Israel's PM acknowledges approval of Hezbollah pager attack

US forces carried out strikes against nine targets associated with Iranian-backed groups in Syria on Monday.

The strikes were in retaliation for attacks against US troops in Syria, the US military said.

"These strikes will degrade the Iranian-backed groups' ability to plan and launch future attacks on US and coalition forces," the US Central Command said on social media.

The US military has around 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq as part of the international anti-IS coalition that was established in 2014 to help combat the jihadists.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who assumed the post last week  in a reshuffle after PM Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defense minister, said on Monday that there was progress in talks about a cease-fire in Lebanon. 

He also indicated that Russia might be able to play a role in such an effort by stopping Hezbollah from rearming via Syria, given Russia's military presence in the country still in tatters after years of internal conflict. 

Sarr said that the war against Hezbollah was not yet over and that the main challenge of any cease-fire accord would be enforcement, but he nevertheless spoke of "a certain progress" in talks. 

A recent intensified US-led push to broker a cease-fire has yet to yield concrete results, and the window to reach a deal before the transition of power on January 20 in the US after Donald Trump's reelection is getting increasingly narrow.

Sarr told a news conference in Jerusalem that ensuring Hezbollah couldn't rearm via Syria "is vital to the success of any arrangement in Lebanon." 

"And the Russians are, as you know, present in Syria. And if they are in agreement with this in principle, I think they can contribute effectively to this objective," the foreign minister said.

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders on Monday that the international community must "immediately halt the Israeli actions against our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon." 

He went on to accuse Israel of "genocide" in Gaza and said Israel's military actions "will undermine the efforts aimed at obtaining the Palestinian people's legitimate rights and establishing peace in the region." 

The joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital. 

According to news agency AFP, a draft resolution for the meeting stresses "firm support" for the "national rights" of Palestinian people, "foremost among which is their right to freedom and an independent, sovereign state." 

Bin Salman also said on Monday that he had spoked on the phone the previous day with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relatively rare call between the two regional rivals. 

He told the summit that the international community should oblige Israel "to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands." 

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) said on Monday that the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah had fired around 50 rockets at northern Israel, injuring three people.

One of the wounded was a 1-year-old child, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service. 

The military said that it had intercepted some of the rockets and that others had fallen on open ground. 

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for several attacks on Israel. 

The group intensified already sporadic rocket fire in the aftermath of Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip following Hamas's October 7 terror attack last year. Israel initially responded with lower-level strikes but in recent months started larger-scale airstrikes and then a ground offensive in parts of southern Lebanon. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Monday confirmed that he has told his Cabinet that he approved the deadly September attack on Hezbollah communications devices that simultaneously exploded in Lebanon. 

Israeli media had earlier reported on Netanyahu's comments during a Cabinet meeting, also reporting that he had told ministers that he went ahead with the operation despite opposition from some senior defense officials and political figures. 

"Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon," the prime minister's spokesman, Omer Dostri, told several news agencies.

It's the first direct and explicit acknowledgment of the Israeli government's involvement, although the attack's provenance had never been in serious doubt and several prominent Israeli politicians had seemed to obliquely indicate approval at the time. 

The pager attack, which was followed by a similar one targeting walkie-talkies that Hezbollah used as a backup communication method, killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400, according to Lebanese officials.

The group had been using the rather outdated communication technology to evade Israeli location-tracking and espionage.

Fairly soon after, on September 27, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut. Israel then launched ground operations in parts of the south of the country on October 1. 

msh/rmt (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)