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      Israel Confirms 1st Military Fatality in Lebanon Invasion

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      Israel’s military said Wednesday that one of its soldiers had been killed in combat in Lebanon, as Israeli ground troops and fighter jets pounded Hezbollah sites across a broad swath of southern Lebanon and the Lebanese militia lobbed dozens of rockets at towns in northern Israel.The military identified the fallen soldier as Capt. Eitan Itzhak Oster, 22, from the city of Modi’in Maccabim Re’ut in central Israel, but did not specify where he was killed. He is the first soldier confirmed to have died in Lebanon since the Israeli military announced Tuesday that it had begun an invasion of the country.The military said Captain Oster was a squad commander in the commando brigade of the elite Egoz Unit. Earlier in the day, it said members of that unit were engaged in “targeted operations in several areas of southern Lebanon” that included “close-range engagements” with Hezbollah militants.In a series of statements posted online, Hezbollah said it had fought Israeli soldiers on Wednesday in Yaroun, Odaisseh and Maroun al-Ras, a border village that was the scene of a major battle during Israel’s last invasion of Lebanon, in 2006.Maroun al-Ras is roughly one mile from the Israeli town of Avivim, which Hezbollah said it had targeted with “a salvo of rockets” earlier in the day. Avivim was evacuated last year because of such attacks.In Yaroun, Hezbollah said it had detonated an explosive device on Wednesday afternoon, resulting in injuries to Israeli soldiers. The Israeli military did not comment on the report of injuries, and it could not be independently verified.Al-Manar, a television network owned and operated by Hezbollah, said fighters from the group’s elite Radwan Force had ambushed Israeli soldiers near Odaisseh after they crossed the border from the Israeli village of Misgav Am.Lebanon’s army — which is not a party to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — said in a statement that Israeli forces had crossed the border and traveled roughly a quarter of a mile inside Lebanon in the areas of Yaroun and Odaisseh, “then withdrew after a short period.” More

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      A History of Israel’s Previous Invasions of Lebanon

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      Israel has invaded Lebanon three times before. On each occasion, it said its aim was to secure its northern frontier and stop militants from launching attacks across the border. And each time, the invasion had unforeseen consequences and achieved less decisive results than Israel’s military planners and political leaders anticipated.The invasions helped fuel the destabilization of Lebanon, a country whose myriad religious sects, including Shia and Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze, fought a 15-year civil war that drew in Syria and caused huge destruction before it ended in 1990. Lebanon has suffered from shaky governments, occasional violence and political assassinations. It currently faces a debilitating economic crisis.“The invasions served to widen the wedge between Lebanon’s political communities, and as they are linked to the country’s sects this has only worsened sectarian tension and fueled the country’s political divisions,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based research organization.As Israel invades for a fourth time, here is a brief look at the history of its previous invasions.1978: Three-Month InvasionIsrael invaded southern Lebanon in March 1978, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, partly in response to an attack by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon who landed by sea and commandeered a bus on a coastal road north of Tel Aviv, leaving 35 Israelis and an American dead. Israeli forces captured territory up to the Litani River, a few miles from Israel’s northern border.Israel withdrew in June, handing control of the ground it had taken to a Lebanese Christian militia and a United Nations peacekeeping force that had been established under a United Nations Security Council resolution. Lebanese officials said 1,200 people died in the invasion. Israel said it had killed 350 Palestinian militants and lost 34 of its own soldiers.The invasion did not solve Israel’s security problems on its northern border and some critics of Mr. Begin argued that Israel had squandered international goodwill by devastating a string of villages in southern Lebanon. Other commentators noted that Arab leaders, despite voluble rhetoric, provided little practical or military assistance to the Palestinians during the fighting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel’s Attack in Central Beirut Was Its First There in Years

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      The overnight strike in the Cola neighborhood in Beirut appeared to have been the first known Israeli strike in the city center since 2006. Israel has struck the densely populated Dahiya area to the south many times recently, with most of those strikes coming after a massive bombing attack on Friday that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah there.Strike in Beirut’s Cola neighborhoodThe strike appeared to be Israel’s first in central Beirut since 2006. More

