Israel prepares for Lebanon ground offensive

AFP | Beirut

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Israel’s army chief told soldiers yesterday to prepare for a possible ground offensive to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon as the air force conducted hundreds of deadly strikes around the country.

“We are attacking all day, both to prepare the ground for the possibility of your entry, but also to continue striking Hezbollah,” Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told a tank brigade, according to a statement from the military.

Lebanon’s health minister said yesterday’s strikes killed 51 people and injured 223, including in mountainous areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.

Hezbollah said it had targeted Israel’s Mossad spy agency on Tel Aviv’s outskirts in the morning -- the first time it has fired a ballistic missile in almost a year of cross-border clashes sparked by the Gaza war. In response, Israel said it hit 60 Hezbollah intelligence sites, among hundreds of the group’s targets struck across Lebanon.

It came amid escalating cross-border clashes, after Israeli raids on Monday killed at least 558 people in the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

Nour Hamad, a 22-year-old student in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, described living “in a state of terror” all week.

“We spent four or five days without sleep, not knowing if we will wake up in the morning,” she said. In Tel Aviv, sirens sounded following Hezbollah’s unprecedented missile launch.

Tel Aviv resident Hedva Fadlon, 61, told AFP: “The situation is difficult. We feel the pressure and the tension... I don’t think anyone in the world would like to live like this.”

Israel calls reservists

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Hezbollah’s attack on Tel Aviv was “deeply concerning” but added there was “still time and space for a diplomatic solution here to de-escalate the tensions and to prevent an all-out war”.

The Israeli military said “over 280 Hezbollah” targets had been struck across Lebanon yesterday, adding the strikes were ongoing. “Fighter jets struck 60 terrorist targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence directorate,” the army said.

It also said two reserve brigades were being called up “for operational missions in the northern arena”, adding this would “enable the continuation of combat against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation”. The United Nations Security Council said it would hold an emergency meeting on the crisis in New York yesterday, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the situation was critical.

Rocket commander killed

The UN’s International Organization for Migration yesterday said 90,000 people had been displaced in Lebanon since Monday.

Among them, “many of the more than 111,000 people displaced since October... are likely to have been secondarily displaced”, a statement from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added. It came after two days of what the Israeli military called “extensive” strikes on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

The Lebanese group on Tuesday confirmed an Israeli claim that it had killed their rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi in a strike on the Lebanese capital. At the UN General Assembly in New York, Secretary-General Guterres issued a stark warning. “We should all be alarmed by the escalation.

Lebanon is at the brink,” he said, while cautioning against “the possibility of transforming Lebanon (into) another Gaza”. US President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s main backer, said “full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest”.