Israeli boots ‘ready to hit the ground’ in Lebanon

Israel is preparing to put boots on the ground with an invasion of Lebanon, its army chief has said.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) jets have carried out heavy bombardments of Hezbollah targets to pave the way for “your boots” to “enter enemy territory”, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi told troops on Wednesday.
It came as the Israeli army called up two brigades of reservists, around 4,000 soldiers, for operations on the northern border.
Gen Halevi, speaking during a visit to the border, said: “You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
“The sense is that your military boots, your manoeuvre boots, will enter enemy territory,” he said.
“Your entry there with force… will show (Hezbollah) what it is like to meet a professional combat force,“ he said.
The purpose of the invasion would be to allow Israeli citizens to return to their homes in the north, Gen Halevi added.
Missiles fired across the border by Iran-backed Hezbollah have led to the evacuation of around 60,000 citizens.
Lt Gen Halevi’s remarks and the call-up of reservists formed the clearest signal yet that Israel intends to escalate Operation Northern Arrow, which has killed more than 600 people, according to Lebanon’s health authorities.
Joe Biden, the US president, said all-out war was possible but not “inevitable”.
“We’re still in play to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region,” he told ABC News.
The US and France on Wednesday night jointly called for an “immediate” 21-day cease-fire to allow for negotiations.
The joint statement, negotiated on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, said the recent fighting is “intolerable and presents an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation”.
“We call for an immediate 21-day cease-fire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy,” the statement said. “We call on all parties, including the Governments of Israel and Lebanon, to endorse the temporary cease-fire immediately.”
Sir Keir Starmer urged all British citizens to leave Lebanon immediately, saying the situation was deteriorating “hour on hour”.
He did not rule out deploying troops on the ground to evacuate stranded citizens if necessary after sending 700 extra soldiers to Cyprus.
Border Force officers are being deployed to help up to 6,000 trapped Britons flee Lebanon, it emerged on Wednesday.
Some UK officers have been sent to Lebanon to work with consular and military staff in helping Britons seeking to leave the country after appeals to do so by Sir Keir.
A bigger contingent of Border Force officers are on 24-hour notice to fly to the region in the event that Britain has to evacuate stranded workers and families.
Chloe Lewin, a 24-year-old freelance journalist from London who is based in Beirut, told BBC News that it was not possible to book commercial flights out of the country. “Keir Starmer’s telling everyone to get out but we can’t,” she said.
“You can’t get out this week because they’re [flights] all full and every time you get to the last page of the booking, it just crashes and it says you can’t book a flight. And then people I know who have had flights, they’re all getting cancelled. My friends were meant to leave this morning on Egyptair – that got cancelled, so they can’t get out.”
According to multiple reports, the US is engaging in a last-ditch diplomatic effort to secure a ceasefire in both Lebanon and Gaza.
Details are being hammered out at the UN General Assembly in New York. The deal, which would result in the release of all Israeli hostages in Gaza, is the first attempt to link the two conflicts.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has given the “green light” to discuss the initiative, an Israeli official told The Telegraph.
The source said that while the US was not speaking to Hezbollah directly, it was mediating emergency talks with the terror group.
Another Israeli official said that Amos Hochstein, its US envoy, was involved in crisis talks, shuttling between the two sides in search of a deal.
“We are striking Hezbollah with blows it never imagined,” Mr Netanyahu said on Wednesday evening. “We are doing this with full force, we are doing this with guile. One thing I promise you: we will not rest until they [displaced families] return home.”
A ground invasion to force Hezbollah away from Israel’s border would be a huge, complex operation.
The Lebanese terror group has a vast network of tunnels and a more sophisticated arsenal of anti-tank missiles than Hamas.
It would also likely fire off the full arsenal of its long-range missiles, which have been largely held in reserve since war broke out last year.
On Wednesday, Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted a Hezbollah missile aimed at Mossad’s headquarters near Tel Aviv, in the first attack attempting to reach so far into Israel.
