hermel and Beirut itself.

The Lebanese government said it expected the death toll to rise, as several residential buildings had been hit.

Hezbollah's deputy secretary-general and now acting leader, Naim Kassem, said in televised remarks that the group would soon elect a new head following the death of leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Blaming Israel for a recent spate of attacks on Hezbollah leadership, he maintained that the violence had done little to dent the organization's power structure.

"Israel was not able to affect our [military] capabilities," Kassem said. "There are deputy commanders and there are replacements in case a commander is wounded in any post."

Hezbollah's longtime leader Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs on Friday.

In his first speech since the killing, Kassem said the militant group was continuing its operations as usual and would be prepared if Israel decides to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon.

"We know the battle could be long, and we are ready for any possibility. If Israel decides to launch a ground invasion, we are ready for a ground engagement," Kassem said.

 

EU foreign ministers are set to hold an emergency summit on the increasing violence in Lebanon, said a spokesman for the bloc's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.

The video meeting planned for Monday afternoon would "discuss the EU's response to the latest escalation in Lebanon."

Europe and other international powers have been scrambling to contain the conflict between Israel and Iran-aligned Hezbollah before it descends into an all-out war. However, over the past year, the 27-member EU has struggled to present a unified response to the conflict in the Middle East or exert much influence on the Israeli government.

Some 100,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria since Israel began carrying out airstrikes in the country last week, according to the UN high commissioner for refugees.

"The number of people who have crossed into Syria from Lebanon fleeing Israeli airstrikes — Lebanese and Syrian nationals — has reached 100,000," Filippo Grandi said on the platform X, formerly Twitter.

The refugee chief added that "the outflow continues," and that his agency is present at four crossing points alongside local authorities to support new arrivals.

Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon in recent days, carrying out airstrikes on what it says are Hezbollah targets across the country. Lebanese health authorities say hundreds of people have been killed, including 105 who were killed on Sunday alone. 

The Palestinian militant group Hamas has said its leader in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif, was killed along with some of his family members in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon. 

"Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amine, the leader of Hamas ... in Lebanon and member of the movement's leadership abroad," was killed in a strike on his "home in the Al-Buss camp in south Lebanon," a Hamas statement said. 

Lebanon's official National News Agency reported an airstrike on the Palestinian refugee camp near the southern port city of Tyre in the early hours of Monday. 

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist group based in the Gaza Strip. It is recognized as a terrorist organization by the German government, the EU, the US and some Arab states.

Palestinian militant group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said on Monday that three of its members were killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut's Kola district.

The attack, which has yet to be confirmed by Israel, would be the first attack within Beirut's city limits since October 7.

Reuters news agency cited witnesses as saying that the strike hit the upper floor of an apartment building.

The PLFP said in a statement that its military security chief Mohammad Abdel-Aal, military commander Imad Odeh, and a third member, Abdelrahman Abdel-Aal were killed in the strike.

The PFLP is a secular left-wing group, aligned with Hezbollah in its support of the Palestinian group Hamas against Israel. The groups are all designated as terrorist organizations by various governments.

Over the past few days, Israel has been targeting Beirut's southern suburbs in strikes it says are aimed at degrading Hezbollah's military infrastructure.

Earlier strikes have focused largely on the Shiite majority areas where Hezbollah are dominant. The Kola district is traditionally more Sunni.

Hanin Ghaddar, author and Senior Fellow from the Washington Institute's Arab Politics Program, told DW that two factors had influenced Israel's decision to escalate the conflict now in Lebanon.

"First is that the Israeli army is no longer needed in big numbers in Gaza. The military operation in Gaza is almost over and the rest that is needed doesn't require the majority of the Israeli army," Ghaddar explained.

Secondly, Ghaddar said that Israel realizes that "it's very easy to infiltrate Hezbollah with their intelligence, that Hezbollah is much more deterred than they thought and much less efficient."

She said that the lack of efficiency means that Iran also does not want Hezbollah to respond.

On the question of how badly Hezbollah has been impacted by the attacks on its leadership, Ghaddar said that what had happened was essentially "an assassination of Hezbollah."

"What we see is not just an assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, it's an actual assassination of Hezbollah itself by eliminating its founders," Ghaddar said.

Lebanon's Health Ministry on Sunday said that 105 people had been killed in Israeli strikes over a 24-hour period.

The ministry said that 359 people had also been injured as Israel struck parts of southern Lebanon, including suburbs in Beirut.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier said that it had conducted strikes on around 120 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

The IDF said that it was continuing attacks in Lebanon to "damage and degrade Hezbollah's military capabilities and infrastructure."

News agencies cited witnesses in reports that an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in central Beirut.

If confirmed this would be the first Israeli strike within the city limits of Beirut in almost a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and comes amid continued attacks throughout Lebanon.

The Reuters news agency reported that an upper floor of an apartment building in the Kola district of Beirut was hit and cited witnesses as having heard a bang and seeing smoke rising from the upper floor of the building.

French news agency AFP cited a security source saying that an Israeli drone hit an apartment belonging to Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya and that four people were killed. This could not be independently verified.

There have been other strikes on Beirut, including the one that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, but this would be the first within the city limits and not in a suburb.

kb/ab (Reuters, AFRP, AP, dpa)