Israeli helicopters evacuate dead, injured troops from south Lebanon

Latest reports suggest Israeli helicopters along the Lebanon border are evacuating dead and wounded soldiers as Hezbollah resistance fighters target Israel's Golani military brigade.

The Israeli media reports said on Thursday that helicopters were dispatched to areas after Hezbollah resistance fighters detonated an explosive device against a group of Israeli soldiers near Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon.

A Lebanese security source said it was the third explosive device detonated against commanders from the Golani Brigade in the town located in southern Lebanon. Sources said the significant incident involving the Golani unit and attacks at noon local time caused deaths and injuries.

Hezbollah said in a statement that at least 17 Israeli troops have been killed since the regime launched its incursion into southern Lebanon. 

"The Islamic Resistance Operations Room confirms from its reliable field and security sources that the number of dead among the officers and soldiers of the Zionist enemy in the heroic confrontations that the resistance fighters fought today, Thursday 03-10-2024, has reached 17 officers and soldiers," it said.

Since dawn on Thursday, the Lebanese resistance fighters have been repelling every attempt by the Israeli elite forces to advance on multiple fronts in southern Lebanon, inflicting heavy losses in equipment and personnel.

The Hezbollah fighters are targeting locations where enemy soldiers are gathering and the lines of advance along the front edge within the occupied territories with artillery shells and rockets.

 The qualitative strikes of Hezbollah have so far thwarted any hostile "Israeli" advance into Lebanese territory.

The Israeli military on Thursday said its death toll from fighting in southern Lebanon had risen to nine. "Captain Ben Zion Falach, aged 21... fell yesterday (Wednesday), during combat in southern Lebanon," it said in a statement.

The occupying regime has long had a policy of not disclosing the true number of soldiers killed in combat and providing significantly lower death toll figures.

A Lebanese political analyst recently praised Hezbollah’s operational capabilities, warning that Israeli forces will become "sitting ducks" for the Lebanese resistance group should they attempt a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

“Hezbollah's ability to rebound from the pager attacks and the assassination of its senior commanders is a testament to its operational resilience and capacity to withstand shocks to its command-and-control structure,” stated Amal Saad, a lecturer at Cardiff University, in a post on X (formerly Twitter) last week. 

14 Israeli soldiers killed in southern Lebanon, Israeli sources say

Sky News Arabia reported the fatalities, citing unnamed Israeli sources.

Hezbollah unleashes hundreds of rockets 

Hezbollah on Thursday said in a statement that it targeted Israeli soldiers near the border with rockets.

"Our fighters today, Thursday, targeted a gathering of Israeli enemy soldiers in the al-Thaghra area on the outskirts of the town of Odaisseh, near the Lebanese-Palestinian border, with a rocket barrage," it said.

Reports indicate over 160 rockets have been fired since this morning. Rockets made a direct impact on Israeli military bases and settlements. 

The Lebanese resistance group said “a salvo of rockets” targeted Israeli soldiers in the Sasa settlement and “a salvo of Falak missiles” was directed at the Ramim military barracks.

Separately, the Israeli occupied city of Tiberias was bombed with rockets. Hezbollah said it also shelled the gathering of Israeli soldiers in the Raheb military site, which was targeted twice before Thursday.

Another attack came in the Misgav Am forest with a rocket salvo targeting Israeli soldiers.

A resistance drone exploded in a settlement in western occupied city of Galilee.  

Israel’s claim of entering southern Lebanon is ‘false,’ Hezbollah says

The Lebanese resistance movement says its fighters are ready for a “direct confrontation” if Israeli troops enter.

Health workers killed in airstrike in central Beirut

An Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s Bashoura district earlier on Thursday killed seven health and rescue workers, according to a medical organization.

The strike hit an apartment within a multi-story building housing the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders.

The attack, the second in 24 hours on the Health Society, marked the closest strike to central Beirut, near UN and government offices.

Lebanese health officials later raised the death toll from the Israeli strike near the heart of Beirut to at least nine people.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, denounced the attack. The Israeli military "targeted once again healthcare workers overnight, in central Beirut: 7 people including paramedics were killed,” he wrote on X.

“Not only civilians are victims of attacks, including in densely populated areas, but they are deprived of emergency care. I condemn this violation of IHL," he said using the acronyms for international humanitarian law.

 Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut also targeted Hezbollah's press office.

Two Lebanese soldiers killed

The Lebanese army said an Israeli attack killed one soldier and wounded another while carrying out a rescue and evacuation mission with the Lebanese Red Cross in the town of Taybeh in the Marjayoun district.

The Lebanese Red Cross said the Israeli strike wounded four of its paramedics and killed a Lebanese army soldier as they were evacuating wounded people from the south.

It said the convoy near the village of Taybeh, which was accompanied by Lebanese troops, was targeted despite coordinating its movements with the UN peacekeepers. 

Another Lebanese soldier was killed by Israeli fire at an army post in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, according to the Lebanese military, which said it returned fire.

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon says crucial needs for people under Israeli fire in the country include water, food, and safe shelters.

“It’s absolutely catastrophic. It’s gone on for almost a year now and the level of needs in the last 10 days is dramatic. We’re talking about one million people displaced and defected,” Imran Riza was quoted as saying

He noted about 1,000 people have been killed in the past two weeks with the number of health workers dying in Israeli attacks surging by 50 percent.

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