Israel has said it is expanding its ground operation in Lebanon with the deployment of a fourth division after another night of intense airstrikes across the south and east of the country.
The reservist 146th division was sent to southern Lebanon overnight, hours after Israel announced the mobilisation of a third standing division, meaning the number of troops on the ground is now likely to number 15,000.
Launching what it has called Operation Northern Arrows last week, the Israeli army said the ground offensive would involve “limited, localised and targeted raids” to remove Hezbollah infrastructure along the disputed de facto border between the two countries, known as the blue line.
However, the rapid deployment of four divisions operating across south Lebanon, alongside evacuation orders for Lebanese villages on the coast upwards of 20 miles from the blue line and the intensive bombing of the country’s south and east and the capital, suggests Israel is preparing for a wider push north against the Lebanese militia.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday threatened Lebanon with “destruction” such as Israel has already wreaked in Gaza.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” he said in a video address directed to the people of Lebanon. “I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Hezbollah’s acting secretary general, Naim Qassem, said the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes, including Beirut bombings that killed the group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and much of the militia’s top command.
“You see that our daily accomplishments are great. Hundreds of rockets and dozens of aircraft [drones], a great number of [Israeli] settlements and cities have come under rocket fire … I would like to reassure you that our capabilities are fine,” he said.
Hezbollah had replaced all of its senior commanders, he said, and Israeli ground troops had not made any advances after a week of fighting.
However, Netanyahu, claimed the IDF had killed Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace the late Nasrallah.
“We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message. It was not immediately clear whom Netanyahu meant by the “replacement of the replacement”.
Hezbollah has not confirmed Safieddine’s death.
The IDF said that it had also killed Suhail Husseini, responsible for overseeing logistics, budget and management, the night before. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, but about 85 projectiles were launched towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa from Lebanon on Tuesday morning. Most of the projectiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems.
Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech. There were reports of a “massive airstrike” in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, about 30km east of Beirut, on Tuesday night, and at least four strikes on Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut where Nasrallah was killed.
Elsewhere, the Syrian government said seven civilians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus, that a war monitor said targeted a building used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The defence ministry said women and children were among the dead and the toll was preliminary as rescuers were still combing the rubble. None of the dead were Iranian, the Iranian embassy in Damascus said.
At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million – about a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago.
The Lebanese health ministry said at least 36 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, with 150 people being injured.
Israel says the operation’s goal is to allow approximately 60,000 displaced people to return to their homes across northern Israel after a year of simmering cross-border fighting.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian allies a day after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year that triggered the new war in Gaza and now threatens to drag in Iran and the US.
In a statement on Tuesday, the anniversary of Hezbollah’s involvement, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN’s special coordinator for Lebanon, and Lt Gen Aroldo Lázaro of Unifil, the head of the peacekeeping force on the blue line, called for a “negotiated solution” to end the latest round of violence.
“Near-daily exchanges of fire have escalated into a relentless military campaign whose humanitarian impact is nothing short of catastrophic,” the statement said.
“A negotiated solution is the only pathway to restore the security and stability that civilians on both sides so desperately want and deserve … The time to act is now.”
The region is still waiting for Israel’s response to an unprecedented missile attack from Iran last week, launched in support of its Lebanese ally after Israel’s ground invasion.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said in an interview with CNN late on Monday: “Everything is on the table. Israel has capabilities to hit targets near and far – we have proved it.”
Israel is consulting Washington, its most important ally, over how to retaliate against Tehran without triggering an even stronger response. The New York Times, citing US officials, said the US believed Israel would prioritise attacking military bases and intelligence sites before nuclear facilities.
A Pentagon spokesperson announced on Tuesday night that Gallant had cancelled plans for a visit to Washington to meet his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday.
Netanyahu reportedly told Gallant his trip would not be approved until the Israeli prime minister has a phone call with Joe Biden to discuss the response to Iran’s missile attack, and until the Israeli security cabinet approves the plan.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, earlier warned against a new Israeli attack. Fighting also continues to rage in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said.
At least 15 people, including two women and four children, were killed on Tuesday in ground fighting in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said, after new Israeli evacuation orders for the city were issued on Monday. The IDF has intensified bombing of the area and moved in tanks.
The Israeli military said it killed about 20 militants in Jabaliya and located a large quantity of weapons, including grenades and rifles.
Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, said in a speech on the anniversary of the 7 October attack that the group would “keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy”.
Hamas fired a barrage of longer-range rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday’s anniversary, underscoring that the group’s military capabilities are eroded but not yet defunct after a year of war.
A total of 1,205 people were killed on 7 October and 251 taken hostage. Another 41,965 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza over the past year, which has also drawn in militia groups allied to Iran in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Israeli media outlets reported earlier this week that government officials have not met to discuss the stalled ceasefire and hostage swap negotiations aimed at ending the war in Gaza for more than two weeks.
