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As Tensions Soar, Hezbollah Reduces Number of Operations against Israel 

Smoke billows from a site targeted by the Israeli military in the southern Lebanese border village of Kafr Kila on July 29, 2024. (AFP)
Smoke billows from a site targeted by the Israeli military in the southern Lebanese border village of Kafr Kila on July 29, 2024. (AFP)
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As Tensions Soar, Hezbollah Reduces Number of Operations against Israel 

Smoke billows from a site targeted by the Israeli military in the southern Lebanese border village of Kafr Kila on July 29, 2024. (AFP)
Smoke billows from a site targeted by the Israeli military in the southern Lebanese border village of Kafr Kila on July 29, 2024. (AFP)

Hezbollah reduced the number of its military operations against Israel on Sunday and Monday as tensions continued in wake of the strike that killed 12 people in the village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights over the weekend.

Hezbollah has strongly denied its involvement in the attack. Israel, meanwhile, continued to make threats that it will strike Lebanon in retaliation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Majdal Shams on Monday, vowing a strong response.

Offering his condolences to the families of the victims, he said: “These are our children. The state of Israel will not let this pass; it cannot.”

Some residents staged protests against his visit.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hezbollah “will pay a price” for the attack. “We will let actions, not words, do the talking,” he added.

A military spokesman said the response will be “clear and forceful. Hezbollah will be targeted.”

“We insist on driving it away from our borders. This is our ultimate goal,” he added.

Field sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the intensity of the operations dropped noticeably over the past two days. Hezbollah declared on Sunday that it had carried out no more than two operations and only three on Monday.

The figures are much lower than what the border regions had grown accustomed to over the past two weeks where the party had staged an average of eight operations a day, they added.

The drop in attacks did not lead to a halt in Israeli operations. Israeli drones flew heavily at low and medium altitudes, reaching the regions of Nabatiyeh, Jezzine, Sidon and al-Zahrani, they noted.

Israel killed two Hezbollah members on Monday.

A drone strike targeted a car and motorcycle in the towns of Shakra and Mays al-Jabal. Two people were killed and four wounded, including a 12-year-old boy.

Hezbollah acknowledged in a statement the death of two members in the attack.

In the evening, a drone strike targeted a car in the town of Kounin near Bint Jbeil.

Israeli jets also struck Houla and Kfar Hamam and artillery hit the towns of Aitaroun, Mays al-Jabal, Kfar Kila and Deir Mimas.

Hezbollah later announced that it fired dozens of Katyusha rockets at the al-Baghdadi position in response to the Shakra attack.

It also fired rockets against Israeli soldiers in the Raheb area and a surveillance system that was recently set up in the Malikiya area.

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Sudan’s Army Says It Seized Key Buildings in Khartoum after Retaking the Republican Palace

Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
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Sudan’s Army Says It Seized Key Buildings in Khartoum after Retaking the Republican Palace

Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
Sudan's army soldiers celebrate after they took the Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)

Sudan ’s military on Saturday consolidated its grip on the capital, retaking more key government buildings a day after it gained control of the Republican Palace from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sudanese military, said troops expelled the RSF from the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service and Corinthia Hotel in central Khartoum.

The army also retook the headquarters of the Central Bank of Sudan and other government and educational buildings in the area, Abdullah said. Hundreds of RSF fighters were killed while trying to flee the capital city, he said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The army's gain came as a Sudanese pro-democracy activist group said RSF fighters had killed at least 45 people in a city in the western region of Darfur.

On Friday, the military retook the Republican Palace, the prewar seat of the government, in a major symbolic victory for the Sudanese military in its nearly two years of war against the RSF.

A drone attack on the palace Friday believed to have been launched by the RSF killed two journalists and a driver with Sudanese state television, according to the ministry of information. Lt. Col. Hassan Ibrahim, from the military’s media office, was also killed in the attack, the military said.

Volker Perthes, former UN envoy for Sudan, the latest military advances will force the RSF to withdraw to its stronghold in the western region of Darfur.

“The army has gained an important and significant victory in Khartoum militarily and politically,” Perthes told The Associated Press, adding that the military will soon clear the capital and its surrounding areas from the RSF.

But the advances don’t mean the end of the war as the RSF holds territory in the western Darfur region and elsewhere. Perthes argued that the war will likely turn into an insurgency between the Darfur-based RSF and the military-led government in the capital.

“The RSF will be largely restricted to Darfur ... We will return to the early 2000s,” he said, in reference to the conflict between rebel groups and the Khartoum government, then led by former President Omar al-Bashir.

At the start of the war in April 2023, the RSF took over multiple government and military buildings in the capital including the Republican Palace, the headquarters of the state television and the besieged military’s headquarters, known as the General Command. It also occupied people’s houses and turned them into bases for their attacks against troops.

In recent months, the military took the lead in the fighting. It reclaimed much of Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North, along with other cities elsewhere in the country. In late January, troops lifted the RSF siege on the General Command, paving the way to retake the palace less than two months later.

The military is now likely to try to retake the Khartoum International Airport, only some 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) southeast of the palace, which has been held by the RSF since the start of the war. Videos posted on social media Saturday purportedly showed soldiers on a road leading to the airport.

The RSF was accused on Saturday of being responsible for the deaths of at least 45 people in the Darfur city of al-Maliha.

The pro-democracy Resistance Committees, a network of youth groups tracking the war, said the RSF entered the city on Thursday and carried out attacks. The dead included at least a dozen women, according to a partial casualty list published by the group.

Al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in North Darfur near the borders with Chad and Libya, is around 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the city of el-Fasher, which remains held by the Sudanese military despite near-daily strikes by besieging RSF.

The war, which has wrecked the capital and other urban cities, has claimed the lives of more than 28,000 people, forced millions more to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.

The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.