BEIRUT: Hezbollah said it battled Zionist troops on Monday in south Lebanon, and claimed several new attacks on Zionist entity after its deadliest strike since the start of the war. A drone strike on a Zionist base near Binyamina, south of Haifa, killed four soldiers on Sunday night, while another 60 people were treated for mild to critical injuries, according to the volunteer rescue service United Hatzalah.

Zionist forces on Monday launched a string of new air strikes on targets in Lebanon, including one on the north of the country which killed at least 18 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross. Zionists also faced new criticism over their alleged attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. In a call with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant discussed Sunday’s night’s drone attack and "the forceful response that would be taken against Hezbollah”, his office said in a statement on Monday.

Just before Sunday’s attack, the Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system known as THAAD and its US military crew to Zionist entity to further boost its allies defenses against potential Iranian attack. Zionist entity has vowed to retaliate after two Iranian missile barrages this year. "There was a huge boom and then suddenly ambulances started driving past, first one, then two, then three and more and more,” Yousef, the manager of a restaurant near the Binyamina base, told AFP, declining to give his full name for safety reasons.

On Monday, Hezbollah said its fighters had launched rockets at a naval base near Haifa and were "engaged in violent clashes” in the Lebanese frontier village of Aita Al-Shaab where a troop carrier had been targeted "with a guided missile”. After almost a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Zionist forces over the Lebanon border, Zionists on

September 23 intensified airstrikes against targets in Lebanon and sent ground troops across the frontier a week later.

Zionists entity has vowed to secure its northern boundary to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire to safely return home. Hezbollah says its strikes are in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas. The Lebanon war, which saw an expansion in fighting and airstrikes at the weekend, has killed more than 1,300 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures. The International Organization for Migration said last week it had verified 690,000 displaced people in Lebanon

Body parts

Deadly airstrike in northern Lebanon on Monday marked a departure from the usual pattern, being located far from the main combat area and in a mostly Christian area. Zionist entity has focused its firepower mostly on Hezbollah strongholds in Shiite Muslim-majority areas in the country and in the southern suburbs of Beirut. An AFP photographer at the site of the strike in Aito said it had leveled a residential building at the entrance to the village. Body parts were scattered in the rubble, with Red Cross volunteers searching for survivors while ambulances evacuated wounded people. Lebanon’s health ministry said that among dozens of people killed in airstrikes over the weekend were 16 in Maaysra, a Shiite Muslim village in a Christian-majority area north of Beirut.

‘No withdrawal’

Zionists continue to face severe criticism over injuries and damage sustained by the UN peacekeeping force which has been deployed in Lebanon since the first of four major ground offensives against their neighbor in 1978. "An attack against a UN peace mission is not responsible, is not acceptable,” European Union chief Charles Michel said on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian summit in Laos.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the UNIFIL mission to withdraw for their own safety and said their presence had "the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields”. Five peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the latest seeing the UN force accuse Zionist troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions.

The military later said a tank "backed several meters into a UNIFIL post” while "under fire” and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose country is a major troop contributor, said on Monday that there would be "no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon. Under Security Council Resolution 1701, only UNIFIL’s roughly 9,500 troops and the Lebanon’s army should be deployed in Lebanon’s south.

Deadly Gaza strike

Attack last year, triggered war in Gaza. Zionist retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, 42,289 people and the majority civilians. The UN has described the figures as reliable. Gaza’s civil defense agency late Sunday reported the latest deadly airstrike on a school used as a shelter for displaced people. "The Al-Mufti school was bombarded with a large volley of Zionist artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded,” said Gaza civil defense spokesman, Mahmud Bassal.

The military said it was looking into the reports. With the wars in Lebanon and Gaza showing no sign of abating, fears of an all-out regional conflict have seen Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas, engage in diplomatic efforts with allies and other powers. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met a senior official from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement in Oman, the latest stop in a wide-ranging diplomatic tour of the region. Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned of "a regional war that will be costly for everyone,” during a meeting with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Monday. - AFP