BEIRUT/TEL AVIV: Israel warned Lebanon of a “very heavy price” if it did not rein in Iran-backed Hezbollah on Saturday, as it pounded the group’s strongholds around the country with air strikes and mounted a deadly airborne raid in the east.
Lebanon was dragged into the wider Middle East war on Monday when Hezbollah fired at Israel, which responded with a new military campaign that has forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.
On Saturday morning, more buildings in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut lay as mounds of smoking rubble and twisted metal, Reuters video showed, after heavy Israeli bombardment that followed an evacuation order for civilians.
’A NIGHT OF HELL’
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, addressing Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun in a statement, said that if the Lebanese government failed to enforce a 2024 agreement to disarm Hezbollah, it and the whole country would suffer.
