Israeli forces have launched limited incursions in Lebanon, the United States said Monday, as Israel vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah and sealed part of the border after killing the Iran-backed militants’ leader.
Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned the battle was not over even after the massive Friday strike on Beirut that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, dealing the group a seismic blow.
World leaders have urged diplomacy and de-escalation, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric saying: “We do not want any sort of ground invasion.”
Israeli officials “have informed us that they are currently conducting… limited operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure near the border”, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists.
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Hezbollah fighters were “ready if Israel decides to enter by land”, deputy leader Naim Qassem said in a first televised address since Nasrallah’s death.
Lebanon’s national army, dwarfed by Hezbollah’s military power, was “repositioning” troops farther from the border, a military official told AFP.
And United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon were no longer able to conduct patrols “given the intensity of the rockets going back and forth”, Dujarric said.
US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s main weapons supplier, earlier on Monday indicated he opposes an Israeli ground operation.
“We should have a ceasefire now,” he said.
Israel launched earlier this month a wave of deadly air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, and on Friday bombed Nasrallah in Beirut.
In northern Israel, near the Lebanese border, Gallant said “we will use all the means that may be required… from the air, from the sea, and on land” to restore calm.
He said the killing of Nasrallah “is an important step, but it is not the final one.”
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported “heavy artillery shelling” at a border village in the country’s south.
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