“You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day,” General Herzi Halevi told Israeli troops on the border with Lebanon, according to a military statement. “This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
A Pentagon spokesperson said an Israeli ground incursion did not appear imminent.
He also appeared to comment on a surface-to-surface missile that the militant group fired towards Tel Aviv – its deepest strike yet into Israeli territory.
The missile set off air-raid sirens in Tel Aviv and across central Israel. There were no reports of casualties or damage. Israel said it subsequently struck the site in southern Lebanon where the missile was launched.
“Today, Hezbollah expanded its range of fire, and later today (Wednesday Israel time), they will receive a very strong response. Prepare yourselves,” Halevi said.
World leaders expressed concern that the conflict – running in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, a Palestinian militant movement backed by Iran – was escalating rapidly as the death toll in Lebanon rose and thousands fled their homes.
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in the southern village of Kfar Rouman, seen from Marjayoun, south Lebanon.Credit: AP
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington and its allies were working tirelessly to avoid a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah, which has said it will not back down until the Gaza war ends.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was dispatching his foreign minister to Lebanon this week as part of efforts to stop war breaking out.
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“There cannot be, must not be war in Lebanon,” he said in a speech on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the 193-member United Nations.
Three Israeli sources said no significant progress had been made in the French-US effort as yet.
“Risk of escalation in the region is acute … the best answer is diplomacy, and our coordinated efforts are vital to preventing further escalation,” Blinken said at a meeting with Arabian Gulf state officials and ministers in New York.
Israeli airstrikes this week have targeted Hezbollah leaders and hit hundreds of sites deep inside Lebanon, where hundreds of thousands have fled the border region, while the group has fired barrages of rockets into Israel.
Mourners thronged a funeral on Wednesday in Beirut’s suburbs for two senior Hezbollah commanders killed in Israeli strikes the day before. Fighters in fatigues carried the flag-covered coffins as a band played. The crowd chanted Hezbollah slogans and some wept.
Israel said on Wednesday that its air force had struck some 280 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon by early afternoon, including rocket launchers used to attack the northern Israeli cities of Safed and Nahariya.
Hezbollah members carry the coffins of commanders Ibrahim Kobeisi and Hussein Ezzedine in Beirut on Wednesday.Credit: AP
In a video message that made no comment on diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah was being hit harder than it could ever have imagined.
Israel has made a priority of securing its northern border and allowing the return there of some 70,000 residents displaced by near-daily exchanges of fire since war broke out in October between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on Israel’s southern border.
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Lebanese hospitals have filled with the wounded since Monday, when Israeli bombing killed more than 550 people in Lebanon’s deadliest day since its civil war ended in 1990.
The Lebanese health minister said Israeli strikes had so far killed more than 50 people, raising the death toll from the past three days to 615. More than 2000 other people have been wounded.
Hezbollah said it had aimed the missile at Mossad headquarters “in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip … and in defence of Lebanon and its people”.
It blamed the Mossad for assassinations of its leaders.
It also accuses the intelligence agency of booby-trapping Hezbollah members’ pagers and radios that exploded last week, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3000. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in those attacks.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a pro-Iranian militant group, said it targeted Israel’s southernmost city of Eilat with drones on Wednesday. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
Reuters
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