Diplomatic efforts intensify after Ainata massacre, Hezbollah response

After an Israeli airstrike killed a grandmother and her three grandchildren in Lebanon’s Ainata and Hezbollah’s retaliatory shelling of Kiryat Shmona, U.S. and European diplomatic efforts intensified in a bid to contain the situation and avoid an all-out war between Lebanon and Israel, media reports said.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s surprise visit to Beirut is “part of this inclination,” al-Binaa newspaper reported on Wednesday.

“Despite the Israeli escalation on Sunday and the resistance’s reaction, things are still under control in terms of avoiding the targeting of civilians and two sides’ avoidance of an all-out war,” the daily quoted sources as saying.

Informed sources meanwhile told the newspaper that “the Americans felt that the firing of rockets from Lebanon at Kiryat Shmona and Haifa meant that Hezbollah would expand the rules of engagement to a big extent that might draw major Israeli responses that would descend into a broad war.”