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US President Joe Biden confirmed today, Friday, that he is “working” to enable residents to return to their homes in the border areas of southern Lebanon and northern Israel, in his first comment on the escalation of tension between the Hebrew state and Hezbollah.
Biden told reporters at the start of the meeting that he wanted to “make sure that people in northern Israel as well as southern Lebanon are able to return to their homes, and return safely.”
“The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and our entire team are working with the intelligence community to try to get this done. We will continue to work until we get it done, but we have a long way to go,” he said.
This comes at a time when the Israeli army launched a “precise strike” in the Beirut area on Friday, which the Lebanese Ministry of Health said killed at least 12 people.
The Israeli military announced the “elimination” of Ibrahim Aqil, the commander of the Radwan Force, an elite unit of the Lebanese Hezbollah, and other “senior commanders” in the airstrike.
The army said in a statement, “Earlier today, warplanes carried out a precise raid in the Beirut area, under the guidance of the Military Intelligence Service, and eliminated Ibrahim Aqil, the head of Hezbollah’s operations system and the actual commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force.” It added, “In the raid, senior leaders in the operations system and Radwan Force were eliminated along with Aqil.”
This is Biden’s first comment in a week that has witnessed a significant increase in the level of escalation that has continued for more than 11 months between Israel and Hezbollah, especially after the bombing of communication devices belonging to party members on Tuesday and Wednesday in an operation attributed to the Hebrew state, which resulted in the killing of nearly 40 people and the wounding of about three thousand.
Biden also denied that a ceasefire in Gaza was out of reach, following a Wall Street Journal report that officials believed it was unlikely.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called on Americans to avoid traveling to or leaving Lebanon.
