TEL AVIV — Israel has been accused of issuing a “declaration of war” by the highest political echelons in both Lebanon and Iraq Monday over two unrelated drone strikes in each country a day earlier.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said that Sunday’s alleged Israeli drone strikes were tantamount “to a declaration of war which allows us to resort to our right to defending [sic] our sovereignty,” the Reuters news agency reported.
The Iraqi parliament’s powerful Fatah coalition, meanwhile, said alleged Israeli drone strikes in western Iraq against Iranian proxy militias were “a declaration of war on Iraq and its people.”
The coalition, which is a parliamentary bloc representing the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) — an Iran-backed paramilitary militia — said it holds the U.S. responsible for the alleged Israeli strikes and called on the U.S. to withdraw all its troops from Iraq.
According to the PMF, the strike in the town of al-Qaim killed a field commander while another fighter was critically wounded. The alleged Israeli strike targeted a weapons convoy, the PMF said.
“As part of the string of Zionist attacks on Iraq, the evil Israeli crows have returned to target the Hashed al-Shaabi [PMF], this time with two drones inside Iraqi territory,” the statement said.
The IDF has so far not commented on the strikes.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, two drones crashed in a Beirut suburb heavily dominated by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.
Hours after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed to shoot down any Israeli aircraft violating Lebanese airspace, Israel was said to conduct another airstrike on a base deep inside Lebanon. The base were said to belong to the Palestinian faction the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syria-based terrorist group allied with the Assad regime.
However, a report in a Saudi news outlet said the base, a weapons-smuggling facility, belonged to Hezbollah.
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