Strikes on the south and drones over Beirut, no negotiations anywhere, and an Israeli press report detailing occupation plans for Tyre, Sidon and Nabatieh. Meanwhile the Health Ministry’s death toll froze at 4,389 across 18 days of bombing — a count that stopped moving while the war did not.
A Yemeni government military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 13 military recruits were killed and 65 others wounded in a ballistic missile attack on a military training center in Qatabah district, northern Al-Dhalea, in southern Yemen, during morning exercises, and blamed the attack on the Houthis. A ballistic missile hit Hayfan in Taiz governorate and killed four Yemenis from the same family, including three children, on Wednesday, according to Middle East Eye. Houthi-run al-Masirah TV blamed the killing of three children and a woman, with four other children wounded in the same district, on a Saudi airstrike. On November 3, Yemeni Interior Minister Ibrahim Ali Haidan accused Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of sending military instructors to command Houthi combat operations, develop missile and drone programs and coordinate attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, according to TASS. Hezbollah denied the allegations and said the Yemeni authorities' statements about support for the Houthi offensive, military training and rearmament are “completely baseless”, adding that “the Yemeni people have sufficient capabilities, resources, and experience to defend their country without external support.”
Syrian authorities said they arrested two members of a Hezbollah cell and seized explosives allegedly intended for use on the Homs refinery, the last facility operational after the civil war. The state agency SANA reported the foiled plot on Sunday, and in early October Damascus had reported sabotage attacks first against an oil pipeline and then a gas one.
Lebanon's Labor Minister Mohammad Haidar, who was appointed by Hezbollah, visited Syria on Monday with three other Lebanese ministers, the first time a member of the group has been formally welcomed in Damascus since the fall of the Assad regime. The delegation, led by Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri, discussed refugee returns, border security, education and bilateral cooperation. Haidar said the trip is ministerial work with no partisan link.
Israel has asked the Lebanese government to deploy troops to set up roadblocks in areas where Hezbollah operatives live, to prevent the group from joining a new war with Iran, according to an Israeli broadcaster cited by The Times of Israel. The request was relayed by US mediators, with the warning that fighting in Lebanon will flare up again if Hezbollah attacks Israel.
A Lebanese military court charged 13 people linked to Hezbollah with trafficking explosives, amid growing pressure on the Iran-backed group to disarm, according to Al Jazeera. The seized vehicle was carrying 780 kg (1,720 pounds) of explosives, including 250 kg (550 pounds) of TNT and 250 kg (550 pounds) of C-4, according to judicial officials. Hezbollah acknowledged owning the explosives and said they were intended for use against Israel, which continues to occupy large parts of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah is unlikely to join a war between the United States and Iran if the two countries resume military operations against each other, unless Iran’s leadership faces an existential threat, according to a report by the United Arab Emirates state-owned outlet The National cited by the Jerusalem Post. According to Lebanese security personnel briefed on the group’s activities, Hezbollah spent at least three months preparing for a resumption of hostilities with Israel after receiving an infusion of cash from Iran.
A Lebanese military court has charged 13 people it says are linked to Hezbollah with trafficking in explosives. The individuals were charged with offenses including possessing weapons, undermining state security and forming illegal associations, Lebanese state media reported. The vehicle seized at the Dahr al-Baydar checkpoint had been carrying 780kg (1,720 pounds) of explosives, including 250kg (550 pounds) of TNT and 250kg (550 pounds) of C-4 plastic explosives, according to judicial officials. Hezbollah later acknowledged that the explosives belonged to the group and said they were intended for use against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, according to Arab News.
A judge at a Lebanese military court charged 13 people over a truck carrying explosives belonging to Hezbollah that authorities seized earlier this month, state media reported. Two of the defendants were arrested when the shipment was seized and are in custody. The others remain at large and were charged in absentia, five of them listed only by nicknames. The truck was stopped at a checkpoint on the main highway linking Beirut with the eastern Bekaa Valley and was carrying 780 kilograms of explosives, including 250 kilograms of TNT and 250 kilograms of C-4, according to judicial officials.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem rejected on Wednesday calls to disarm the Lebanese group under the June framework agreement brokered by the United States with Israel, according to Middle East Eye. “The resistance continues and will confront any aggression against it; there is no room for discussion regarding the surrender of its weapons,” Qassem said in a statement, according to the outlet.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on a podcast that Israel should annex the territory it occupies in Gaza and Lebanon so that they “truly feel the cost of their mistake”, according to the Middle East Eye. According to the outlet, he said the annexation should go “at least up to the lines we’re currently holding” and that, if Hezbollah attacks again, it would go “all the way to Beirut” and, if they attack again, “even beyond that”.
A Lebanese judge summoned two Hezbollah officials over a seized explosives shipment, and Lebanese security agencies are working to locate them and take them into custody, according to a judicial official cited by The Times of Israel, after Hezbollah admitted the explosives belonged to it.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared over the weekend that troops would not withdraw from the areas they currently control in southern Lebanon and warned the military could advance toward Nabatieh and the Litani River if Hezbollah launches further attacks. Katz claimed that more than 60 villages and 23,000 homes had been destroyed in an area of roughly 700 square km under Israeli control and that around 200,000 residents had been displaced, according to RT.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Thursday about the seizure of hundreds of kilograms of explosives from Hezbollah, according to the Jerusalem Post. Rubio urged Aoun to hold accountable those who ordered, financed and directed the shipment and said that returning the explosives to Hezbollah “is out of the question.” Aoun asked Rubio to press Israel to halt attacks on southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Presidency in a statement on X cited by Middle East Eye.
