President Joe Biden considered this Thursday that a total war can be avoided in the Middle East, where Israel has bombed Hezbollah positions in Lebanon and has suffered retaliation from Iran with a missile attack.
“I don’t think there will be a total war. I think we can avoid it,” Biden told reporters at the White House. The president maintained, however, that “there is still much to do.”
Fears of an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East intensified after Iran launched almost 200 missiles against Israel on Tuesday, October 1, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that the Islamic Republic will pay for its “big mistake.”
The leaders of the G7 countries – Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Japan and the United Kingdom – expressed “their deep concern about the deterioration of the situation in the Middle East.”
Iran said it acted in response to the assassination of Nasrallah in an Israeli bombing near Beirut and the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed on July 31 in a bomb attack in Tehran attributed to Israel.
President Joe Biden declared this Thursday that he is in talks with Israel about the possibility of attacking Iranian oil facilities, which boosted crude oil prices.
Before dawn, Israeli troops bombed an emergency care center run by Hezbollah in the heart of Beirut, killing at least seven people, according to the group.
The Israeli Army announced this Thursday that it killed 15 Hezbollah fighters in a nighttime bombing of a “Bint Jbeil mayoral building” where it claimed “large quantities of weapons were stored.”
According to official Lebanese figures, nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in October 2023, including more than a thousand since the start of intense bombing in September.
More than 40 rescuers and firefighters were killed in three days in Israeli bombings, according to Lebanese authorities.
The Government of Lebanon estimates that around 1.2 million people have been displaced by these attacks.
In this regard, this Thursday the Israeli Army promised that it will continue to deal “hard blows” to Hezbollah in Lebanon, where its troops are engaged in ground combat supported by aircraft attacks against militants of the Islamist movement.
Harsh blows against Hezbollah will continue, says Israel
After an offensive of intense bombings against the pro-Iran organization in Lebanon, which killed several Hezbollah leaders and left more than 1,000 dead throughout the country, according to Lebanese authorities, Israel began ground raids in the south on Monday, September 30.
The Israeli aviation attacked “the intelligence headquarters” of the movement on Thursday, on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital, the Army announced.
The American news site Axios claims, citing three official Israeli sources, that the target of the attack was Hashem Safieddine, the possible successor at the head of Hasan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah, assassinated on Friday, September 27. The Israeli military did not confirm this.
Hezbollah claimed for its part that an attack hit a warehouse near the Beirut airport and a source close to the movement reported up to 11 consecutive bombings in the south of the capital, a stronghold of this organization, overnight.
In total, 37 people were killed and 151 wounded in Thursday’s Israeli airstrikes, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said.
Almost a year after the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the attack by the Hamas group on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil, Israel announced in September 2024 that the “center of gravity” of the conflict shifted towards the north, on the Lebanese border.
Israel says it seeks to weaken Hezbollah to allow the return of tens of thousands of people displaced since the Islamist movement began launching projectiles into its northern territory a year ago in support of Hamas.
Israeli Chief of Staff General Herzi Halevi vowed that his forces will continue to attack Hezbollah positions and will not allow the Islamist movement to “resettle” in southern Lebanon.
“The harsh blows against Hezbollah (…) are going to continue,” the general said in a televised speech.
The Lebanese Army said this Thursday that, for the first time in a year, it responded to Israeli gunfire in the south after the death of two of its soldiers.