Middle East latest: Israel and Hezbollah trade fire, threatening Lebanon ceasefire

Hezbollah fired into a disputed border zone held by Israel on Monday. The militant group said the volley, its first during the truce, was a warning shot in response to what it called repeated Israeli truce violations.

Israeli leaders threatened to retaliate and within hours, Israel's military carried out its biggest wave of strikes in southern Lebanon. Lebanon's Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike on a village killed five people, while another airstrike killed four. Israeli strikes had already killed two people on Monday before the Hezbollah attack.

Both sides accuse each other of violating the ceasefire, which began Wednesday. Israel says that under the truce deal it reserves the right to retaliate for Hezbollah violations.

Hezbollah began launching its attacks on Israel last year in solidarity with Hamas militants who are fighting in the Gaza Strip. The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

Israel's blistering retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,429 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war in Gaza has destroyed vast areas of the coastal enclave and displaced 90% of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.

Bernie Sanders says Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza

The Vermont lawmaker said he agreed with a former top Israeli general and defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, who accused the government of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, where the army has sealed off the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp and allowed almost no humanitarian aid to enter.

''You don't fight terrorism by starving people & killing tens of thousands of civilians,'' Sanders said Monday in a post on social media.

Last month, the Senate rejected attempts by Sanders to block sales of offensive weapons to Israel over mounting civilian deaths in Gaza.

Trump demands immediate release of Oct. 7 hostages, says otherwise there will be ‘HELL TO PAY'

WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is demanding the immediate release of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, saying that if they are not freed before he is sworn into office for a second term there will be ''HELL TO PAY.''

He added that, ''Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!''

It was not immediately clear whether Trump was threatening to directly involve the U.S. military in Israel's ongoing campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Trump allies have said he hopes there will be a ceasefire and hostage release deal before he returns to office early next year.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage on Oct. 7, 2023. Some 100 are still held inside Gaza, around two-thirds believed to be alive.

Biden administration downplays significance of Israeli strikes in Lebanon, says ceasefire is holding

WASHINGTON — Senior American officials have had conversations with Israelis to raise questions about some of the strikes they have carried out against Hezbollah since a ceasefire went into place but have not found the Israelis to be in gross violation of the terms of the ceasefire, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday that ''largely speaking the ceasefire is holding.''

''We've gone from, you know dozens of strikes, you know, down to one a day maybe two a day,'' Kirby told told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Joe Biden made his way for a visit to Angola. ''That's a tremendous, tremendous reduction. And we're going to keep trying and see what we can do to get it down to zero so that both sides are fully implementing it. But, this is, this is the only it's only a, a week or so old.''

— By Aamer Madhani

Hezbollah fires its first attack since the ceasefire began, targets a disputed border zone held by Israel

JERUSALEM — Hezbollah fired into a disputed border zone held by Israel on Monday, the militant group's first attack since its ceasefire with Israel took hold last week, after Lebanon accused Israel of violating the truce more than 50 times in recent days.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired on an Israeli military position in the area as a ''defensive and warning response'' after what it called ''repeated violations'' of the ceasefire deal by Israel. It said complaints to mediators tasked with monitoring the ceasefire ''were futile in stopping these violations.''

The U.S.- and French-brokered ceasefire came into effect on Wednesday calling for a 60-day halt in fighting, aiming to end more than a year of exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel.

Since then, Israel has carried out a number of strikes in Lebanon, most recently on Monday, when a drone strike killed a man on a motorcycle in southern Lebanon and another hit a Lebanese army bulldozer in the northeastern town of Hermel, wounding a soldier. The Lebanese army had stayed on the sidelines of the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel says the strikes are in response to Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire, without giving specifics.

Lebanon's parliament speaker says Israel has violated the ceasefire with Hezbollah more than 50 times

Speaking to the Lebanese newspaper Al Joumhouria, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri condemned Israel's ''aggressive actions,'' including the alleged demolition of homes in border villages, the persistent overflight of Israeli reconnaissance drones, and airstrikes that have caused casualties.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Berri's assertions. Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire deal to respond to perceived ceasefire violations.

