BEIRUT: Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to Lebanon on Sunday. Earlier this week, US special envoy Amos Hochstein said in Lebanon that a truce deal was "within our grasp", and then headed to Israel for talks with officials there. War between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in late September, nearly a year after the group began launching strikes in solidarity with its Palestinians. The conflict has killed at least 3,670 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.
In the Lebanese capital, Borrell held talks with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation efforts on behalf of ally Hezbollah. "We see only one possible way ahead: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701," Borrell said after his meeting with Berri. Under Resolution 1701, which ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, only Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be allowed to maintain a presence in the south, where Hezbollah holds sway. It also called for Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon. "Back in September I came and was still hoping we could prevent a full-fledged war of Israel attacking Lebanon. Two months later Lebanon is on the brink of collapse," Borrell said. He said the European Union was ready to provide 200 million euros to help bolster the Lebanese armed forces.
On Sunday, the Lebanese army said an Israeli strike on a military post killed one soldier and wounded 18 others. Also on Sunday, Hezbollah said it launched attacks using missiles and drones directed at a naval base in southern Israel and a "military target" in Tel Aviv. It said it had "launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of strike drones on the Ashdod naval base".
On Saturday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes around the country killed more than 55 people, many of them in central Beirut. One strike on the working-class Basta neighbourhood of Beirut killed at least 20 people and wounded 66 others, Lebanon's health ministry said. "We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more," said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one destroyed.
In a phone call with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Washington's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution" in the Lebanon war, a Pentagon spokesperson said. — AFP
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