‘ONE MORE ATTACK’: The UN said Israel’s ban on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres entering was a political statement, but that contact would continue
AFP, BEIRUT
Israel yesterday carried out a deadly airstrike in central Beirut after eight ground troops were killed near the Lebanese border as it traded threats with Iran over possible attacks.
The Israeli military kept up its bombardment of the Lebanese capital after Iran launched its largest missile attack yet on Israel, which prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn that Tehran would pay for its “big mistake.”
As Israel weighs retaliation, US President Joe Biden said that Washington was “fully supportive” of its ally, but ruled out supporting a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
A man takes a photograph as smoke rises from a damaged building following Israeli airstrikes in Beirut yesterday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Iran, which backs Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, said it would step up its response if Israel counterattacked.
In Beirut, journalists heard multiple explosions overnight and reported some buildings shaking.
One of the Israeli strikes hit a Hezbollah rescue facility, a source close to the group told reporters, killing at least six people, according to a Lebanese Ministry of Health toll.
Seventeen overnight airstrikes had hit Beirut by dawn yesterday, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported.
Israel reported the first death of a soldier in the war with Hezbollah, a toll that later rose to eight dead.
Hezbollah said it had forced Israeli soldiers to retreat, targeted an Israeli unit with explosives and destroyed three Merkava tanks with rockets as they advanced on Maroun al-Ras village.
The Israeli military said it staged two brief incursions into Lebanon, ordering residents to flee more than 20 areas.
The military released footage that it said showed soldiers inside Lebanon, moving through villages and mountainous areas on foot, and announced it had deployed a second division to support the fighting.
In New York, the UN on Wednesday called Israel’s ban on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres entering the country a political statement by its foreign minister, adding that the world body’s contacts with Israel would continue “because they have to.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz deeming the UN head “persona non grata” was “one more attack on the United Nations staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.”
Guterres did not respond to a question about the ban as he headed to an emergency UN Security Council meeting, where he demanded a halt to the escalation of “tit-for-tat violence” that he warned is leading people in the Middle East “straight over the cliff.”
Earlier in the day, Katz accused Guterres of being biased against Israel and said the UN head never condemned the Hamas attacks and sexual violence committed by its fighters.
Dujarric strongly disagreed, saying Guterres has condemned “over and over again the terror attacks, the acts of sexual violence and other horrors that we’ve seen.”
However, the Israeli government objected to the secretary-general’s phrase in his initial condemnation that said Hamas’ attack did not happen “in a vacuum.”
Additional reporting by AP
