JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: Israel’s elite units launched limited ground raids into Lebanon on Tuesday, as arch-foe Hezbollah fired missiles at Tel Aviv, with the U.S. warning it had indications Iran may be preparing to enter the fray with a ballistic missile attack on Israel.
The tit-for-tat escalation following weeks of intense Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon raised concerns of a broader Middle East conflagration sucking in both Iran and the United States.
In Washington, a senior White House official said the U.S. is actively supporting preparations to defend Israel against a direct military attack by Iran. The official added that such an attack would carry severe consequences for Iran.
Israel carried out one attack that hit a high-rise building in Beirut city’s Jnah area and one on the capital’s southern suburbs later on Tuesday that briefly closed the road to Beirut airport, two Lebanese security sources said.
The Israeli military said it had carried out a “precise strike.” An Israeli security official earlier said troops in southern Lebanon had begun limited raids into Lebanon overnight that only went a short distance over the border, adding that no direct clashes with Hezbollah fighters were reported.
“Israeli forces have been carrying out raids into southern Lebanon for months, uncovering Hezbollah tunnels and weapons caches under homes and invasion plans by the group,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari claimed on Tuesday.
Israel has also claimed that operations had uncovered plans by Hezbollah to enter Israel and carry out an attack similar to the one led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year that triggered the current conflicts. Hezbollah has not commented on these claims.
‘BOGGED DOWN’
The latest escalation has caused international alarm, with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy saying Israel should avoid a repeat of the past and not get “bogged down in a quagmire” in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has challenged Israel since the group was created in Lebanon by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982. The Israeli raids follow airstrikes that have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership, including the assassination of its chief Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last week.
Israel’s military said its ground raids are aimed at Hezbollah strongholds along the border that threaten Israel and that it is not a war against the Lebanese people.
The military said on Tuesday it was calling up four additional reserve brigades for operational missions on the northern border with Lebanon. Residents in southern Lebanon fled on Monday and Tuesday as Israeli strikes drew nearer, local sources told Reuters.
At least 600 people were seeking refuge in a monastery on the southern Lebanon border after their Christian village of Ain Ebl received a warning from the Israeli military, local residents told Reuters.
An Israeli military spokesman warned residents of Ain Ebl and at least 20 other towns to evacuate their homes immediately because the military would attack houses that armed group Hezbollah was using.
Near the city of Sidon, mourners wept over coffins containing black-shrouded bodies of those killed in Israeli strikes. Abdulhamid Ramadan said he had lost his wife and daughter to an airstrike on what he said was a civilian building. “The building got struck down and I couldn’t protect my daughter or anyone else. Thank God, my son and I got out, but I lost my daughter and wife, I lost my home, I have become homeless. What do you want me to say? My whole life changed in a second.”
NEW ROCKETS USED
A Hezbollah spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday that the Israeli military had not entered Lebanese territory but that Hezbollah would be ready to fight them in direct clashes if they did.
Hezbollah said on Tuesday that it had fired the “Fadi 4” at military positions in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial capital. The missile is the fourth iteration of a series that have progressively bigger payloads and longer ranges that Hezbollah has begun to use in recent weeks. The group also said it fired missiles at the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and at a military intelligence unit on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Israel’s ambulance service said two people had been wounded by shrapnel from the barrage of missiles.
Despite its biggest successes against Hezbollah in decades, Israel has indicated it is primed for a full-fledged invasion of Lebanon, with the stated aim of enabling thousands of its citizens who fled Hezbollah rockets to safely return to their communities near the northern border.
More than 1,700 people have been killed in Lebanon since hostilities began on Oct. 8 last year. Israel’s strikes have displaced one million Lebanese from their homes. A looming ground push sparked fear and anger in Lebanon. “Not just Hezbollah, all of Lebanon will fight this time. All of Lebanon is determined to fight Israel for the massacres it committed in Gaza and Lebanon,” said Abu Alaa, a resident of the southern port city of Sidon.