“Hezbollah today expanded its [range] of fire. Later today, it will receive a very strong response,” Lt Gen Halevi vowed.
Hezbollah has fired around 9,000 missiles and drones at Israel since Oct 8.
In recent days, Israel has significantly stepped up its military campaign in Lebanon, killing several Hezbollah commanders in strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
It carried out attacks on Monday that killed more than 500 people, including 50 children, Lebanese health authorities said, in the deadliest day for the country since fighting started.
Tensions intensified last week when scores of Hezbollah operatives’ pagers and walkie-talkies were blown up in remote detonations.
The attacks, which have not been claimed by Israel, took 1,500 fighters out of action, according to Reuters.
Thank you for following our live coverage from the Middle East as Israel continues its aerial offensive against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Here’s a recap of today’s major events:
More than 100,000 civilians fled their homes in Lebanon on Monday and Tuesday, some of whom have been forced to escape incessant shelling on foot, a senior aid official has said.
Battered by a deep financial crisis and 11 months of cross-border fire, Lebanon’s government and people are in no position to cope with the dramatic surge in displacement, according to Laila Al Amine, Lebanon’s country director for Mercy Corps, a global aid group.
The latest influx of displaced people nearly doubled the number forced from their homes since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel last October, drawing a ferocious Israeli response and resulting in near daily cross-border exchanges of fire.
The majority of those fleeing the most intensive airstrikes launched globally this century were able to use their cars to escape. But for others that luxury was not always available — leaving them with no option but to try to make the hazardous journey to safety on foot, Ms Al Amine told the Telegraph. Some of the families who escaped are sleeping on the street.
The situation is particularly desperate for many Syrian refugees who sheltered in southern Lebanon after fleeing their own war and are now on the move again. Few have the means to escape except on foot.
Painting a bleak picture of the worsening crisis, Ms Al Amine described a humanitarian situation that was already close to breaking point.
Even before the escalation of the past week there were Lebanese villages on the Israeli border that had recorded destruction levels of up to 90 percent.
“The number of displaced is huge for a small country like Lebanon,” Ms Al Amin said.
“There are several layers to this crisis. We have already witnessed a year of low-intensity war. On top of this you have an economic crisis over the past four years that has forced people to spend all their savings and assets — and now you have this.”
The Israel Defence Forces claimed to have hit 60 Hezbollah intelligence sites in air strikes on Wednesday as part of its ongoing bombardment of Lebanon.
60 Hezbollah Intelligence Directorate targets were struck by the IAF. The strikes eliminated intelligence-gathering tools, command centers, and additional infrastructure used by the terrorist army to build an intelligence situational assessment.Here you can see all the… pic.twitter.com/Vzhv5JzsR5
Lebanon’s health minister said 51 people were killed and more than 220 injured on Wednesday, the third day of major Israeli raids across the country.
“Since this morning 51 people have been killed and 223 injured in the various strikes,” Firass Abiad said.
It brings the total of those killed in strikes since Monday to over 600.
Israeli warplanes targeted 280 Hezbollah sites across Lebanon today so far, the military said.
The targets included rocket launchers used in attacks on the Israeli towns of Safed, Nahariya and those east of Haifa.
מטוסי קרב של חיל האוויר, בשיתוף פיקוד הצפון תקפו במהלך היום כ-280 מטרות של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה בשטח לבנון, בהם המשגרים מהם בוצעו השיגורים לעבר מרחב צפת, נהריה והעמקים הבוקר, מחבלים, מחסני אמל״ח, משגרים מוכנים לשיגור ותשתיות צבאיות של הארגון.צה״ל ממשיך לתקוף כעת בשטח לבנון>> pic.twitter.com/fXtJrqWb8D
Sir Keir Starmer told British citizens in Lebanon on Wednesday that “the time to leave is now”.
“In relation to Lebanon I am very worried about the escalation. I’m calling for all parties to step back from the brink, to de-escalate. 
