BEIRUT: Israel kept up strikes on southern Lebanon on Tuesday, pressing its campaign against Hezbollah a day after US President Donald Trump asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Beirut to avert further escalation in the three-month-old war.
Following Trump’s intervention, Lebanon’s government said Israel would refrain from carrying out threatened strikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, while the group would halt attacks against Israel.
But the announcement has failed to reassure many Lebanese or halt the broader war in south Lebanon, which Netanyahu has vowed would continue. The din of an Israeli drone over Beirut kept residents on edge on Tuesday. The Lebanese government has said it would seek to expand the ceasefire in talks with Israeli officials in Washington that began on Tuesday, the latest in a series of face-to-face meetings Beirut has attended despite Hezbollah objections.
Iran has demanded a Lebanon ceasefire as part of any wider deal with the US to end the three-month-old war that began with US and Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February.
In the south, Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire hit a string of towns there and the Israeli military ordered residents of the city of Nabatiyeh to leave ahead of strikes.
Hezbollah announced two operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Tuesday, but no cross-border rocket attacks. The Israeli military overnight said it had intercepted two projectiles crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
If Israel’s northern communities were attacked, the Israeli military would evacuate and strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, warned Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in remarks provided by his office.
“The test of this policy for protecting our communities will be simple and will become clear in the coming days: either the attacks on Israeli communities stop, or if attacks continue and we strike Dahiyah in Beirut, this equation will be realized,” he said.
Beirut resident Faten Al Chehime said the Israeli warnings led her to flee her home in the southern suburbs on Monday, just two weeks after she had returned.
“Every time we return to our homes, there is a warning for us to be displaced again,” said Chehime, speaking at a camp sheltering displaced people in Beirut.
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