BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon Hezbollah The militant group’s leader warned on Wednesday that the group has new weapons and intelligence capabilities that could help it attack more important positions inside Israel in the event of all-out war.
Hassan Nasrallah said: Months of border conflict The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel appears to be reaching a boiling point. US envoy meets with Lebanese officials It’s his latest attempt to ease tensions.
“We now have new weapons, but I won’t say what they are,” he said in a televised address mourning a top Hezbollah commander killed by an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon last week. “Once a decision is made, they will be seen on the front lines.”
Hezbollah has used a domestically produced explosive drone for the first time since the start of the Syrian civil war. The war between Israel and Hamas Surface-to-air missiles were also deployed in Gaza in October to repel Israeli fighter jets.
Nasrallah said in 2021: Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters But he now insisted the numbers were much higher, without giving details. He also said he had rejected offers from allies and regional militias that could have added tens of thousands of people to his force.
The roughly 10-minute video, purportedly taken by a Hezbollah surveillance drone and released on Tuesday, shows parts of the city of Haifa, far from the Israeli-Lebanese border. Nasrallah said in a speech on Wednesday that Hezbollah has more footage, posing a clear threat that it could reach its base deep inside Israel.
Israeli Lt. Gen. Helgi Halevi, visiting Israeli air defense soldiers near the Lebanese border on Wednesday, said Israel is aware of Hezbollah’s capabilities shown in the video and has solutions to these threats.
“Obviously, we have much greater capabilities,” he said. “I think the adversary only knows a small part of it, so (we) intend to confront them at the appropriate time.”
Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militant group HamasSyria has been exchanging near-daily attacks with Israel since the Gaza war broke out on October 7 in an effort to force Israeli forces to withdraw from the embattled Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah attacks intensified after Israel expanded its offensive against the southern Gaza city of Rafah in May and in June Hezbollah official Taleb Sami Abdullah killed in Israeli attackThe highest-ranking militant killed so far during the Israeli-Hamas war.
The Israeli military also said on Tuesday it had “approved and verified” plans to attack Lebanon, but the decision on whether to actually launch such an operation must be taken by the country’s political leaders.
The warnings from both sides followed a visit by Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, who met with Lebanese and Israeli officials in the latest effort to ease tensions. Hochstein told reporters in Beirut on Tuesday that this was a “very serious situation” and that a diplomatic solution to prevent a larger war was urgently needed.
Nasrallah said a broader war with Lebanon would have regional ramifications and that Hezbollah would attack other countries in the region that support Israel’s war, citing Cyprus, which hosts Israeli military training. He suggested that Cyprus might allow Israel to use its bases in the event of a broader war.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides responded by saying his country was “not involved in any military operations” in the region. Pointing to the Cyprus-Gaza maritime corridor used to deliver aid to the Palestinian territories, he said Cyprus was “part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
Only a ceasefire in Gaza would halt fighting on the Lebanese-Israeli border or attacks on Western- or Israeli-linked targets by Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iraqi militias allied with Hezbollah.
Israel sees Hezbollah as its most direct threat, and the two sides fought a 34-day war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Military power has improved significantly Since then, the United States and Israel have estimated that Hezbollah, along with other Lebanese militant groups, now has about 150,000 missiles and rockets. Hezbollah is also working on developing precision-guided missiles.
Hezbollah said at least four Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, as Hochstein returned home for new meetings in Israel.
Lebanese state media reported the attacks took place along the border and near the coastal city of Tyre, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) away. The Israeli army said two Hezbollah launches damaged several vehicles in northern Israel.
Kamel Mohanna, head of the Amer Association, a non-governmental organization that provides medical services across Lebanon, said its medical center in the town of Khiam had been damaged in the Israeli shelling.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 400 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah and other militants, but also more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. In northern Israel, attacks from Lebanon have killed 16 soldiers and 11 civilians.
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Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman and Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Menelaos Hadjikostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.
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This version corrects that Hochstein was speaking in Beirut, not Berlin, on Tuesday.
