By Timour Azhari
BEIRUT (Reuters) -Hezbollah welcomes any effort to cease the struggle in Lebanon however doesn’t pin hopes for a ceasefire on any specific U.S. administration, Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi stated on Thursday when requested about Donald Trump’s election victory.
“It might be a change in the party who is in power, but when it comes to Israel, they have more or less the same policy,” Moussawi instructed Reuters. “We want to see actions, we want to see decisions taken.”
Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged hearth for greater than a yr, in parallel with the Gaza struggle, however preventing has escalated since late September, with Israeli troops intensifying bombing of Lebanon’s south and east and making floor incursions into border villages.
Israel says it’s concentrating on Hezbollah infrastructure and navy belongings, whereas avoiding civilians. Hezbollah and Lebanese officers level to the rising dying toll, with greater than 3,000 killed since October 2023, and widespread destruction within the nation as proof Israel’s hearth is indiscriminate.
U.S. diplomatic efforts to halt preventing between Israel and Hezbollah, which included a 60-day ceasefire proposal, faltered final week forward of the U.S. election on Tuesday by which former president Trump recaptured the White Home.
Moussawi acknowledged the heavy toll of Israeli assaults which have blown aside 1000’s of buildings, largely in Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim-dominated south and east and the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut. However he stated the group’s navy capabilities remained robust.
“Our hearts are broken – we are losing very dear lives. This feeling that (Israel) cannot be punished or brought to international justice is a result of U.S. support which renders them immune to accountability,” he stated.
“America is a full partner in what’s happening because they can exercise influence to stop this destruction.”
Massad Boulos, a Lebanese-American billionaire who’s the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, denied a report revealed this week by Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed that had quoted him saying he can be Trump’s envoy answerable for negotiating with the Lebanese facet to succeed in a deal to finish the struggle. Boulos instructed Reuters that the report was “totally wrong”.
The Israeli authorities celebrated Trump’s return to energy, saying he was a pacesetter who would help them “unconditionally”.
STRIKE AT ARMY CHECKPOINT
The Israeli navy stated on Thursday that 5 troopers had been killed and 16 wounded in a fight incident in southern Lebanon. It didn’t say precisely when the incident occurred.
In a single day on Wednesday, Israel carried out a collection of strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs, together with at the least one simply tens of metres (yards) from Beirut airport’s runways.
Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamiye stated the airport was functioning usually on Thursday.
One other Israeli strike on Thursday on a automobile at a Lebanese military checkpoint on the entrance to the southern metropolis of Sidon killed three individuals and wounded three Lebanese troopers and 4 members of a U.N. peacekeeping contingent, the Lebanese military stated in an announcement.
A Reuters reporter on the scene stated a bus with United Nations markings that was half of a giant convoy of U.N. peacekeepers had sustained harm within the strike.
UNIFIL, the peacekeeping drive, stated in an announcement that 5 newly-arrived peacekeepers have been flippantly injured within the Sidon drone strike and handled on the spot.
On Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an Ottoman-era constructing close to the famed UNESCO-listed historic temples of Baalbek in jap Lebanon, the area’s governor and an organisation that has organised cultural occasions there stated on Thursday.
Governor Bachir Khodr instructed Reuters the strike hit the empty heritage constructing within the closest assault but to the complicated of Greco-Roman and Phoenician temples that make up the World Heritage Website, simply meters away.
“It’s a very artisanal neighbourhood, typically full of tourists,” he stated.
