U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday urged Israel to take measures to protect civilians and ensure they are not caught “in a terrible crossfire,” as Washington continued its efforts to prevent a broader conflict in the Middle East and seek a diplomatic solution in Lebanon.
This came as fresh Israeli strikes in Gaza and Beirut resulted in numerous casualties. The Israeli military said it was targeting terrorist operatives.
Blinken said Lebanon’s future was for the Lebanese people to decide, not for any external actor.
“It's clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest, a strong interest, in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future. The presidency has been vacant for two years now, and for the Lebanese people, having a head of state would be very important, but that's for the Lebanese to decide, and no one else,” Blinken told reporters during a news conference in Vientiane, Laos.
U.S. officials have reiterated that Israel has the right to defend itself against terror attacks from Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah, as Israel expands its ground incursion into Lebanon.
The Pentagon said Friday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Thursday to discuss Israel's operations in Lebanon.
Austin reaffirmed “ironclad support for Israel's right to defend itself” and said Washington was committed to a “diplomatic arrangement” that safely returned both Lebanese and Israeli civilians to their homes on both sides of the border.
In the Lebanese capital, two Israeli airstrikes late Thursday hit apartment buildings in the central part of the city — without any warning and far from the Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut that Israel has bombarded nightly for more than two weeks.
The Lebanese Health Ministry put the toll at 22 dead and 117 injured, but the casualty numbers were expected to rise as rescuers continued to sift through the rubble Friday.
Israeli and Lebanese media speculated that the likely target was Wafiq Safa, the longtime head of Hezbollah's Liaison and Coordination Unit. There was no immediate confirmation that he was the target or whether he was killed.
At a news conference Friday, Hezbollah spokesperson Mohammad Afif said, “The battle with the enemy is still in its very early stages.”
Speaking outdoors with the rubble of destroyed buildings behind him in the group’s stronghold on the southern outskirts of the capital, Afif referred to Hezbollah rocket attacks that have gone as far south as Haifa, Israel, in recent days.
“What happened in Haifa and the surroundings in the past few days proves that we are still in the beginning,” he said. “And I say to the enemy: You have only seen a few of our strikes.”
After a period of relative calm, Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel following Hamas' October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, displacing tens of thousands on both sides of the border and leading to the current escalation.
In the south, peacekeepers with the U.N. interim force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, sustained Israeli fire for a second day. The mission said two Sri Lankan peacekeepers were wounded, one critically.
They were injured in a blast near an observation tower at the mission’s headquarters in Naqoura. The headquarters was also hit by Israel Defense Forces tank fire on Thursday, injuring two Indonesian peacekeepers.
UNIFIL said that at a separate position on Friday near the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel at Labbouneh, several protective blast walls collapsed when an IDF armored bulldozer hit the perimeter and IDF tanks moved near the position.
Asked about Thursday’s attack at a news conference on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Laos, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters that the “incident is intolerable, and it cannot be repeated.”
“Peacekeepers must be protected by all parties of the conflict, and what has happened is obviously condemnable,” Guterres said.
The IDF said of Friday’s incident that its soldiers “identified an immediate threat against them” and “responded with fire toward the threat.”
“An initial examination indicates that during the incident, a hit was identified on a UNIFIL post, located approximately 50 meters from the source of the threat, resulting in the injury of two UNIFIL personnel,” the military said.
The IDF has told UNIFIL to move 5 kilometers (3 miles) north of the area, but the United Nations says its force is mandated to stay and do its job. The mission has taken some precautionary measures and plans to remain, the head of U.N. peacekeeping said Thursday.