BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Tuesday there would be no negotiations while fighting continued with the Zionist entity and it claimed sole responsibility for a drone attack on Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home. The group “takes full and sole responsibility” for targeting Netanyahu’s house, Mohammad Afif, head of the group’s media office, told a press conference in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

“If our hands didn’t reach you the previous time, then days, nights and the battlefield are still between us,” he said. The Zionist entity said a drone was launched at Netanyahu’s holiday home on Saturday. Netanyahu was not there at the time, but he described it as an assassination attempt.

Hezbollah also for the first time acknowledged that the Zionist entity had captured some of its fighters since it launched a ground offensive in south Lebanon, and said that the Zionist entity

was responsible for their wellbeing. Previously, the Zionist army said it has captured a total of four Hezbollah fighters since the start of its ground offensive in Lebanon, and released video footage it said showed one of them answering questions. Hezbollah had not captured any Zionist soldiers but had come close, Afif said. “It won’t take long before we have captives from the enemy.”

He also denied that the group’s Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association was involved in financing Hezbollah salaries or weapons and would fulfill its obligations to clients in full even after the Zionist entity targeted it with some 30 strikes on Sunday. The Zionist entity and the US say Al-Qard Al-Hassan, which has over 30 outlets across Lebanon, is used by Hezbollah for money laundering and terrorism financing, assertions the group denies.

The Zionist entity kept up its bombing of Lebanon Tuesday after a late-night strike that killed 18 people near a Beirut hospital, state media reported, as its war on Hezbollah approached the one-month mark. The latest deaths brought the overall toll in Lebanon since Sept 23 to at least 1,552, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, although the real number is likely to be higher due to data gaps.

The official National News Agency said four strikes hit Beirut’s embattled southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, with AFP footage showing plumes of smoke rising over the area. The strikes forced Hezbollah to cut short the press conference after the Zionist army issued an evacuation order for the area. A Zionist strike hit a target several hundred meters away from the venue just minutes after reporters left, an AFP video journalist said. One raid in the Ghobeiri area levelled an 11-storey apartment complex, AFP images showed.

In the country’s south, the Lebanese Red Cross said three paramedics were wounded in a strike on Nabatiyeh as they carried out a rescue mission in coordination with UN peacekeepers. The strikes on Nabatiyeh created a “belt of fire”, with scores of residential buildings, shops and cafes wiped out in “less than 30 seconds”, NNA said, calling it the heaviest Zionist bombardment of the city since the start of the war. “One street looked like a terrifying battlefield,” NNA said.

The Zionist army also bombed Al-Hawsh, just south of the southern city of Tyre, NNA said, with AFPTV footage showing smoke billowing over the area. Tuesday’s bombardment followed heavy shelling the previous day that killed a total of 63 people and wounded 234, according to health ministry figures. Monday’s toll includes 18 killed, four of them children, in a Zionist strike near a south Beirut hospital, the ministry said.

Another 60 people were wounded in the strike near the Rafic Hariri Hospital, Lebanon’s biggest public health facility, located in Jnah a few kilometers from the city center, the health ministry said. There was no evacuation warning for the densely populated neighborhood that has seen an influx of people displaced from areas further south. The hospital sustained minor damage in the strike, with windows shattered and solar panels destroyed, its director said.

But the strike flattened four nearby buildings, an AFP correspondent reported. Rescuers were still combing the rubble for survivors on Tuesday. Among them was resident Ola Eid who said she had watched from her balcony the previous night as her neighbourhood was bombed. “The children were playing in the courtyard,” Eid told AFP. “I was tossing them chocolate and candy from my balcony,” she added. “Before they could even catch them, the first strike hit, then a second. I saw the children ripped apart.”

The strike came after the Zionist entity accused Hezbollah on Monday of storing money in a bunker under the nearby Sahel Hospital, an allegation the facility’s owner denied. Journalists were invited to tour the hospital on Tuesday as calls mounted for the protection of Lebanon’s medical infrastructure. The Sahel Hospital is less than two kilometers away from the Rafic Hariri and both have treated casualties of Zionist strikes. – Agencies