An Israeli drone strike on Monday hit a Lebanese army military bulldozer in the northeastern town of Hermel, wounding a soldier, the Lebanese army said in a statement.

Also on Monday, an Israeli drone strike targeting a motorcycle in Jdeidet Marjayoun in southern Lebanon killed one person, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. In Bint Jbeil province, a drone strike injured one person, the state-run National News Agency said.

On Saturday, two people were killed in an airstrike on Marjayoun province, Lebanon's state media said.

He said that Lebanon and Hezbollah have fully adhered to the terms of the ceasefire since the early hours of Wednesday. Berri is the leader of the Shiite Amal movement, which is closely allied with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Israeli drone strikes reported in Lebanon days after fragile ceasefire

BEIRUT — Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said Monday one person was killed in an Israeli drone strike that hit a motorcycle, while the Lebanese army said that a soldier was wounded in an Israeli strike on a military bulldozer at an army base.

The Israeli military said that it carried out a series of strikes in Lebanon on Sunday and Monday, including one in the same area where the soldier was said to have been wounded. It said it struck several military vehicles in Lebanon's Bekaa province as well as strikes on Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.

The incidents underscored the fragility of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah reached after nearly 14 months of cross-border fighting.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Monday rejected accusations that Israel is violating the tenuous ceasefire agreement, saying it was responding to Hezbollah violations.

In a post on X, Saar said that he made that point in a call with his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot. France, along with the U.S., helped broker the deal and is part of an international monitoring committee meant to ensure the sides uphold their commitments.

Israel says that it reserves the right under the deal to respond to perceived ceasefire violations.

Israeli American soldier thought to have been taken hostage is now presumed dead

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Monday an Israeli American soldier who was believed to have been taken hostage alive on Oct. 7, 2023, is now presumed to have been killed during Hamas' attack and his body taken into Gaza.

In a statement announcing the death, the military did not say how it came to the conclusion over Neutra's fate. He was one of seven American Israelis still held in Gaza, four of whom are now said to be dead. Hamas released a video of one, Edan Alexander, over the weekend, indicating he was still alive.

In late summer, Israel said Hamas killed Hersh Goldberg-Polin, another prominent Israeli American hostage, along with five other captives, whose bodies the Israeli military recovered.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. Some 100 captives are still held inside Gaza, around two-thirds believed to be alive.

Iranian-supported Iraqi militias back Syrian government's counteroffensive against insurgents

Iraqi militias supported by Iran deployed in Syria on Monday to back the government's counteroffensive against a surprise advance by insurgents who seized the largest city of Aleppo, a militia official and a war monitor said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus Sunday and announced Tehran's full support for his government. He later arrived for talks in Ankara, Turkey, one of the rebels' main backers.

Iran has been of Assad's principal political and military supporters and deployed military advisers and forces after 2011 protests against Assad's rule turned into an all-out war.

Tehran-backed Iraqi militias already in Syria mobilized and additional forces crossed the border to support them, said the Iraqi militia official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

According to Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 200 Iraqi militiamen on pickups crossed into Syria overnight through the strategic Bou Kamal. They were expected to deploy in Aleppo to support the Syrian army's pushback against the insurgents, the monitor said.

US Navy destroys Houthi missiles and drones targeting American ships in Gulf of Aden

U.S. Central Command said late Sunday that the destroyers USS Stockdale and USS O'Kane shot down and destroyed three anti-ship ballistic missiles, three drones and one anti-ship cruise missile. The merchant ships were not identified.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement and said they had targeted the U.S. destroyers and ''three supply ships belonging to the American army in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden.''

Houthi attacks for months have targeted shipping through a waterway where $1 trillion in goods pass annually over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and Israel's ground offensive in Lebanon. A ceasefire was announced in Lebanon last week.

The USS Stockdale was involved in a similar attack on Nov. 12.

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