Nawaf Salam says all Hezbollah activities are \u2018illegal\u2019 after the group launches attack on Israel from Lebanon
\nBeirut
\nLebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam says Hezbollah\u2019s military and security activities are banned, hours after Israel responded to the Iran-linked group\u2019s rocket and drone attack by launching air raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
\n\u201cWe announce a ban on Hezbollah\u2019s military activities and restrict its role to the political sphere,\u201d Nawaf said on Monday in a statement.
\n\u201cWe declare our rejection of any military or security operations launched from Lebanese territory outside the framework of legitimate institutions.\u201d
\nThe prime minister said all Hezbollah military activities are \u201cillegal\u201d and called upon the security forces to \u201cprevent any attacks originating from Lebanese territory\u201d.
\n\u201cWe declare our commitment to the cessation of hostilities and the resumption of negotiations,\u201d he added.
\nThe Iran-allied Lebanese armed group said earlier on Monday that its attack on a military missile defence facility near Haifa was in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, \u201cin defence of Lebanon and its people\u201d, and \u201cin response to the repeated Israeli aggressions\u201d.
\nIsrael responded by bombing Beirut\u2019s suburbs and southern Lebanon and killing more than 30 people and injuring 149, according to the state-run National News Agency.
\nIn a statement on Monday, the Israeli army said an overnight strike in Beirut had killed Hussein Makled, described as the head of Hezbollah\u2019s intelligence headquarters.
\nIt accused Makled of being responsible for compiling intelligence assessments on Israeli forces and coordinating with senior Hezbollah commanders to plan attacks against Israel and said operations against the group would continue.
\nHezbollah, which operates independently from the Lebanese government, has been weakened by a 2024 war, which saw Israel kill most of the group\u2019s military and political leaders.
\nUnder growing pressure from the United States and Israel, Lebanese authorities agreed to disarm Hezbollah, which dismissed the plan as a US-Israeli ploy and refused to surrender its weapons north of the Litani River. The group maintained that a ceasefire signed in November 2024 applied to disarmament exclusively south of the waterway.
\nLast month, the Lebanese government said its military would need at least four months to complete the second phase of its plan to dismantle Hezbollah\u2019s arsenals in the country\u2019s south. The second phase concerns the area between the Litani and the Awali rivers, about 40km (25 miles) south of Beirut.
\nIt announced in January that it had completed the first phase of its five-stage plan, covering the area between the Litani and the southern border with Israel.
\nThe military escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could deepen the crisis in Lebanon, which has been suffering from economic and political woes for years.
\nSalam called the Hezbollah attack \u201can irresponsible and suspicious act that jeopardises Lebanon\u2019s security and safety and provides Israel with pretexts to continue its aggression\u201d.
\nThe Israeli army also ordered residents to leave 18 villages and towns, claiming they were being used by Hezbollah.
\nAl Jazeera\u2019s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said a humanitarian crisis was in the making as hundreds of thousands of people fled from southern Lebanon and the capital\u2019s southern suburbs.
\n\u201cThis is part of Israel\u2019s strategy to punish the supporters of Hezbollah and those who live in areas under Hezbollah\u2019s influence,\u201d she said.
\nKhodr added that Israel\u2019s objective was to \u201cturn them against the group and blame it for escalating what had been a simmering conflict\u201d.
\nThe US embassy in Beirut called on American citizens to not travel to the country and urged those already there to \u201cdepart Lebanon NOW while commercial flight options remain available\u201d.
\n\u201cThe security situation in Lebanon is volatile and unpredictable,\u201d it said in a social media post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nawaf Salam says all Hezbollah activities are \u2018illegal\u2019 after the group launches attack on Israel from Lebanon Beirut Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam says Hezbollah\u2019s military and security activities are banned, hours after Israel responded to the Iran-linked group\u2019s rocket and drone attack by launching air raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut. \u201cWe announce …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94495,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94474\/revisions\/94495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}