Israeli air force blamed for strike on Palestinian base in Lebanon
BEIRUT — Israeli drones bombed a Palestinian base in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria early Monday amid rising tensions in the Middle East, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency and a Palestinian official said.
The strike came a day after an alleged Israeli drone crashed in a stronghold of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in southern Beirut while another exploded and crashed nearby.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun told the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jan Kubis, that the attacks violate a UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“What happened is equal to a declaration of war and gives us the right to defend our sovereignty, independence, and the safety of our land,” Aoun said in comments released by his office Monday. “We are people who seek peace and not war, and we don’t accept that anyone to threatens us though any means.”
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said later Monday that the UN took note of Aoun’s statements and reiterated the UN appeal to stop violations of the Security Council resolution and implement all its provisions.
“The UN calls on the parties to exercise maximum restraint, both in action and in rhetoric,” Dujarric said.
The Lebanese state news agency report said there were three strikes after midnight on Sunday, minutes apart, that struck a base for a Syrian-backed group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command, an ally of Hezbollah.
Abu Wael Issam, an official with the Palestinian group in Lebanon, told The Associated Press that the strike was carried out by Israeli drones and did not inflict any casualties. He accused the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using such attacks to boost his credentials ahead of Israel’s parliamentary elections next month.
He said the Palestinian group’s “alternatives are open in confronting the Zionist enemy” but didn’t specify how or if it would retaliate. A statement issued later by the group said “the Zionist aggression” will not stop the group and its allies.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strike, which the Lebanese news agency said hit near the village of Qusaya in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Airstrikes by Israel against Palestinian factions in Lebanon, such as this one, have been rare in the past years.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday that his group will confront and shoot down any Israeli drones that enter Lebanese airspace from now on, raising the potential for conflict amid heightened regional tensions.
Nasrallah also vowed to retaliate to an Israeli airstrike inside Syria that took place late Saturday, which he said killed two Hezbollah members.
He said allowing Israel to keep flying drones over Lebanon would lead to a similar situation as in Iraq, where a series of attacks there targeting military bases and weapons depot belonging to Iranian-backed Shiite militias have left the country on edge.
In Saturday’s strikes near Damascus, Israel publicly stated it was thwarting an imminent drone strike against Israel by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.