JERUSALEM/BEIRUT — Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones against Israel on Sunday in retaliation for the assassination of a senior commander in Beirut last month, the Iranian-backed movement said, as Israel’s cabinet met to prepare a response.

The Israeli military said it had thwarted a much larger attack with preemptive strikes after it assessed that Hezbollah was preparing to launch the barrage.

Sunday’s violence was among the biggest exchanges of fire since hostilities began between Israel and Hezbollah in parallel with the eruption of Israel’s war against Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.

Around 100 Israeli jets struck more than 40 Hezbollah launch sites in southern Lebanon shortly before the strikes, destroying thousands of launcher barrels that were aimed mainly at northern Israel but with some targets in central areas, the Israeli military said in a statement.

Hezbollah said it had launched drones and more than 320 Katyusha rockets towards Israel and hit 11 military targets. It said the barrage had completed “the first phase” of its response to Israel’s assassination last month of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander, in Beirut but that the full response would take “some time”.

It dismissed Israel’s account of the preemptive strikes but said in a statement its military operation had been completed successfully for the day.

Expectations of an escalation between the two sides had risen since a missile strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last month killed 12 youngsters and the Israeli military assassinated Mr. Shukr in Beirut in response.

Israel’s cabinet met at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced, but there were no immediate details on any further response from Israel.

“We are determined to do everything possible to defend our country, to return the residents of the north safely to their homes and to continue to uphold a simple rule: Whoever harms us — we harm him,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Israel would respond to developments on the ground but did not seek a full-scale war.

Most of the Israeli strikes were hitting targets in southern Lebanon but the military was ready to strike anywhere there was a threat, an Israeli military spokesperson said.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared a state of emergency, and flights to and from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv were suspended for around 90 minutes, but the airports authority said normal operations were expected to resume by 7 a.m.

WARNING SIRENS
In northern Israel, warning sirens sounded and multiple explosions were heard around several areas as Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defense system shot down rockets coming from southern Lebanon. Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service said it was on high alert all over the country.

The Israeli military issued civil defense instructions from central Israel to the north, limiting gatherings but authorizing people to go to work as long as they were able to reach air raid shelters quickly. There were no casualties immediately reported in Israel, according to the ambulance service.

A security source in Lebanon said at least 40 Israeli strikes had hit various towns in the country’s south in one of the densest bombardments since hostilities began in October.

One of the strikes on the town of Khiam killed one fighter from the Hezbollah-allied Shi’ite group Amal, two security sources told Reuters. Amal later announced his death.

A resident of the southern Lebanese town of Zibqeen, some 7 km (4 miles) from the border, told Reuters it was the first time he had awakened “to the sound of planes and the loud explosions of rockets — even before the dawn prayer. It felt like the apocalypse.”

Israel’s Army Radio, citing defense officials, said the military assessed that the Hezbollah barrage on northern Israel was “improvised” after the pre-emptive strike by Israeli jets on the Hezbollah launch sites.

REGIONAL CONFLICT
The Israel-Hezbollah escalation has drawn fears of a wider regional conflict, potentially involving both the United States and Iran. President Joseph R. Biden was following events closely, the White House said.

“At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts. We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability,” said National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett.

The strikes came as negotiators were meeting in Cairo in a last-ditch effort to conclude a halt to fighting in Gaza and a return of Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Hezbollah fired missiles in Israel immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas gunmen on Israel. Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire constantly ever since, while avoiding a major escalation as war rages in Gaza to the south.

That precarious balance appeared to shift after the strike in the Golan Heights, for which Hezbollah denied responsibility, and the subsequent assassination of Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s most senior military commanders.

Mr. Shukr’s death in an air strike was quickly followed by the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which led to vows of reprisal against Israel by Iran. — Reuters

LONDON — Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer will warn Britons next week that the changes needed to fix Britain’s many problems will take time, saying “things will get worse before we get better” in a speech he describes as a chance to level with the public.

