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Israel has launched limited ground attacks in Lebanon and carried out airstrikes on central Beirut on Monday for the first time in nearly two decades.
Three people familiar with the situation said Israeli forces have carried out small-scale cross-border operations as the country expands its offensive against regional opponents.
One person said the attacks were limited in scale and targeted artillery positions HizbollahIran-backed militant groups and other infrastructure near the border, as well as gathering intelligence ahead of a possible larger operation.
Israeli military leaders have in recent weeks raised the possibility of a ground offensive into Lebanon and mobilized at least two brigades on the northern border.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would use “all the means at our disposal” against Hizbollah when he visited troops on the border on Monday.
“Forces are ready and willing to attack,” Gallant posted on X, while Hizbollah also vowed to continue the conflict.
A military spokesman said no ground operations had yet begun, adding that the Israel Defense Forces does not comment on special operations.
This is not the first time Israeli forces have carried out operations on the Lebanese side of the border since the start of the war. In April, four Israeli soldiers were injured while carrying out an operation inside Lebanon.
According to Lebanon, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon in the past two weeks, including more than 100 on Sunday alone, while up to 1 million people have been displaced.
In the first attack within Beirut city limits since Israel’s 2006 war with Hizbollahthree leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a factional group, were killed in an apartment building in the Kola Bridge area early Monday morning.
Videos from central Beirut showed rubble scattered across a busy street as ambulances raced to the scene after the attack, which footage showed targeted a specific apartment.
Days of attacks in Beirut’s southern suburbs have killed dozens of top Hizbollah commanders. including its leader Hassan Nasrallahand Israel continued to carry out overnight attacks against Hizbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon.
Hizbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem said Monday that the group will not stop its fight against Israel.
“Even though we lost some leaders. . . we will continue to confront the enemy Israel in support of Palestine and defense of Lebanon,” he said in a public address, adding the group would choose a new secretary general “as soon as possible ”.
“If the Israelis want to attack on the ground, the resistance is ready for it,” he said. “We are ready. We rely on Almighty God and we will prevail.”
The IDF added on Monday that it killed Fateh Sherif, a leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Lebanon, who it said was responsible for coordinating with Hizbollah.
Hamas said Sherif was killed in an Israeli attack on a Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Tire in southern Lebanon.
Despite calls from the US and other Western powers for Israel to de-escalate, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the offensive against Hizbollah and its allies will continue until more than 60,000 people displaced from northern Israel after a year of possible cross-border fires. to return home.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Monday that his country is ready to accept a nearly 20-year-old United Nations resolution requiring, among other conditions, Hizbollah to withdraw 30km from its border with Israel – in an intervention seemingly aimed at maintaining stability. the door is open for a diplomatic solution.
Mikati said the state is making every effort to cope with what he called “the largest displacement in the region, in Lebanon and even in history.”
Israel has also launched a broader offensive against Iran-backed groups. Israeli fighter aircraft attacked multiple locations in Yemen involving Houthi rebels on Sunday.
Netanyahu said the country is in the process of “changing the balance of power” in the Middle East and vowed to continue attacking on many fronts.
In Yemen, Israeli warplanes targeted power plants, ports and other infrastructure in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, a stronghold of Houthi rebels, after the country’s military intercepted an attacker. Fire launched from Yemen through central Israel on Saturday.
The Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Israel, merchant ships and US naval vessels in the Red Sea since an October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
Explosions were also heard in the Syrian capital Damascus, as an attack appeared to target the outskirts of the city, local news agencies reported.
US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that he planned to talk to Netanyahu. When asked whether an all-out war in the Middle East could be avoided, he replied: “It must be avoided.”
EU foreign ministers will hold an emergency crisis meeting via video conference on Monday afternoon to hammer out a common response to the growing crisis, officials said.
Sirens sounded in northern Israel as the IDF reported dozens of rockets fired from Lebanon on Monday. All were intercepted or allowed to fall in open areas, the IDF said.
Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Brussels and Charles Clover and Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper in Beirut
Data visualization by Jana Tauschinski
