Zürcher Nachrichten - Lebanese leaders rebuke Iran as Israel, Hezbollah trade attacks

Lebanese state media reported fresh Israeli strikes on around 40 locations in southern Lebanon on Friday, with some causing casualties, while Hezbollah claimed new attacks on Israeli troops who have invaded the south, including with drones and rockets.

Lebanon was drawn into the wider Middle East war when Hezbollah attacked Israel on March 2 to avenge the February 28 killing of Iran's supreme leader.

Iran, in its peace negotiations with Washington, has repeatedly insisted that the fighting in Lebanon and the war in the Gulf are inextricably linked.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam addressed Iran's leaders in frank terms during a press conference on Friday, telling them: "Have mercy on our south, stop treating it and its people as merely a bargaining chip to improve the terms of your negotiations."

"We are the people of a sovereign nation that refuses to serve as a mailbox for the messages of others or as an open battlefield for their wars," he added. "The south is not anyone's reserve front."

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, echoing Salam's "bargaining chip" remark, offered a similar message for Iran in an interview with CNN.

"It's not your country, it's our country," he said. "It's not your job to interfere into our country."

Lebanese and Israeli envoys in Washington agreed to a truce this week that according to a statement is conditional on a "complete cessation" of Hezbollah fire, without mentioning a halt to Israeli attacks.

Hezbollah flatly rejected the deal on Thursday, demanding instead a comprehensive ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon.

Lebanese parliament speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri said Friday that the group would withdraw from the area south of Lebanon's Litani River if these conditions were met.

Hezbollah had vehemently opposed the government's direct engagement with Israel, with its leader Naim Qassem describing the talks as a "farce and humiliation" -- a stance Aoun took issue with on Friday.

"Hezbollah must understand that (there is) no other way but to sit and talk, no other way to solve this problem and to save what's left except through negotiation and diplomacy," he told CNN.

- 'How long will this go on?' -

Israel has staged its deepest incursion in two decades into Lebanon, and on Friday it warned residents of nine towns and villages, including Sarafand on the coastal road between Tyre and Sidon, to immediately evacuate.

Lebanon's official National News Agency reported mass displacement from some of the villages, and subsequently reported strikes there.

An overnight Israeli strike near the city of Tyre's Jabal Amel hospital killed four people, wounded seven and lightly damaged the facility, while another in a residential area killed three and wounded five, including two children, according to a civil defence source.

An AFP correspondent saw a heavily damaged bank near the hopsital, one of only three in the city.

"I was in my mother's hospital room when a powerful strike hit near the hospital," Marwan Ghorayeb told AFP, adding that his mother had also survived a Monday strike near the facility that killed four people and wounded 127, including 39 hospital personnel.

"My house in my hometown was destroyed, and my house in Tyre was destroyed. How long will this go on?"

Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,558 people since March 2.

- 'Not a life' -

In rejecting the new truce deal on Thursday, Hezbollah chief Qassem demanded that any "ceasefire must be comprehensive... without the Israeli enemy having the freedom to kill".

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said after the deal's announcement that the army would "at this stage, continue its fire and ground operations", while retaining the "freedom" to strike Beirut if Hezbollah attacked Israeli communities.

Hezbollah is Lebanon's only militant group that refused to hand over its arsenal after the 1975-1990 civil war, arguing that it was fighting Israel's occupation of south Lebanon.

After Israeli troops withdrew in 2000, calls on Hezbollah to disarm multiplied, with the leadership under Aoun taking the firmest stance yet.

The Lebanese government has declared Hezbollah's military activities illegal, and the army was working to disarm the group in areas near the border before the latest war erupted.

The war launched by the US and Israel on Iran saw Hezbollah return to the battlefield, launching attacks into Israel while fighting Israeli troops inside Lebanon.

As the exchanges of fire continued, Israelis in northern villages expressed fatigue at the situation.

"We can't keep doing this," 60-year-old Sigalit Levin told AFP on Thursday from her home in Shlomi, a small town in Israel's far north.

"This is not a life."

O.Pereira--NZN