Israel fights Hizbollah on the ground, pounds Lebanon from the air

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel battled Hizbollah in south Lebanon as the air force expanded its bombardment of the country, with the Iran-backed group reporting "point-blank" fighting and Israel announcing the capture of a fighter.

It came amid sharpening accusations from UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon, who said Israeli troops "forcibly" entered a position, after the Israeli premier called on the force to withdraw from the area.

Israel's recent strikes have increasingly focused on areas beyond Hizbollah's traditional strongholds in the south and east, with the Lebanese health ministry reporting deadly strikes on a Shiite Muslim village in a mostly Christian mountain area and another in the north.

Israeli warplanes also hit a 100-year-old mosque in the village of Kfar Tibnit near the border on Sunday, Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said.

"It was a significant place because families used to gather in the square right next to it [the mosque] on special occasions," Mayor Fuad Yassin told AFP.

AFPTV footage from the northern Deir Billa area showed rescuers and villagers digging through debris left by a strike with their bare hands.

The Israeli military said its 36th division continued "targeted and limited operational activity" against Hizbollah.

The air force hit "Hizbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities" among other militant targets, and on the ground, soldiers "eliminated dozens" of fighters, it said. 

According to the NNA, Israeli forces have "escalated their attacks" on southern Lebanon, with "successive air strikes from midnight until morning" pounding several border villages.

Hizbollah said it clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to "infiltrate" border villages.

It later said it shelled Israeli soldiers gathered in the village of Maroun Al Ras, and that in Blida village, its forces engaged Israeli soldiers "with machine guns at point-blank range".

It also said it launched a salvo of rockets at a "base in southern Haifa". Hizbollah has repeatedly fired on targets in the area of Haifa, a major city on Israel's north coast.

The Israeli military said about 115 projectiles fired by Hizbollah crossed into Israeli territory by Sunday afternoon.

A Hizbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel's military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.

UN seeks 'explanation' 

United Nations peacekeepers on Sunday accused Israeli troops of "forcibly" entering one of their positions in south Lebanon.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier on Sunday called on the UN chief to remove peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm's way, after the force rejected repeated requests to abandon their positions.

He said that the peacekeepers' presence had "the effect of providing Hizbollah terrorists with human shields".

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Netanyahu's call, saying it "represents a new chapter in the enemy's approach of not complying with international" norms.

UNIFIL, with about 10,000 troops, is in southern Lebanon under the longstanding UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called it "absolutely unacceptable" that UN troops are "deliberately targeted by the Israeli armed forces".

The health ministry in Gaza says 42,227 people, the majority civilians, have been killed since Israel's military campaign began there. The UN acknowledges these figures to be reliable.

In support of its Hamas, Hizbollah started firing into northern Israel in October last year, triggering a near-daily exchange of fire that even before the current escalation had led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.

In September, Israel expanded its Lebanon focus, with Netanyahu vowing to fight Hizbollah until Israelis displaced by the violence could return to their homes. 

Since then, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Lebanon and a million others have been displaced, according to Lebanese officials.

Efforts to negotiate an end to the Lebanon and Gaza wars have so far failed.

Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a "full and immediate ceasefire".

 'No red lines' 

Even before the war, Lebanon was facing its worst economic crisis in decades.

Aid arrived in Beirut airport on Sunday from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the latest assistance to land in the country where the International Organisation for Migration has described the needs as "huge".

In a visit to Baghdad ahead of Israel's expected retaliation for Iran's October 1 missile attack on Israel, Iran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi on Sunday vowed there would be "no red lines" for Iran in defending its people and interests.

He later said Tehran was "fully prepared for a war situation" but added, "we do not want war, we want peace and we will work for a just peace in Gaza and Lebanon".

In Gaza, Israeli forces have for days essentially besieged an area around Jabalia in the north, with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, saying the fighting was causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there.

Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip, many of whom have been uprooted multiple times by the war, were praying for an end to the violence.

"There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north -- everyone is at risk of death," Gaza resident Sami Asliya, 27, told AFP.