After being elected as prime minister at a July landslide election, Mr. Starmer has repeatedly blamed the former Conservative government for leaving Britain in a parlous state, something he said allowed “thugs” to spark this month’s anti-migrant riots.

In a speech due on Tuesday, a week before Britain’s parliament returns to work after a summer break, Mr. Starmer will say that “change won’t happen overnight” but that his government is determined to tackle a multitude of problems ranging from overflowing prisons to long waiting lists for health services.

“I said change would not happen overnight. When there is rot deep in the heart of a structure, you can’t just cover it up. You can’t tinker with it or rely on quick fixes. You have to overhaul the entire thing,” Mr. Starmer will say, according to excerpts of his speech provided by his office.

“We have inherited not just an economic black hole but a societal black hole and that is why we have to take action and do things differently. Part of that is being honest with people about the choices we face and how tough this will be. Frankly, things will get worse before we get better.”

Mr. Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, was forced to cancel his summer holiday this month to tackle riots that targeted Muslims and migrants. The riots began after the killings of three young girls in northern England was wrongly blamed on an Islamist migrant based on online misinformation.

Mr. Starmer said the Conservative government’s failure to tackle problems had widened cracks in society making it harder to deal with rioters than when he was Britain’s top prosecutor from 2008 to 2013.

“And those people throwing rocks, torching cars, making threats, they didn’t just know the system was broken. They were betting on it, they were gaming it, they saw the cracks in our society after 14 years of populism and failure and they exploited them. That’s what we have inherited,” he will say.

Appealing to what he calls Britain’s working people such as teachers, nurses, small business owners and firefighters, Mr. Starmer will say his government has taken the “first steps towards the change people voted for” on July 4.

But he will say the poor state of Britain’s public finances — which his finance minister says are on course to show a 22-billion pound ($29 billion) overspend this year — mean his government will have to make tough decisions.

“If we don’t take tough action across the board, we won’t be able to fix the foundations of the country like we need,” he will say. “I won’t shy away from making unpopular decisions now if it’s the right thing for the country in the long term. That’s what a government of service means.” — Reuters

PARIS — Pavel Durov, the Russian-French billionaire founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV and BFM TV said, citing unnamed sources.

Mr. Durov was traveling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.

TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.

The encrypted Telegram, with close to one billion users, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union. It is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police had no comment.

Russian-born Mr. Durov founded Telegram with his brother in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he sold.

“I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone,” Mr. Durov told US journalist Tucker Carlson in April about his exit from Russia and search for a home for his company which included stints in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco.

After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become the main source of unfiltered — and sometimes graphic and misleading — content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.

The platform has become what some analysts call ‘a virtual battlefield’ for the war, used heavily by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his officials, as well as the Russian government.

Telegram — which allows users to evade official scrutiny — has also become one of the few places where Russians can access independent news about the war after the Kremlin increased curbs on independent media following its invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian foreign ministry said its embassy in Paris was clarifying the situation around Mr. Durov and called on Western non-governmental organizations to demand his release.

Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order to grant state security services access to its users’ encrypted messages.

The action interrupted many third-party services, but had little effect on the availability of Telegram there. The ban order, however, sparked mass protests in Moscow and criticism from non-government officials.

‘NEUTRAL PLATFORM’
TF1 said Dubai-based Mr. Durov had been traveling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8.00p.m. (1800 GMT).

Mr. Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics.”

Telegram’s increasing popularity, however, has prompted scrutiny from several countries in Europe, including France, on security and data breach concerns.

Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other Russian politicians were quick on Sunday to accuse France of acting as a dictatorship — the same criticism that Moscow faced when putting demands on Mr. Durov in 2014 and trying to ban Telegram in 2018.

“Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play more or less visible role in international information space it is not safe for them to visit countries which move towards much more totalitarian societies,” Mr. Ulyanov wrote on X.

Elon Musk, billionaire owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said after reports of Mr. Durov’s detention: “It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.”

Several Russian bloggers called for protests at French embassies throughout the world at noon on Sunday. — Reuters