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BEIRUT — Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Tuesday visited troops deployed close to the border with Israel and U.N. peacekeepers, as Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops conflict for a 3rd week.
The go to by Prime Minister Najib Mikati to the tense southern province is his first since clashes erupted alongside the border following a shock assault by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7. It additionally got here two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops alongside the border on Sunday.
Mikati and worldwide governments have been scrambling to stop the Hamas-Israel battle from increasing to Lebanon, the place the highly effective Hezbollah group warned Israel a couple of floor incursion into the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Kassem mentioned the group is within the “coronary heart” of the battle to “defend Gaza and confront the occupation.”
“Its finger is on the set off to no matter extent it deems essential for the confrontation,” Kassem tweeted.
Clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli army so far have been largely restricted to a number of cities alongside the border.
PHOTOS: Lebanon’s prime minister visits troops on the nation’s tense southern border with Israel
Journalists from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar tv reported that an Israeli helicopter assault struck an empty place close to the border city of Houla, after a missile fired from Lebanon hit an Israeli army place. The Israeli army mentioned the anti-missile assault hit a place in Manara with no casualties. They added that they struck a gaggle of militants in Mount Dov, a disputed territory generally known as Shebaa Farms in Lebanon, the place the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet.
In the meantime, Lebanon’s high Druze political chief Walid Jumblatt, mentioned that he together with Mikati and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri, who’s Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, are in settlement that the battle shouldn’t additional increase into the tiny Mediterranean nation. Jumblatt mentioned that he held calls with high Hezbollah safety officers on the matter.
“However the matter is less than Hezbollah alone … Israel may have hostile intentions,” Jumblatt mentioned after assembly with Druze spiritual officers and clergymen in Beirut. “We should count on the worst.”
Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong battle in 2006 that led to a stalemate. Israel sees Iran-backed Hezbollah as its most critical risk, estimating it has round 150,000 rockets and missiles geared toward Israel.
In the meantime, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Israel on Tuesday, the place he reaffirmed calls to stop the battle from increasing into Lebanon and the broader Arab world, and known as for a “decisive” political course of with the Palestinians for a viable peace.
Macron warned Hezbollah and different Iran-backed teams towards opening a brand new entrance within the ongoing battle, and that Paris had expressed these issues in direct communication with Hezbollah.
“To take action can be to open the door to a regional inferno from which everybody would come out the loser,” he mentioned.
