Air France and Lufthansa extend flight suspensions to Beirut and Tel Aviv

“Due to the security situation at the destination, Air France is suspending its connections” between Paris “and Beirut in Lebanon” and between Paris “and Tel Aviv in Israel until September 20,” the company announced. At the same time, Lufthansa has extended the suspension of its flights to Tel Aviv until September 24 inclusive, and until October 26 for Beirut. The German company has also suspended its flights to Tehran in Iran, until September 24 inclusive.

In the United States, the American airline Delta Air Lines announced that it would extend until the end of the year the suspension of its service between New York and Tel Aviv, which was initially planned until the end of October. American Airlines had already indicated that it would no longer provide routes to the Israeli metropolis until the end of March 2025, and United Airlines has suspended them indefinitely.

Fear of a full-scale war in the region

The announcements come amid heightened tensions in the region. The Israeli military announced Thursday that it had bombed seven Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, increasing pressure on the Lebanese movement in the wake of a series of deadly explosions attributed to Israel that targeted Hezbollah’s communications systems. The explosions killed 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 on Tuesday and Wednesday, heightening fears of a full-scale war in the Middle East.

Israel has not commented on the attacks, which came just after it announced it was expanding its war aims against the Palestinian Hamas to the northern border with Lebanon, to allow the return of displaced people in the north of the country.

Delta had already decided to interrupt these flights at the end of July, after an initial resurgence of tension in Lebanon, against the backdrop of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. At the end of July, one of the military leaders of the pro-Iranian Lebanese movement Hezbollah, Fouad Chokri, was killed in an Israeli strike near Beirut. The organization responded by launching hundreds of drones and rockets at Israel.