The Israeli military on Tuesday warned people to evacuate nearly two dozen Lebanese border communities hours after launching what it said was a limited ground incursion against the Hezbollah militant group. Hezbollah denied Israeli troops had entered but said it was ready to battle them.
The military advised people to evacuate north of the Awali River, some 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and much farther than the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a U.N.-declared zone that was intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war.
“You must immediately head north of the Awali River to save yourselves, and leave your houses immediately,” said the statement posted by the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, on the platform X.
Israel’s warning suggests push deeper into Lebanon.
The border region has largely emptied out over the past year as the two sides have traded fire. But the scope of the evacuation warning raised questions as to how deep Israel plans to send its forces into Lebanon as it presses ahead with a rapidly escalating campaign against Hezbollah.
Israeli troops were so far within walking distance of the border, focused on villages hundreds of meters (yards) from Israel, an Israeli military official said earlier, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations. The official said there had been no clashes yet with Hezbollah fighters.
Hezbollah denied that Israeli troops had entered Lebanon but said its fighters are ready if they do.
In its first statement since Israel announced the start of ground operations, Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif dismissed what he said were “false claims” of an Israeli incursion. He said Hezbollah is ready for “direct confrontation with enemy forces that dare to or try to enter Lebanon.”
Israel strikes more targets and Hezbollah fires rockets
Israeli artillery units pounded targets in southern Lebanon through the night and the sounds of airstrikes were heard throughout Beirut.
The official said Hezbollah had launched rockets at central Israel, setting off air raid sirens and wounding a man in his 50s. Hezbollah said it fired salvos of a new kind of medium-range missile, called the Fadi 4, at the headquarters of two Israeli intelligence agencies near Tel Aviv.
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Afif, the Hezbollah spokesman, said the missile attack “is only the beginning.”
The Israeli military official said Hezbollah had also launched projectiles at Israeli communities near the border, targeting soldiers without wounding anyone.
Israel says it launched ‘localized raids’
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s top spokesperson, said troops were conducting “localized ground raids” on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon to ensure that Israeli citizens could return to their homes in the north.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel ignited the conflict in Gaza. Israel has launched retaliatory airstrikes and the conflict has steadily escalated. In recent weeks Israel has unleashed a punishing wave of airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon, killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several of his top commanders, as well as many civilians.
Hagari said the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 had not been enforced and that southern Lebanon was “swarming with Hezbollah terrorists and weapons.”
That resolution had called for Hezbollah to withdraw from the area between the border and the Litani River and for the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers to patrol the region. Israel says those and other provisions were never enforced. Lebanon has long accused Israel of violating other terms of the resolution.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Lebanese army nor the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, that Israeli forces had crossed the border.
UNIFIL said the military had notified it the day before of its “intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon” and described it as a “dangerous development.” It noted that any such incursion would also violate the U.N. resolution and urged both sides to de-escalate.
Israeli official says no plans to march on Beirut
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Monday that his country is willing to deploy the army in support of the resolution if there is a cease-fire. Lebanon’s armed forces would not be able to impose an agreement on the far more powerful Hezbollah.
The military statements indicated that Israel might focus its ground operation on the narrow strip along the border, rather than launching a larger invasion aimed at destroying Hezbollah, as it has done in Gaza against the Palestinian Hamas.
The military official said marching to Beirut, as Israeli forces did during their 1982 invasion of Lebanon, is “not on the table.”
Hezbollah and Hamas are close allies backed by Iran, and each escalation over the past year has raised fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and the United States, which has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
The incursion follows weeks of heavy blows by Israel against Hezbollah — including an airstrike that killed its longtime leader Nasrallah — and seeks to step up the pressure on the group. The last time Israel and Hezbollah engaged in ground combat was a monthlong war in 2006.
There was no word on how long the operation would last, but the army said soldiers had been training and preparing for the mission in recent months.
A ground operation marks a new and potentially risky phase of fighting. It also threatens to unleash further devastation on Lebanon. Over 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in Israeli strikes over the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.
Hezbollah is a well-trained militia, believed to have tens of thousands of fighters and an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles. The last round of fighting in 2006 ended in a stalemate, and both sides have spent the past two decades preparing for their next showdown.
Recent airstrikes wiping out most of Hezbollah’s top leadership and the explosions of hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah indicate that Israel has infiltrated deep inside the group’s upper echelons.
Hezbollah vowed Monday to keep fighting even after its recent losses. The group’s acting leader, Naim Kassem, said in a televised statement Monday that Hezbollah would be ready for a ground operation. He said commanders killed in recent weeks have already been replaced.
European countries have begun pulling their diplomats and citizens out of Lebanon. A British government-chartered flight is due to leave Beirut on Wednesday to evacuate U.K. nationals. The U.K. has also sent 700 troops to a base in the nearby island nation of Cyprus to prepare for a potential evacuation of the estimated 5,000 British citizens in Lebanon.
Mroue reported from Beirut.