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      A Strike in Central Beirut Damages a Building

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      If the explosion is confirmed to be an Israeli attack, it would be the first Israeli strike within the Lebanese capital since the 2006 war with Hezbollah.Footage showed emergency personnel responding to the strike on the Cola neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon.Fadel Itani/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEmergency crews in Beirut were working early Monday in an area of the city where an apparent Israeli airstrike damaged a residential building, The Associated Press reported.If Israel is confirmed to be behind the attack, it would be the first known Israeli strike within Beirut since Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, a militia backed by Iran. Israel has been stepping up its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past two weeks, killing its leader and striking targets nearly daily.The A.P. released videos from the Lebanese capital on Monday that showed people and emergency workers gathering below a damaged multistory building in the largely Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Cola. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.A militant group based in Lebanon and Gaza, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that three of its members had been killed in the strike in Cola. That claim by the group, which is mostly known for a string of airline hijackings and bombings decades ago, could not be independently verified.The intensifying cadence of Israeli strikes has stretched deep into Lebanon. Israel has said that most have been directed at Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed late Friday by Israeli bombs. But the military has also hit other groups, including a strike against Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.Euan Ward More

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      Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War

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      The United States’ ability to influence events in the Mideast has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers.Over almost a year of war in the Middle East, major powers have proved incapable of stopping or even significantly influencing the fighting, a failure that reflects a turbulent world of decentralized authority that seems likely to endure.Stop-and-start negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, pushed by the United States, have repeatedly been described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, only to fail. The current Western-led attempt to avert a full-scale Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amounts to a scramble to avert disaster. Its chances of success seem deeply uncertain after the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah on Friday.“There’s more capability in more hands in a world where centrifugal forces are far stronger than centralizing ones,” said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Middle East is the primary case study of this dangerous fragmentation.”The killing of Mr. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah over more than three decades and the man who built the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful nonstate armed forces in the world, leaves a vacuum that Hezbollah will most likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the chief backer of Hezbollah, that may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. Whether full-scale war will come to Lebanon remains unclear.“Nasrallah represented everything for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was the advance arm of Iran,” said Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on the Middle East and the author of a book on the world’s upheaval since Oct. 7. “Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps mortally, and one wonders who can even give an order for Hezbollah today.”For many years, the United States was the only country that could bring constructive pressure to bear on both Israel and Arab states. It engineered the 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Just over three decades ago, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shook hands on the White House lawn in the name of peace, only for the fragile hope of that embrace to erode steadily.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel-Hezbollah Tensions Spiral in Week of Attacks: What to Know

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      The past week has seen a significant rise in tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia supported by Iran. Back-and-forth attacks have brought the two sides to the brink of their first full-scale war since 2006, when they fought a 34-day conflict that involved an Israeli ground invasion and killed over 1,000 Lebanese and 150 Israelis.Hezbollah and Israel have been trading cross-border missile and drone attacks since last October, forcing the evacuations of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the frontier. Hezbollah says it is fighting in support of Hamas in Gaza, while Israel says it is acting to secure its northern border.Here is a look at the events of the past week:Tuesday, Sept. 17Hundreds of pagers suddenly and simultaneously blew up across Lebanon in an apparently coordinated attack that targeted members of Hezbollah. At least 12 people were killed and more than 2,000 others injured, according to Lebanese health authorities. Many of those killed and wounded were Hezbollah members, but the stunning blasts also killed two children and wounded Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. Hezbollah and Lebanese officials blamed Israel, an assessment confirmed by U.S. and other officials. Israel did not explicitly claim responsibility.WednesdayThe next day, walkie-talkies owned by Hezbollah members exploded, killing at least 20 people and wounding hundreds of others. Israel did not claim this attack, either, but experts said both operations required extensive planning and sophistication. Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, said that the “center of gravity” of Israel’s military effort, which had focused on defeating Hamas in Gaza, was “moving north.”ThursdayHassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, gave a speech from an undisclosed location in which he acknowledged that his group had “endured a severe and cruel blow” but promised to retaliate against Israel. As his speech was broadcast, sonic booms from Israeli fighter jets flying over Beirut frightened residents. Hours later, Israel carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting what it said were Hezbollah rocket launchers, in what Lebanese officials described as one of the heaviest bombardments of southern Lebanon in months.FridayAn Israeli airstrike flattened at least one residential high-rise in the heart of the Dahiya, crowded neighborhoods south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. A top Hezbollah commander, Ibrahim Aqeel, was killed in the strike. The Israeli military also said that “around 10” senior commanders in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force had been killed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.N. Sees ‘Human Rights Abyss’ in Myanmar as Military Kills Civilians

