Report: Israel to invade Lebanon following assassination of Hezbollah leader

On Wednesday, the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, announced a potential ground operation in the neighboring state as he talked to troops stationed at Israel’s northern border.

Airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the past week were aimed at preparing the area “for the possibility of your entry”, the general told the troops.

According to Halevi, Israel was still seeking to return displaced residents from the northern regions to their homes.

“To do this, we are preparing the [ground] maneuver,” the general added, without revealing a time frame for the operation.

“You will go in, destroy the enemy there, and decisively destroy their infrastructure,” Halevi said, claiming that Hezbollah has turned villages into “large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launch pads into our territory”.

Israel and Hezbollah have sporadically exchanged fire over the past year, as the latter has supported the Palestinian cause in light of the regime’s military operation against Hamas.

Israel drastically escalated its campaign against the Lebanese group earlier this month, wounding thousands in a sabotage operation targeting the group’s handheld communication devices and subsequently bombarding southern Lebanon with airstrikes.

The ABC report came just a day after Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting what was described as the group’s main headquarters in a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The group confirmed its leader’s death early Saturday. No successor to Nasrallah has been named.

Israel stated later on Saturday that almost all of Hezbollah’s military leaders had been eliminated. It also shared a list of a dozen top commanders killed over the past few weeks.