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 raid against the Hezbollah militant group. Hezbollah denied that Israeli troops had entered, but said it was ready to fight them.
The military advised people to evacuate north of the Awali River, about 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and much further than the Litani River, which marks the northern edge of a U.N.-declared zone intended to serve as buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war.
“You must immediately go north of the Awali River to save yourselves and leave your homes immediately,” said the statement published by the Arab spokesman for the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, on platform X.
Israel’s warning suggests going deeper into Lebanon.
The border region has largely emptied over the past year as the two sides exchanged gunfire. But the scope of the evacuation warning raised questions about the extent to which Israel plans to send its forces to Lebanon as it presses ahead with a rapidly escalating campaign against Hezbollah.
Israeli troops were until now only a short distance from the border, concentrated in villages hundreds of meters from Israel, an Israeli military official said earlier, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with military regulations. The official said there had been no clashes with Hezbollah fighters yet.
Hezbollah denied that Israeli troops had entered Lebanon, but said its fighters are prepared if they do.
In his 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 a “direct confrontation with enemy forces that dare or attempt to enter Lebanon.”
Israel attacks more targets and Hezbollah fires rockets
Israeli artillery units bombed targets in southern Lebanon overnight and the sounds of airstrikes were heard throughout Beirut.
The official said Hezbollah had fired rockets into central Israel, setting off air raid sirens and wounding a man in his 50s. Hezbollah said it fired salvos of a new type of medium-range missile, called 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 just the beginning.”
The Israeli military official said Hezbollah had also launched projectiles at Israeli communities near the border, targeting soldiers without injuring anyone.
Israel says it launched ‘localized raids’
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, 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’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel ignited the conflict in Gaza. Israel has launched retaliatory airstrikes and the conflict has steadily escalated. In recent weeks, Israel has unleashed a wave of airstrikes across much 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 war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 had not been implemented and that southern Lebanon was “riddled with Hezbollah terrorists and weapons.”
That resolution called for Hezbollah to withdraw from the area between the border and the Litani River and for the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to patrol the region. Israel says those and other provisions were never implemented. Lebanon has long accused Israel of violating other terms of the resolution.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Lebanese army or the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, that Israeli forces had crossed the border.
UNIFIL said the military had notified it the previous day of its “intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon” and described it as a “dangerous development.” He noted that any such incursion would also violate the UN resolution and urged both sides to de-escalate tensions.
Israeli official says there are no plans to march on Beirut
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Monday that his country is ready to deploy the army in support of the resolution if a ceasefire occurs. Lebanon’s armed forces would not be able to force an agreement on the much more powerful Hezbollah.
Military statements indicated that Israel could 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 Palestinian Hamas.
The military officer said marching on 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 broader conflict in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and the United States, which has quickly sent military assets to the region in support of Israel. .
The raid comes after weeks of heavy blows by Israel against Hezbollah, including an airstrike that killed its former leader Nasrallah, and seeks to increase pressure on the group. The last time Israel and Hezbollah engaged in ground combat was a month-long war in 2006.
There was no information on how long the operation would last, but the military 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 in Lebanon. According to the Health Ministry, more than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in Israeli attacks over the past two weeks, almost a quarter of them women and children. 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 last two decades preparing for their next showdown.
The recent airstrikes that wiped out most of Hezbollah’s top leadership and the explosions of hundreds of Hezbollah-owned pagers and walkie-talkies indicate that Israel has deeply infiltrated the group’s upper echelons.
Hezbollah on Monday vowed to keep fighting even after its recent losses. The group’s acting leader, Naim Kassem, said in a televised statement on 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 removing their diplomats and citizens from Lebanon. A flight chartered by the British government will leave Beirut on Wednesday to evacuate UK citizens. The United Kingdom has also sent 700 troops to a base on the nearby island nation of Cyprus to prepare for a possible evacuation of the approximately 5,000 British citizens in Lebanon.
Mroue reported from Beirut.
