BEIRUT: The Zionist entity bombed Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold on Monday and battles raged in Lebanon’s south after the group claimed 50 attacks on Zionist targets the day before. A senior Zionist official said on Monday the Zionist cabinet would meet on Tuesday to approve a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, and a Lebanese official said Beirut had been told by Washington that an accord could be announced "within hours”.
The Zionist military said Hezbollah fired 250 projectiles into the Zionist entity on Sunday, part of a wave of attacks the fighters said had targeted areas including the Ashdod naval base and military sites near Tel Aviv. The Zionist military later reported having carried out attacks on 25 Hezbollah targets across the country in the span of an hour. The strikes took place in Nabatiyeh, Baalbek, the Bekaa Valley, southern Beirut and the city’s outskirts, it said.
The strikes came after a weekend of heavy air raids in and around the capital’s south. Lebanon’s education ministry suspended classes on Monday at schools, technical institutes and private higher education institutions in Beirut and a number of surrounding areas, citing "the current dangerous conditions”.
Zionist ground forces have also entered several villages and towns near Lebanon’s southern border, including Khiam, where Lebanese official media on Monday reported clashes with Hezbollah fighters. In the southern district of Tyre, the Lebanese health ministry reported at least 12 people killed in a pair of Zionist attacks, one on a road near the city of the same name, and another in the nearby town of Maaraka.
The escalation came as the United States, European Union and United Nations pushed for a truce in a war that Lebanon says has killed at least 3,754 people in the country since Oct 2023, most of them in the last two months. US news website Axios, citing an unnamed senior US official, said the Zionist entity and Lebanon had agreed to the terms of a deal, and a senior Zionist official told Reuters Tuesday’s meeting was intended to approve it.
On Monday a senior UN official urged "the parties to accept a ceasefire” in Lebanon. Axios reported that the parties were close to a deal that would involve a 60-day transition period in which the Zionist army would pull back, the Lebanese army would redeploy near the border and Hezbollah would withdraw its heavy weapons north of the Litani River.
Zionist media also reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was likely to endorse a US ceasefire proposal. Asked in New York whether the Zionist entity had accepted a ceasefire agreement, the country’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said "we are moving forward on this front”. He said he assumed "that the cabinet will meet today or tomorrow to discuss it.”
Zionist far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir warned reaching a ceasefire deal in Lebanon would be a "historic missed opportunity to eradicate Hezbollah”. "I understand all the constraints and reasons, and still it is a grave mistake,” he wrote on X. Ben Gvir has repeatedly threatened to bring down the government if it agrees to a truce deal with Hamas in the Gaza Strip or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
With an intensive Zionist military operation in Gaza’s besieged north in its 50th day, remaining residents are left "scavenging among the rubble” for food, Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, told AFP. Heavy rains flooded tent encampments of displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Monday, adding seasonal winter misery to communities already devastated by 13 months of war, as Zionist forces stepped up strikes in the enclave.
Downpours overnight inundated tents and in some places washed away the plastic and cloth shelters used by displaced Gazans, most of whom have been uprooted several times during the conflict. Some placed water buckets on the ground to protect mats from leaks and dug trenches to drain water away from their tents. Many tents used early in the war have now worn out and no longer offer protection, but the price of new tents and plastic sheeting has shot up beyond the means of displaced families. Some other encampments closer to the beach were flooded, and some tents were swept away by high waves.
The Gaza government media office said around 10,000 tents were either washed away or damaged due to the winter storm, appealing for international help to provide displaced families with tents to shield them against the rain floods. "According to government field assessment teams, 81 percent of the displaced persons’ tents are no longer usable. Out of 135,000 tents, 110,000 are completely worn out and urgently need replacement,” it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Zionist military strikes intensified across the enclave. In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, a Zionist airstrike killed at least four people, medics said, while tanks deepened their incursions in the northern edge of two towns of Beit Hanoun, and in Beit Lahia, and Jabalia, the largest of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps. Medics said seven Palestinians were killed by two Zionist airstrikes in the area of Jabalia.
On Monday, residents said Zionist planes dropped new leaflets on Beit Lahia ordering remaining residents to leave to the south, saying the area would come under attack and providing them with a map. Residents said Zionist forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in the area. Palestinians say the Zionist entity appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza. – Agencies