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      Three years after the military staged a coup, intensifying a civil war, civilians continue to pay the price, according to a coming United Nations report.Thousands of civilians in Myanmar have been “killed at the hands of the military,” the United Nations said on Tuesday, including hundreds who have died from torture and neglect in the junta’s prisons.“Myanmar is plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss,” James Rodehaver, the head of the U.N. human rights team monitoring the crisis, told journalists. He described a vacuum in the rule of law that was being filled by summary killings, torture and sexual violence.The casualties attest to a chaotic civil war that escalated sharply after the military staged a coup in February 2021. Now, three years later, pro-democracy forces and ethnic militias are battling the junta’s soldiers in a conflict that has displaced more than three million people and left close to 19 million in need of humanitarian aid, according to the U.N.But the military’s ferocious tactics, including an ongoing campaign of airstrikes and mass arrests, also reflect its shrinking hold. The military now controls less than 40 percent of the country and is constantly losing ground to armed opposition groups, Mr. Rodehaver said.The military killed at least 2,414 civilians just between April 2023 and the end of this June, including 334 children, according to a report by the U.N. team monitoring Myanmar that it will present to the Human Rights Council next week. About half of those deaths occurred in military airstrikes or in artillery bombardments.Another 759 people died in the junta’s custody in that same time period, the U.N. report will say. And they are only a portion of those who have died in detention since the coup, according to the report. Military authorities have arrested around 27,400 people since February 2021, including some 9,000 people in the 15 months that the U.N. report covered.What’s Happening in Myanmar’s Civil War?Questions you may have about the ongoing war in Myanmar, explained with graphics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sweeping Iraq Raid Killed 4 ISIS Leaders

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      The U.S. military said those killed in a joint assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces last month included the group’s top commander in Iraq and its leading bomb maker.One of the largest counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State in Iraq in recent years killed four top insurgent leaders last month, the U.S. military said on Friday, dealing the group a major blow at a time when its attacks in Iraq and Syria are on the rise.The raid by American and Iraqi commandos against several Islamic State hide-outs in western Iraq on Aug. 29 killed at least 14 insurgents and devastated the group’s top leadership in the country, according to a statement from the Pentagon’s Central Command and U.S. counterterrorism officials.Among the dead the military identified was Ahmad Hamid al-Ithawi, the top ISIS commander in Iraq and one of the group’s most well-established veterans. Two senior commanders for ISIS operations in western Iraq were also killed, the military’s statement said.Another main target killed was Abu Ali al-Tunisi, a Tunisian national who was the subject of a $5 million reward from the U.S. government, the military revealed on Friday. Mr. al-Tunisi has been ISIS’s most significant designer, manufacturer and teacher in explosives — including improvised devices, suicide vests and car bombs, counterterrorism officials said.“The raid appears to have effectively killed off ISIS’s entire command in Anbar,” Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and counterterrorism programs, wrote in a Substack newsletter, “Syria Weekly,” on Friday. Anbar is a vast province in western Iraq that has been a locus for violent Sunni extremists for years.Central Command and the Iraqi military offered scant details when they announced the raid on Aug. 30, even though it was one of the most sweeping counterterrorism missions in the country in years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More