Israel steps up strikes in Lebanon as the conflict escalates

Israel stepped up airstrikes on Lebanon and said a senior Hezbollah commander in the south of the country had been killed.

The Israeli military reported the assassination of Hezbollah’s head of the Qana area on Wednesday. Lebanese officials said Israeli strikes on the town of Nabatieh killed 16 people including the local mayor and injured 52.

Interior Minister Bassam Al Mawlawi said the assault hit a municipality building during a meeting to coordinate relief efforts for the area, adding that members of the civil defense organization were among the dead. The Israel Defense Forces said it hit dozens of targets in the area including military warehouses, which it said were located near civilian buildings.

Israeli jets also struck Beirut for the first time in almost a week, just hours after Lebanon’s prime minister said the U.S. had assured him that Israeli attacks on the capital would ease.

The mounting campaign comes after the U.S. linked its military support for Israel to the provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza, warning Israeli ministers that a law may require limiting military support if they don’t allow more help to reach the besieged Palestinian territory within 30 days.

“We have seen some improvement in the last few days,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington on Wednesday. “But, of course, the proof will be in the pudding, ultimately. And we want to see them take additional steps.”

Miller said some of the positive changes include Israel reopening a route for the Jordanian Armed Forces to northern Gaza that allowed 50 trucks with food and water to come in on Tuesday. It also includes the reopening of the Erez crossing, an access route from southern to northern Gaza for aid coming in from the Kerem Shalom crossing near the Egypt border, he said.

The World Food Program says 96 percent of Gaza’s population faces acute levels of food insecurity after a year of war between Israel and Hamas, another Iran-backed group, which controls the enclave.

Israel has stepped up attacks on Hamas in Gaza in recent days, and 65 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, according to officials with the Hamas-run health ministry.

The U.S. wants a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon but has no “active call” for a cease-fire there, the State Department’s Miller said on Tuesday.

At least 1,600 people have been killed in the country since Israel started its air campaign against Hezbollah almost a month ago, according to health officials there. The death toll likely includes some Hezbollah fighters, as officials usually don’t differentiate between combatants and civilians.

The government announced its first confirmed cholera case since the Israeli invasion. Lebanon had reported 18 cases of the disease and two probable deaths in the north of the country in 2022, the first outbreak in nearly three decades, according to the World Health Organization.

Iran, the main backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah, is on a diplomatic push to gather regional support as it braces for Israel’s response to its firing of 200 ballistic missiles at the country on Oct. 1.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization sees an attack on the country’s nuclear sites as “very unlikely,” spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told Nour News on Wednesday, saying that it was no longer possible for such strikes to set back its atomic program.