Israel and Hezbollah trade fire across Lebanon border, Blinken calls for urgent resolution

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By Laila Bassam, Amina Ismail, James Mackenzie and Humeyra Pamuk

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM/LONDON (Reuters) -An Israeli strike killed three journalists in southern Lebanon on Friday, Lebanese officials said, while Hezbollah killed two people in northern Israel and violence raged in Gaza as Washington pressed for a way out of the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was an urgent need to get a diplomatic resolution, a day after he said Washington did not want to see a protracted campaign in Lebanon by its ally Israel.

Israel launched its major offensive in Lebanon a month ago, saying it was targeting the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah group to secure the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from the north due to cross-border rocket attacks.

Beirut authorities say Israel’s Lebanon offensive has killed more than 2,500 people and displaced more than 1.2 million, sparking a humanitarian crisis.

Hezbollah stepped up its rocket attacks when the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza, where Palestinian officials said Israeli strikes had killed at least 72 people since Thursday night.

Ahmed al-Farra described digging relatives including his mother from the rubble in the southern city of Khan Younis with a tank aimed at him.

“I was thinking ‘shall I dig or shall I watch the tank,’ what shall I do? I dug her out full of fear. Everyone was doing the same, digging in fear,” he said.

In northern Gaza, a World Health Organization representative said its workers saw “mayhem and chaos” after an Israeli raid on the Kamal Adwan hospital.

Israel said it was targeting “terrorists and terrorist” infrastructure in the area of the hospital and had killed militants in southern Gaza.

The strike that killed two people in Majd al-Krum in northern Israel, according to Israeli media, followed a statement from Hezbollah saying that it targeted the northern Israeli town of Karmiel with a large missile salvo.

“The world must stop Iran now – before it’s too late,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said on X.

The journalists killed as they slept in guesthouses overnight in south Lebanon were Ghassan Najjar and Mohamed Reda of the pro-Iranian news outlet Al-Mayadeen and Wissam Qassem, who worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar, the outlets said in separate statements. Several others were wounded.

Five journalists have been killed in previous Israeli strikes while reporting on the conflict, including Reuters visual journalist Issam Abdallah on Oct. 13, 2023.

“This is a war crime,” Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary said. At least 18 journalists from six media outlets, including Sky News and Al-Jazeera were using the guesthouses.

“We heard the airplane flying very low – that’s what woke us up – and then we heard the two missiles,” Muhammad Farhat, a reporter with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed, said.

His footage showed overturned and damaged cars, some marked “Press”. Sharing a post about the strike on X, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan wrote: “Deliberate killing of a journalist is a war crime.”

Israel, which denies deliberately attacking journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said Israeli forces had fired at their troops in an observation post in southern Dhayra on Tuesday.

Israel has denied deliberately targeting the force but says Hezbollah has built strongholds in close proximity to UNIFIL sites. Its previous strikes on UNIFIL posts have drawn international condemnation.

BORDER CROSSING STRUCK

Israel has used airstrikes to pound southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs, and has also sent ground forces into southern Lebanon against Hezbollah.

The military said it struck weapon production sites and Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut as well as Hezbollah targets around the Jousieh border crossing in the northern Bekaa Valley.

It said Hezbollah used the crossing, controlled by the Syrian military, to transfer weapons into Lebanon.

The Lebanese government said the strikes had knocked the crossing out of service, leaving the northern route as the only way to Syria, where the UN refugee agency said some 430,000 people had fled since Israel’s campaign started.

“The attacks on the border crossings are a major concern,” UNHCR spokesperson Rula Amin said. “They are blocking the path to safety for people fleeing conflict.”

‘REAL URGENCY’

Blinken said people on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border needed to be able return to their homes.

“We have a sense of real urgency in getting to a diplomatic resolution and the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, such that there can be real security along border between Israel and Lebanon,” Blinken said in London.

Hezbollah has kept fighting despite heavy blows, including the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israel has announced the deaths of ten of its soldiers over the past two days.

The Israeli military said it had uncovered an underground command centre in a village close to the border with Israel and a site concealed in wooded terrain where Kornet anti-tank missiles, launchers, hand grenades and rifles were stored.

Washington has expressed hope that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks, could provide an impetus for an end to fighting, a sentiment also voiced by several senior Israeli army officers.

Two Egyptian security sources said a delegation led by the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency had been briefed by officials in Egypt on their talks with Hamas and its conditions for a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza. Israel has said Mossad chief David Barnea would meet with CIA director William Burns and the Qatari prime minister in Doha on Sunday.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who met Blinken in London, said “ethnic cleansing” was taking place in northern Gaza. Israel denies such accusations, saying it is separating civilians from Hamas militants and moving them to safer areas.

Safadi said: “We are at the moment now where nothing justifies the continuation of the wars. Guns have to go silent.”

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Tala Ramadan Menaa Alaa El Din, Nayera Abdallah, Nadine Awadalla in Dubai; Emily Rose in Jerusalem; Thomas Escritt in Berlin, Ahmed mohamed Hassan in Cairo; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Gareth Jones, Andrew Heavens, Ros Russell, Philippa Fletcher)