The latest exchanges in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict came with Israel under increasing international pressure after UN peacekeepers in Lebanon were injured as well, over the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The Israeli army said its warplanes struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the southern city of Nabatiyeh, where the Lebanese group and its ally Amal hold sway.

The Lebanese health ministry said 16 people were killed and 52 injured in the strikes on two municipal buildings, adding that rescuers were searching for survivors.

The city’s mayor was among the dead, a local official told AFP, adding that the strikes “formed a kind of belt of fire”.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack, saying Israel “deliberately targeted a meeting of the municipal council that was discussing the city’s services and relief situation”.

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, said the “devastating attack claimed the lives of yet more civilians and local authorities working to provide relief.”

Rescuers were also searching through rubble for survivors in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, where Israeli strikes killed three people and injured 54 on Tuesday, the Lebanese ministry said.

Israel’s army said in a statement it had “eliminated” the Qana area’s Hezbollah leader Jalal Mustafa Hariri.

South Beirut hit

Hezbollah’s main stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs was also targeted by Israeli air strikes and there were further strikes reported in the south and the Bekaa region in Lebanon’s east.

Hezbollah said it fired rockets at the northern Israeli town of Safed — the third such attack in 24 hours.

The Israeli army said that “around 90 projectiles” fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israel on Wednesday.

Israel ramped up its bombardment in late September and sent ground troops across the Lebanese border on September 30.

The Israel-Hezbollah war has left at least 1,373 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

Iran-backed Hezbollah started low-intensity strikes on Israel in October last year in support of its ally Hamas, following its October 7 attack that triggered the Gaza war.

With Hamas weakened, Israel widened the focus of its military operations to include Lebanon, vowing to fight until tens of thousands of Israelis forced by Hezbollah’s fire to flee their homes can return.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed calls for a unilateral ceasefire on Tuesday, saying it would “not change the security situation in Lebanon”.

Pressure on Israel

Israel’s government has come under criticism over its strikes in Lebanon, including from the country’s top ally and arms supplier, the United States.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated Washington’s criticism on Wednesday, saying: “We have told Israel directly that we oppose any Israeli campaign… of near-daily strikes in densely populated areas of Beirut.”

She also said the United States had told Israel its operations should “not threaten the lives of civilians”, UN peacekeepers or the Lebanese military.

Earlier, 16 European Union defence ministers called “for maximum political and diplomatic pressure on Israel” to prevent further incidents against peacekeepers.

Also on Wednesday, the Lebanese Red Cross said two paramedics were wounded in an Israeli strike on a south Lebanon village while a rescue mission coordinated with UN peacekeepers was underway.

And the World Health Organisation warned there is a “very high” risk of cholera spreading among displaced people in Lebanon, confirming a case of the potentially deadly infection earlier this week.

Famine fears in Gaza

There has been a chorus of international condemnation of the lack of aid reaching hunger-ravaged Gaza.

In a letter sent to the Israeli government on Sunday, Washington warned it could withhold weapons deliveries unless more humanitarian aid was delivered.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Wednesday that there was “a real risk” of famine.

The besieged strip has “become a kind of wasteland, which I would say is almost unliveable,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.

For over a week, Israeli forces have engaged in a sweeping air and ground assault targeting northern Gaza and the area around Jabalia amid claims that Hamas militants were regrouping there.

Nidal al-Arab lost 10 of his family members during Israeli strikes on Jabalia.

“People are trapped. If they don’t die of shelling, they will soon die of thirst and hunger,” the 40-year-old told AFP.

The head of the civil defence agency in northern Gaza, Ahmed al-Kahlout, said that more than 200,000 people in northern Gaza have been “deprived of food aid for the 12th consecutive day, as well as potable water”.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza after the October 7 attack by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.

The Israeli campaign has killed 42,409 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which the UN considers reliable.

Nuclear sites strike ‘unlikely’

The region is braced for Israel’s promised retaliation against its arch-foe Iran for launching around 200 missiles at Israel on October 1.

Iran said the attack was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Beirut days before that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan.

Iran said on Wednesday an Israeli attack on its nuclear sites was “very unlikely” and it could quickly fix any damage.

© Agence France-Presse

Pieces of an elaborate sarcophagus believed to contain Herod’s remains were found three weeks ago, Ehud Netzer, professor of archaeology at Hebrew University, told a news conference.

”Three weeks ago we found the sarcophagus and we knew that it was it,” said Netzer, who led the digs and has been working at the site since 1972.

The tomb was located at Herodium, a mesa rising more than 750m above sea level 12km south of Jerusalem in the West Bank, Netzer said.

Herod built a palace on the flattened hilltop and was thought to have been buried there, but years of excavations failed to find the burial site.

