“Liberate your country from Hezbollah,” he launched Tuesday in a video message in English addressed to the Lebanese, threatening otherwise Lebanon would experience “destruction and suffering like those we see in Gaza,” where he Israeli army has been carrying out an offensive for a year which has left tens of thousands dead.
“We have eliminated (Hassan) Nasrallah”, the leader of Hezbollah killed on September 27 in an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut “and the replacement of Nasrallah and the replacement of his replacement”, added the Prime Minister, without giving of names.
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His Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, had affirmed shortly before that Hezbollah was now “a bruised and broken organization”, after the intense Israeli strikes which targeted it.
The minister also postponed an official trip planned for this week to Washington. He was to meet his counterpart Lloyd Austin there to discuss the situation in the Middle East, at a time when Israel said it was preparing a response to the attack launched by Iran with 200 missiles on October 1 against its territory.
A “dismantled” tunnel
The Israeli army, engaged since September 30 in a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, announced Tuesday that a fourth division had begun to be deployed there and was carrying out “limited operations” against Hezbollah in the southwest of Lebanon. country, bordering the Mediterranean.
In the coastal town of Saida, 40 kilometers south of Beirut, fishing boats remained docked.
“We are fishermen with no other source of income and now all our work has stopped,” testified Hamza Sonbol, a fisherman.
At the same time, Israel carried out airstrikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s three strongholds.
In the evening, the Lebanese national news agency Ani reported a series of strikes causing “massive destruction” in the southern suburbs of the capital.
In Syria, an Israeli strike killed seven civilians in Damascus, including children, according to the Syrian government. An NGO reported nine deaths and affirmed that the strike had targeted a building “frequented by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and members of Hezbollah”.
Despite the blows inflicted on Hezbollah and Hamas, whose leader, Ismaïl Haniyeh, was also killed, these movements continue to fire rockets against Israel, which borders the Gaza Strip to the south and Lebanon to the north.
After claiming responsibility for rocket attacks on military sites and the city of Haifa in northern Israel on Tuesday, Hezbollah threatened to intensify its attacks if Israeli bombings continued on Lebanon.
The Islamist movement also claimed to have repelled Israeli soldiers “infiltrated” into southern Lebanon near a position of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force.
“Our capabilities are good, contrary to what the enemy says who claims to have weakened us,” assured Naïm Qassem, Hezbollah’s number two, in a televised speech.
The Israeli army announced on Tuesday that it had “dismantled” a tunnel dug by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon over a length of ten meters inside Israeli territory.
After weakening Hamas during the offensive launched in Gaza in retaliation for the attack of October 7, 2023, the army moved most of its operations to Lebanon in mid-September.
Israel seeks to distance Hezbollah from the border areas of southern Lebanon and to stop its rocket fire towards northern Israel to allow the return to this region of some 60,000 displaced residents.
Since October 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than 1,110 since the start of massive Israeli bombings against Hezbollah on September 23, according to an AFP count based on official figures. More than a million people have been displaced.
