Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah operative in northern Lebanon amid ongoing tensions, while Lebanese authorities investigated the abduction of a sea captain by armed men near Batroun, potentially linked to Israel, indicating escalating conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group.
Meanwhile, Iran's supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.
Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the U.S. presidential election this Tuesday.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles from Lebanon into Israel in solidarity with Hamas immediately after the Hamas-led Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. The yearlong cross-border fighting boiled over to full-blown war on Oct 1, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006.
Middle East Crisis | Top Points
Israeli naval forces captured a senior Hezbollah operative in north Lebanon which marks the first time Israel has announced it deployed troops deep into northern Lebanon to take a senior Hezbollah operative captive since the conflict between the two sides escalated in late September.
Hezbollah issued a statement describing what happened as a “Zionist aggression in the Batroun area”. The statement did not give details or confirm whether a Hezbollah member was captured by Israel.
Recounting the event, Lebanese residents from the apartment building where the man was seized said the armed group introduced themselves as state security. “We were terrified. They were breaking into the apartment next to ours,” Hussein Delbani told The Associated Press near where the man was captured. “I thought a state agency was doing a security operation,” said Delbani, who was displaced from south Lebanon a month ago when the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.
“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front," Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier likely is in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be coming to the region to deter Iran and its militant allies.
An attack on a central Israeli town early Saturday injured 11 people after Iran's supreme leader's threat.
The Magen David Adom emergency service said 11 people were hurt by shrapnel and glass shards in a direct strike on a building in Tira, a predominantly Israeli Arab town. Three were in moderate condition, while the others suffered milder injuries.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Saturday afternoon wounded 11 people, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. Israeli planes resumed strikes on on the southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight Friday, following four day lull in the capital.
