Israel increases evacuations as clashes with Hezbollah escalate
As conflict intensified on Israel’s border with Lebanon, Israeli authorities said they were expanding a state-funded evacuation plan to an additional 14 villages. Along with a rare airstrike on the West Bank, the fighting raised fears that the war could expand.
Israel’s military said that attacks from Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that controls southern Lebanon, had resulted in civilian and military casualties. Amid concerns that the conflict could spill over, the Pentagon said on Saturday that it was sending an antimissile battery and battalions of the Patriot ground-based air defense system to the Middle East.
Israeli forces massed along the border with Gaza yesterday ahead of an expected ground invasion of the enclave. Israel’s military efforts to eradicate Hamas “may take a month, two, or three, but in the end, Hamas will no longer exist,” the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said yesterday.
Violence also has been surging across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel carried out an airstrike against what it described as an underground “terror compound” beneath a mosque in the city of Jenin. The claims had not been independently verified. Two people were killed, according to Palestinian health officials.
