Rising tensions in the Middle East have led to air traffic chaos, with regional airports in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Kuwait seeing significant flight delays and cancellations.
Airlines such as British Airways and Air France-KLM delayed flights to Ben Gurion Airport, while Dubai International Airport saw 85% delays and 60% of flights canceled in Beirut.
Although some flights over Iranian airspace have resumed, the general air traffic situation shows no signs of normalization before mid-October.
Since early morning, Dahiya, a Beirut suburb where Hezbollah has a stronghold, has been shaking.
Fighting is also taking place on the ground in a limited ground invasion. Israeli commandos and paratroopers entered Lebanon yesterday morning. The first reports are coming in of face-to-face clashes between Hezbollah and the IDF in the border villages. Israel will increase its forces and send additional troops to the south of Lebanon.
The beheaded ‘Party of God’ continues to demonstrate force, but without much effect. Although Hezbollah was left without almost its entire command structure in just 10 days, this morning it fired a hundred rockets at Israel. They fell on areas from which people were evacuated.
Despite the opening of a new front, Israel’s grip on Gaza is not loosening. Last night’s attack killed at least 25 people in the center of the enclave.
The Israeli army announced on Wednesday that infantry and armored units were joining ground operations in southern Lebanon, but reiterated that the operation would be limited.
Israel announced a day earlier that its commandos and paratroopers had crossed the border, the first public acknowledgment of ground operations in Lebanon. The military later announced that its special forces had been conducting cross-border raids on Hezbollah targets for months, during which tunnels and weapons caches were discovered under houses.
The joining of the infantry and armed units of the 36th Division, including the Golan Brigade, the 188th Armored Brigade and the 6th Infantry Brigade, shows that the operation has expanded beyond those commando reconnaissances.
The Israeli army claims that the goal of the ground operations is primarily to destroy tunnels and other infrastructure near the border and that there are no plans for a wider operation that would target Beirut or major cities in southern Lebanon.
The spokesman of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, Muhammad Afifi, said that their fighters killed a large number of Israeli soldiers in direct clashes in the south of the country.
Afifi held a press conference on the latest developments on the battlefield in the south of the country in the southern part of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, more precisely in the Dahiya region, which is famous for being a stronghold of Hezbollah.
“In the settlements of al-Adisa and Marun er-Ras, in the south of Lebanon, there were open conflicts in which we killed a large number of Israeli soldiers,” Afifi said at a press conference attended by more than 150 journalists.
Recalling that Israel has not published information on the number of dead soldiers, Afifi emphasized that the clashes in the aforementioned two settlements in the south of Lebanon are just the beginning, because Hezbollah is in a state of “highest combat readiness” in this area.
He also stated that there were no weapons or military equipment in any of the buildings bombed by Israel in the Dahiya region.
According to information from the Lebanese authorities, since September 17, when Izael caused the explosion of portable communication devices across Lebanon, 1,328 people have been killed, including 104 children and 194 women.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a bombing in Beirut on September 27.
Hezbollah, on the other hand, is shelling parts of Israel, and military activities have caused mass displacement in northern Israel, but also in southern Lebanon.