”The location and unique nature of the findings, as well as the historical record, leave no doubt that this was Herod’s burial site,” Netzer said, adding that no inscriptions have yet been found.

The pieces of the ”large unique” sarcophagus, made of Jerusalem reddish limestone and decorated with rosettes, was discovered on the north-east slope of the mesa, where archaeological excavation began in August 2006.

”Only very few similar sarcophagi are known in the country and can be found only in elaborate tombs,” he said.

It ”was broken into hundreds of pieces, no doubt deliberately,” Netzer said, adding that it appeared to have been destroyed between 66AD and 72AD during the first Jewish revolt against the Romans.

”It is an important discovery, first of all because Herod is well known,” he said. ”Secondly, because Herod is a personality that is important to the Christians — he is mentioned many times in the New Testament.

”Thirdly, Herodium is a wonderful building that Herod left us,” he added.

Herod, sometimes called Herod the Great, was appointed king of Judea by the Romans in around 40BC. He greatly expanded the Jewish second temple and ordered building works in Caesaeria, Jericho and at the hilltop fortress of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea.

He is best known to Christians from the Gospel of St Matthew in the Bible for ordering the Massacre of the Innocents — the mass killing of male babies in Bethlehem in a bid to avert a perceived threat to his rule.

Herod reportedly ordered his troops to slaughter the children after a prophecy that he would lose his throne to a newly born ”King of the Jews” — Jesus Christ.

The Herodium discovery is likely to spark political fall-out in a region where archaeological finds inevitably become linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and any claims that appear to strengthen one side’s connection to the land are viewed suspiciously by the other.

After the news conference, Shaul Goldstein, an official with the Gush Etzion Jewish settlement near the Herodium site, told army radio that the find ”constitutes new proof of a connection between Gush Etzion and the Jewish people and Jerusalem.”

He called on the government to name Herodium ”a national and religious site”.

Palestinian Tourism Minister Khulud Dwaibess, who oversees archaeological sites, told Agence France-Presse that a team of Palestinian archaeologists was due to inspect the site and that her ministry would not comment until after receiving their report. — Sapa-AFP

With Olmert out the country on a visit to China, Israeli media reported that a criminal investigation would be opened into his alleged abuse of influence while he was acting finance minister under his predecessor, Ariel Sharon.

Channel 10 television reported that Attorney General Menahem Mazuz is expected to announce the probe into allegations surrounding the privatisation of Bank Leumi, after the premier returns from his China trip.

A Justice Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday declined to confirm the report, which made the front pages of most of Israel’s dailies.

“The Justice Ministry does not make comments when decisions are still in the process of being made,” Moshe Cohen told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“The information made public in the Israeli media is premature,” Cohen said.

Meanwhile, Olmert’s entourage was incensed that the news of the potential probe broke while the premier was away.

“The prime minister should not learn through the media that the prosecutor general had demanded he be made the object of a criminal investigation. That’s out of place,” a senior official accompanying Olmert on his trip to China told AFP.

Olmert was expected to respond to the reports later on Wednesday when he briefs reporters travelling with him in China.

The premier was the subject last year of several corruption investigations involving property deals and appointments, although no formal charges have been filed against him.

The latest probe involves the 2004 privatisation of Israel’s second-largest lender, Bank Leumi. There are allegations that Olmert intervened on behalf of a businessman who was attempting to secure an interest in the bank.

The bank was eventually sold to another company with no relation to the man in question.

The news of the possible probe comes as Olmert’s ratings are at their lowest since he officially assumed the premier’s chair in May.

A poll published last Friday showed that 77% of respondents were dissatisfied with his performance and 62% judged him incapable of handling tense situations.

The possible charges against Olmert are the latest in a string of corruption scandals that have rocked the Jewish state.

These include allegations of rape against President Moshe Katsav; sexual harassment against former justice minister Haim Ramon; corruption against Finance Minister Abraham Hirshson; and graft against Tsahi Hanegbi, chief of Parliament’s powerful foreign affairs and defence committee.

The latest affair to grab the headlines broke last week and focuses on the Israeli Tax Authority (ITA). Police suspect that appointments to the ITA, including that of its chief, Jacky Matza, were influenced by powerful businessmen in exchange for promises of favourable tax treatment.

Matza and Olmert’s personal secretary and close aide of 30 years, Shula Zaken, have been placed under house arrest and at least 15 ITA officials are under investigation.

“Twenty-four hours in the life of the nation and the scene looks like Sodom and Gomorrah,” the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot wrote last week as the case broke. “A fall to the lowest depth.”

Ami Ayalon, an MP with Olmert’s coalition partner Labour, told army radio on Wednesday: “I think that the problem of corruption is today the most important danger for Israel.” — AFP