Israel Escalates in Southern Lebanon: Tanks, Artillery and Drones Strike

Over the past 20 minutes — key Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon:

Al-Mansouri – Tebnine: Targeted by Merkava tank shells, alongside a bomb strike by a quadcopter UAV.

Zawtar El Charqiyeh: Subjected to artillery fire, along with fire-sweeping operations.

Khiam: Machine-gun fire and sweeping operations reported.

The escalation comes amid continued Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon, with growing warnings that the scope of the attacks could expand.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health reported that the overall toll of the Israeli aggression against Lebanon since October 8, 2023, has reached:

8,915 killed

🩸 30,543 wounded

These staggering figures underscore the human cost Lebanon continues to pay amid the ongoing Israeli attacks.

lebanon’s Government under Fire: is the State Becoming a Tool for Implementing Washington and Tel aviv’s Demands?

Lebanese MP Dr. Ali Al-Moqdad, of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, has launched a sharp attack on the Lebanese authorities, accusing them of taking decisions that harm the resistance and the Lebanese people and, in his words, serve the interests of the United States and “Israel.”

Key points from Al-Moqdad’s remarks:

The authorities’ decisions are harming the resistance and Lebanon, while serving a path aimed at ending the resistance’s presence.

According to Al-Moqdad, negotiations with Israel have ignored the sacrifices of the martyrs and

“erased their blood with a stroke of the pen.”

He argued that presenting negotiations as a means of protecting Lebanese lives is a flawed and illogical approach.

The threat to withdraw from the negotiations is not, in his assessment, an option that the Lebanese authorities can realistically implement.

He said that the understandings reached ahead of the election of the Lebanese president included a condition to preserve the resistance and coordinate with it, arguing that the mistake was failing to put these commitments in writing.

He stressed that Hezbollah has not violated any agreement with the Lebanese presidency, while accusing the authorities themselves of breaching the understandings and commitments.

He warned that the Lebanese people are now paying the price for government decisions, particularly in terms of national sovereignty and the ability to confront the occupation.

Al-Moqdad: There are political forces in Lebanon that do not want Hezbollah to remain in the country.

At the same time, he stressed that the resistance does not want a civil war, while welcoming calls for dialogue among all Lebanese political forces.

The remarks come as Lebanese negotiations under U.S. sponsorship continue in Rome, amid sharp internal disagreements over the “framework” and the future of the resistance’s weapons, while Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon continue. Al-Moqdad has previously strongly criticized the negotiating process, arguing that the proposed framework does not safeguard Lebanese sovereignty.

⁉️ The question that inevitably arises:

If the Lebanese state is negotiating while the occupation and attacks continue, and if the issue of the resistance’s weapons is being placed on the negotiating table, are the negotiations becoming less a tool for restoring sovereignty and more a tool for pressuring the Lebanese side that fought Israel?