The Albany Gazette - EU urges immediate halt to Israel-Hezbollah war

Earlier this week, US special envoy Amos Hochstein said in Lebanon that a truce deal was "within our grasp", and then headed to Israel for talks with officials there.

War between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in late September, nearly a year after the Iran-backed group began launching strikes in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7 attack.

The conflict has killed at least 3,670 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.

In the Lebanese capital, Borrell held talks with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation efforts on behalf of ally Hezbollah.

"We see only one possible way ahead: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701," Borrell said after his meeting with Berri.

Under Resolution 1701, which ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, only Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be allowed to maintain a presence in the south, where Hezbollah holds sway.

It also called for Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon.

"Back in September I came and was still hoping we could prevent a full-fledged war of Israel attacking Lebanon. Two months later Lebanon is on the brink of collapse," Borrell said.

He said the European Union was ready to provide 200 million euros ($208 million) to help bolster the Lebanese armed forces.

- Air raid sirens -

Hezbollah is one of the world's best-armed non-state forces, and was the only group in Lebanon that refused to surrender its arsenal after the 1975-1990 civil war.

The Lebanese army maintains a presence across the country's territory, but it is Hezbollah that holds sway in key areas along the border with Israel.

While the Lebanese army is not engaged in the Israel-Hezbollah war, it has suffered multiple fatalities among its ranks.

On Sunday, the army said an Israeli strike on a military post killed one soldier and wounded 18 others.

Also on Sunday, Hezbollah said it launched attacks using missiles and drones directed at a naval base in southern Israel and a "military target" in Tel Aviv.

It said it had "launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of strike drones on the Ashdod naval base".

In also claimed to have carried out an operation against a "military target" in Tel Aviv using "a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of strike drones".

The Israeli military said air raid sirens were activated in several areas of central and northern Israel, adding that it had intercepted projectiles fired from Lebanon.

Israel's emergency medical service Magen David Adom said it had provided treatment to two people including a 70-year-old woman who was mildly injured.

On Saturday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes around the country killed more than 55 people, many of them in central Beirut.

One strike on the working-class Basta neighbourhood of Beirut killed at least 20 people and wounded 66 others, Lebanon's health ministry said.

"We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more," said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one destroyed.

In a phone call with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Washington's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution" in the Lebanon war, a Pentagon spokesperson said.

A spokesman for Katz said he commended US efforts towards de-escalation in Lebanon, but said Israel would "continue to act decisively in response to Hezbollah's attacks on civilian populations in Israel".

- Hostage claim -

On the Gaza front, Hamas's armed wing said Saturday that an Israeli hostage, captured during the group's October 7 attack which triggered the war, had been killed.

Israel's military said it could neither "confirm nor refute" the claim.

Israeli protesters held another of their regular Saturday rallies in Tel Aviv to demand their government reach a deal to free remaining hostages.

On Sunday, Gaza's civil defence agency said a drone strike had seriously injured a hospital chief in an attack on the healthcare facility, while Israeli raids killed 11 people across the Palestinian territory.

Hossam Abu Safiya heads the Kamal Adwan hospital, one of just two partly operating facilities in northern Gaza, as the territory is in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis.

Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,211 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

Criticism of Israel has mounted over its conduct of the war, and this week the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

It has also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, though it is unclear whether he is still alive.

(N.Miller--TAG)