MANILA/JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) – The U.S. defense secretary said on Tuesday he did not believe a fight was inevitable between Hezbollah and Israel though he remained concerned about the potential for escalation after a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Tensions have worsened since Saturday when the rocket killed 12 children and teenagers at a football pitch in a Druze village. Israel accused the Iran-backed Hezbollah and vowed a harsh response. Hezbollah has denied involvement.
The United States has been leading a diplomatic effort to deter Israel from striking Lebanon’s capital Beirut or major civil infrastructure in response to the attack, five people with knowledge of the drive told Reuters on Monday.
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border since October, their worst conflict since a 2006 war. The hostilities, sparked by the war in Gaza, have so far been largely been contained to areas near the frontier.
Though both sides have previously indicated they do not seek a wider confrontation, the hostilities have prompted concerns about the risk of a slide towards a wider, more destructive conflict between the heavily armed adversaries.
“While we’ve seen a lot of activity on Israel’s northern border, we remain concerned about the potential of this escalating into a full-blown fight. And I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
“We’d like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion,” he added during a joint press conference in Manila, following security talks between himself, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their respective Philippine counterparts.
The Israeli military said it struck around 10 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight and killed one of the group’s fighters – attacks which appeared to be in keeping with the pattern of violence over the last nine months.
Hezbollah confirmed one of its fighters had been killed.
Two Israeli officials said on Monday that Israel wanted to hurt Hezbollah but not drag the Middle East into all-out war.
Some flights at Beirut’s international airport have been cancelled or delayed this week due to the heightened tensions.
Hezbollah has denied firing the rocket that killed the youngsters in the village of Majdal Shams. It said on Saturday it had fired a missile against a military target on the Golan, a border region Israel seized from Syria in 1967.
Hezbollah began firing across the border into Israel in October in what it says is solidarity with the Palestinians and Palestinian Islamist militant allies Hamas. Tens of thousands of people have since fled or been evacuated from towns and villages on both sides of the frontier.
Since October, Israeli strikes have killed around 350 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and more than 100 civilians, according to security and medical sources and a Reuters tally of Hezbollah death notifications.
Israel says 23 civilians and at least 17 soldiers have been killed in Hezbollah attacks since October.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis in Manila, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Maya Gebeily and Laila Bassam in Beirut, Jana Choukeir in Dubai; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Graff)
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