The United States had announced a few hours earlier “limited” Israeli ground operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Washington, President Joe Biden suggested he was opposed to Israeli ground operations, calling for a ceasefire.
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Following the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil, which triggered the war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah opened a front against Israel in support of its ally.
The armed forces “operate according to a methodical plan established by the General Staff and the Northern Command, for which Civil Defense soldiers have trained and prepared in recent months,” explained the Israeli army.
The air force and artillery of the Civil Defense support the land forces with precise strikes, according to the same source.
The army emphasizes continuing its operations “to achieve the war objectives” and doing “whatever is necessary to defend the citizens of Israel and return the citizens of northern Israel to their homes.”
A Lebanese security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Israel carried out at least six strikes on south Beirut overnight, after the Israeli army ordered residents of the Hezbollah stronghold to evacuate the premises. AFP journalists heard explosions there.
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Hezbollah “ready”
Hezbollah fighters are “ready if Israel decides to enter the ground,” the group’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, declared Monday in a first televised address since the death of Hassan Nasrallah.
“Israel has not been able to undermine our military capabilities,” he said, affirming that his party would continue its fight against Israel “in support of Gaza.”
In a statement released overnight, Hezbollah said it had “targeted” Israeli troops “moving” in orchards near the border, with a source close to the group saying the soldiers were “right on the border.” .
Hezbollah had no immediate comment after the Israeli military announced the ground raids, but the group’s al-Manar TV reported the Israeli statement announcing the raids on its Telegram channel.
The Lebanese army, overwhelmed by the military power of Hezbollah, is in the process of “repositioning” its troops further from the border, a military official told AFP.
World leaders had called for de-escalation.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has expressed his opposition to any Israeli “land invasion” of Lebanon. Present in Beirut, the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot, also called on Israel to “refrain from any land incursion” as well as for a cease-fire.
Any new Israeli military intervention in Lebanon “must be avoided”, also launched the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Several countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, have announced that they have chartered flights to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon. France deployed a military ship as a “precaution”, in case of need to evacuate French nationals.
Strikes in Syria
Due to the “intensity of the fighting”, the UN announced on Monday that peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon could no longer patrol.
The death toll from Monday’s Israeli strikes in Lebanon is 95 dead across the country, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
At the same time, on the night of Monday to Tuesday, a Syrian state media outlet, the Sana agency, claimed that air defense intercepted “hostile” targets in the Damascus region early Tuesday, using an expression generally used to designate Israeli strikes.
Syrian state television said in a statement it mourned “presenter Safaa Ahmad, who died as a martyr in the Israeli aggression on the capital Damascus.”
The death of Hassan Nasrallah, who was considered the most powerful man in Lebanon, constitutes a major victory for Israel against Iran, Israel’s enemy, and its allies including Hamas.
Israel has promised to fight its “enemies” and “eliminate” them wherever they are found. There is “no place in the Middle East that Israel cannot reach,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned.
Iran affirmed that it would not “deploy” fighters to Lebanon and Gaza to confront Israel, believing that “the governments of Lebanon and Palestine have the capacity and power necessary to confront the regime’s aggression Zionist.”
Since mid-September, Israel has focused its military operations on the northern front, with the objective of putting an end to Hezbollah’s rocket fire and allowing the return of tens of thousands of residents displaced by this fire.