Iran instructed Hezbollah to raise its level of military readiness for a possible confrontation, according to Lebanese security and military sources cited by the Emirati site Erem News, in a report by The Jerusalem Post. All full-time Hezbollah members who receive monthly salaries were summoned, with the caveat that the directions were only preparations for a near-term scenario, with no final decision to go to war. Over the past two weeks, Hezbollah launched at least three drones and intelligence-gathering devices toward the security zone in southern Lebanon, according to Israeli Army Radio. Israel tried to intercept all three items and managed to bring down only one, according to the report in Hebrew media reproduced by The Cradle.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to seize more territory in southern Lebanon, in the areas of Nabatieh and the Litani River, if Hezbollah joins an Iranian attack, during a visit to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)’s buffer zone. “If Hezbollah joins Iran in an attack on Israel, it will be dealt a heavy blow and lose additional territory in southern Lebanon, in the areas of Nabatieh and the Litani [River], which will become part of a permanent Israeli security zone — the IDF is prepared to launch a [new expanded] invasion,” he said. Katz also said that “more than 1 million Shiites will become displaced in Lebanon.”
Lebanese forces seized 500 kilograms of explosives with metal balls and nails from a vehicle at a checkpoint in Dahr al-Baidar in the Bekaa Valley and arrested two individuals connected to Hezbollah, according to the Jerusalem Post. Lebanon's justice minister questioned whether the explosives were for internal use or to create new pretexts to plunge Lebanon into new wars, according to MTV Lebanon, cited by the Jerusalem Post. Hezbollah announced on Tuesday $14,000 in compensation for displaced people, and Lebanese lawmakers began questioning where the funds are coming from.
Sources told the Lebanese outlet Al-Modon that Hezbollah took advantage of the extended ceasefire to rebuild its military capabilities in southern Lebanon, both south and north of the Litani River, according to The Jerusalem Post. The same sources linked the rebuild to the seizure of a truck carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives, including TNT and C4, and said the group uses the material for first-person view (FPV) drones, whose payload has grown from 2.5 kg to between 4 and 6 kg.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited on Monday victims of the explosion of a Hezbollah cluster munition in northern Israel, among them 14-year-old student Eitan Masouri, who told the prime minister he realised he was injured, saw a friend wounded and tried to help him, according to The Jerusalem Post. Upper Galilee Regional Council head Asaf Langleben demanded that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) search areas open to hikers after an unexploded Hezbollah munition killed one person and injured 24, according to The Jerusalem Post, and said hiking in the region would continue.
Lebanese forces seized hundreds of kilograms of explosives from a vehicle at a checkpoint in Dahr al-Baidar in the Bekaa Valley late last week, according to The Jerusalem Post. A judicial source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that 250 kilograms of TNT-type explosives and 250 kilograms of C4 were seized and that one of the suspects was the son of a Hezbollah official. Lebanon's justice minister said the disarmament of illegal weapons is an irreversible path and will accelerate, according to the newspaper.
Hezbollah members remain present in the pilot zones of Froun, Srifa and Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, south of Nabatiya, posing as civilians, according to KAN, as reported by the Jerusalem Post. Israeli officials say the pilot program — under which Israeli troops would withdraw so the Lebanese Armed Forces could take over operations against Hezbollah — failed, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem declared that the liberation of southern Lebanon is within sight and that Israeli forces will not manage to maintain what he called their illegal occupation, whatever the time, according to the Tehran Times. Iranian general Ali Abdollahi said the 7th of October turned the Resistance Front’s defensive strategy into an offensive one and accelerated the decline of what he called the usurping Zionist regime.
The village of Mansouri, occupied by Israel and perched a few kilometres from the coastal city of Tyre, in Lebanon, is slowly disappearing, day after day, according to Middle East Eye. The Israeli army presents the village as an operational stronghold of Hezbollah, and it was initially located outside the “Yellow Line”. Today the Yellow Line cuts through Mansouri and divides it in two, although officially only in part.
Kataib Hezbollah leader Ahmad al-Hamdawi announced the suspension of military activities, with the exception of targeting hostile aircraft violating the country’s airspace, while spokesperson Jaafar al-Husseini said negotiations with the government on regulating weapons failed to yield an agreement and the weapons remain with the fighters, according to the Associated Press (AP), in a text republished by Middle East Eye. The announcement came on Wednesday, the first day of the country’s post-coalition period, according to Iraqi News.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Sunday that Israel had been unable to break the group, at a ceremony marking two years since Israel killed the movement's longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to Middle East Eye. Qassem said Hezbollah had demonstrated that Israel and its soldiers “were unable to achieve their goals to break the resistance, end its existence, consolidate the Israeli occupation and establish settlements in Lebanon”, in an address televised at a gathering in Beirut's southern suburbs. Qassem said “Palestine and the liberation of our land remains our priority”, at the ceremony marking the anniversary of the deaths of Nasrallah and Safieddine, according to Mehr News.
Israeli fighter jets resumed attacks on Saturday against mountainous areas near the Lebanese towns of Jezzine and Nabatieh, north of the Litani River, according to TASS, citing the outlet Janoubia. The airstrikes targeted underground shelters, command posts and Hezbollah depots on the heights of Jebel al-Rafi, Rayhan and Sajoud. According to Mehr News, southern Lebanon saw Israeli air and artillery attacks in recent hours, with artillery fire covering Al-Mansouri, Eastern Zotar, Barashit, Kafrtbanit and Beit Yahoun.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s office asked the United States for an exemption to resume flights with Iran on humanitarian grounds related to medical treatment, education, religious visits and the interests of civilians, after four Iraqi airports suspended all flights to and from Iran on Friday, days after Washington announced new aviation sanctions on any global company doing business with Iranian airlines. On Saturday, demonstrators gathered in Baghdad against the suspensions, in a protest organised by Iran-allied militias, and the head of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Akram al-Kaabi, vowed to organize sit-ins at airports across the country unless normal air traffic resumes.