Israel faces casualties in Lebanon as it presses ahead on two fronts

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Israel stepped up its attacks on two fronts on Wednesday, meeting fierce resistance in its ground campaign against Hezbollah that left eight Israeli soldiers dead and killing dozens in air strikes in both Lebanon and Gaza.

The deaths of the soldiers are believed to mark the Israeli military’s first combat casualties on Lebanese soil since the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, when more than 120 Israeli soldiers were killed. The Israeli military’s Telegram channel said five more soldiers were seriously wounded on Wednesday. Among the dead were four members of Egoz unit of the Commando Brigade, the channel said.

Hezbollah did not acknowledge any casualties, though the Israeli military said 20 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the fighting. Israel said it had destroyed 150 Hezbollah targets, including rocket launchers and weapons storage sites. The Times of Israel reported that Israel later “gained control over the area where the fighting took place.”

Hezbollah claimed it knocked out three Israeli Merkava heavy-battle tanks with guided rockets in Maroun el-Ras, a Lebanese border town.

Live now: The latest on the conflict between Israel and Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation against Tehran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, since 180 Iranian missiles were fired into Israel on Tuesday night. The Iranian attack, which the government said was in response to the assassinations of top Hamas and Hezbollah commanders, including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, has brought the region another step toward a full-blown regional war.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement early on Thursday that 46 people were killed and 85 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in the past 24 hours, Reuters reported.

Early Thursday, an Israeli air strike hit an apartment building near the Lebanese capital’s city centre, the second time Israel has struck central Beirut this week. At least six people were killed, the Associated Press reported. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station said it targeted the militant group’s health unit. Multiple strikes were also reported in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

“We have the capability to reach and strike every location in the Middle East, and those of our enemies who have not yet understood this, will understand this soon,” Israel’s Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said Wednesday in a video filmed inside an air force base in central Israel.

In Gaza, Israeli ground and air operations in a hard-hit city of Khan Younis on Wednesday killed at least 51 people, including women and children, Palestinian medical officials told the Associated Press. Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war.

Around the time General Halevi was making his remarks, a large explosion was heard in Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is a close ally of both Iran and Hezbollah.

Yossi Alpher, a retired Mossad agent, told The Globe and Mail that he expected Israel’s response would come in the form of a “pinpoint attack on strategic target some time soon.” Speaking just before the explosion in Damascus, he predicted that Israel could seek to demonstrate its reach by simultaneously striking Iran-aligned targets in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq or Syria.

Mr. Alpher said he didn’t think Israel would strike Iran directly, unless the United States agreed to take part in the attack too, a scenario he said President Joe Biden “seems anxious to avoid at least until the elections.”

But Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Wednesday that the U.S., along with Israel, was considering a possible military response to the Iranian attack. Mr. Biden on the same day said he would not support a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.

But he told the media that more sanctions would be imposed on Iran.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the United Nations, urged the UN’s Security Council to condemn Iran’s “unprovoked” missile attack on Israel and impose “serious consequences.” Addressing the council on Wednesday, she described Iran’s missile attack on Israel as a “significant escalation” of tensions in the Middle East, adding that “the Iranian regime will be held responsible for its actions.”

Israel has attacked distant nuclear sites in the past. In 1981, it launched Operation Babylon, a surprise Israeli Air Force attack on a partly finished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad. At the time, Israel said the attack was not an anomaly, but “a precedent for every future government in Israel.”

In an interview just before the Iranian missile barrage, Amine Kammourieh, a Lebanese journalist and regular commentator for Al-Jazeera, said that Hezbollah’s recent setbacks, including the simultaneous explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the militants in Lebanon on Sept. 17 and 18, delivered a blow to the perception of its fighting ability. “Hezbollah will have to hit hard to regain confidence among their supporters,” he said. “They will have to show they are willing to avenge Nasrallah’s death.”

While Israel has destroyed some of Hezbollah’s weapons caches, Mr. Kammourieh said “they still have a lot of weapons.”

Tuesday marked the second time that Iran has launched projectiles directly at Israel during almost a year of war pitting Israel against Iran’s allies Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the Houthi rebels of Yemen. The attack – which featured only fast-moving ballistic missiles – was considered far more dangerous than an April volley that used mostly slow-moving explosive drones that were fairly easy for Israel and its allies to shoot down.

Though no Israelis were killed in Tuesday’s attack, several Iranian missiles penetrated Israel’s air defence systems, including the vaunted Iron Dome. The main targets of the attack appeared to be a pair of Israeli air bases, as well as the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. Videos posted online appeared to show several explosions at the Netzanim base, as well as near the Mossad facility. The Israeli military acknowledged Wednesday that its air bases had been hit, but said there were no casualties or damage to aircraft.

Other missiles or missile fragments landed near a shopping mall and a restaurant in Tel Aviv, as well as an elementary school in the centre of the country. The only reported fatality as a result of the attack was a Palestinian man who was killed by falling missile debris near the city of Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran was not seeking escalation. He claimed that unlike Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Iran’s targets had been military, not civilian. “Our action is concluded unless the Israeli regime decides to invite further retaliation,” he said in a post on X on Wednesday. “In that scenario, our response will be stronger and more powerful.”

The heightened tension comes as Rosh Hashanah, the first of the Jewish high holidays, began at sunset on Wednesday. Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, begins at sunset next Friday.

Mr. Netanyahu says the goal of the Israeli military operation in south Lebanon is to allow residents of northern Israel – currently a closed military zone – to feel safe returning to their homes.

“It makes us feel that something’s happening,” said Katia Cohen, a 66-year-old retired recreational therapist who fled her home in the border town of Kiryat Shmona the same day that Hezbollah began firing into Israel. She and her husband Alan have spent the past year living at a friend’s holiday home in central Israel. “Once Nasrallah was killed, once things started to move, all our friends – and Alan and I – started to feel a lot more optimistic.”