“We need a ceasefire so this can be sorted out diplomatically. But I have a very important message for British nationals in Lebanon which is: the time to leave is now. 
“The contingency plans are being ramped up but don’t wait for those, there are still commercial flights. It’s very important that they hear my message, which is to leave and to leave immediately.”
Benjamin Netanyahu will convene Israel’s security cabinet tonight at 8pm (6pm BST), an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
Netanyahu is currently scheduled to head to New York on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
Iran has reportedly refused requests by Hezbollah in recent days to launch a direct attack on Israel, two Israeli officials and one Western diplomat said.
Iranian officials, the sources told the Axios news website, warned their counterparts in Hezbollah that the “the timing isn’t right” because Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, is visiting New York the UN General Assembly.
Iran has still not retaliated for Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran almost two months ago, however Pezeshkian appears to be pushing for restraint after saying that Israel was laying “traps” to lead his country into war.
A senior Israeli official also told Axios that the directive given by Israel’s security cabinet to its military is to avoid any steps that would give Iran pretext to join the escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
The UN has said that 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon since Monday when Israel began its large-scale bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon.
Maj-Gen Uri Gordon, the IDF’s northern front commander, told troops to prepare for “maneuvers and action” as Israel enters “new phase of the campaign”.
The IDF also said on Wednesday it was calling up two reserve brigades to the north “for operational missions in the northern arena,” it said, without specifying further.
The White House said on Wednesday that a missile launched by Hezbollah at Tel Aviv was “deeply concerning”.
“It’s certainly deeply concerning, obviously to the Israelis, of course, but also to us,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN.
“There is still time and space for a diplomatic solution here to de-escalate the tensions and to prevent an all-out war.”
The Israel Defense Forces continued its aerial bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon on Wednesday, claiming to have hit 100 targets linked to Hezbollah.
The IDF confirmed that Hezbollah had fired at least 40 projectiles into Israel.
The head of the United Nations has warned that Lebanon is “on the brink” of catstrophe.
“We should all be alarmed by the escalation,” Antonio Guterres said in a sobering state-of-the-world address as he opened the annual high-level gathering of the UN’s 193 member nations.
He cautioned against the “possibility of transforming Lebanon [into] another Gaza,” which he said he turned into a “nonstop nightmare” that “threatens to take the entire region with it.” 
Despite Israel striking Lebanon with one of the most intensive air assaults in recent international history this week, one British national living in Beirut said he had good reason to brave the risk.
Chris Watts, who is 35, said he would feel like “Captain Coward” if he abandoned the colleagues and children he works with at Future Academy, an education and sports charity he runs at a Palestinian refugee camp in the Bourj el-Barajneh district of Beirut.
“I have built this programme from scratch,” he said. “Over that time we have defeated challenges from militias to covid. I am not willing to sacrifice what we have achieved over the past five years.”
While he admitted to feeling a degree of nervousness and has had to allay concern from relatives back in Britain, Mr Watts said he did want to “cut and run”.
Doing so would make him feel like Francesco Schettino, the cruise ship captain who abandoned the Costa Concordia, which capsized in the Tyrrhenian Sea in 2012, killing 32 people, he added.
“We have 160 children who come to us every week and if I go home, they stay at home,” Mr Watts said.
“If I left now, for the rest of my life there would be a voice in the back of my head saying: ‘Chris, you promised these kids you would be with them, and you broke your promise.’ The worst thing you can do is to offer people hope and then take it away.”
Mr Watts, who was born in Camden, said that while relatives at home were worried about him, they supported his decision.
“I’ve been scaring my mum for 30 years,” he joked. “Now I’m properly scaring her.”
The death toll from Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Wednesday has risen to 22, according to the Lebanese health authorities.
Lebanon said 15 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, including two rare strikes in mountain areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in the south and east.
The health ministry said an Israeli strike on the village of Joun in the Chouf mountains, southeast of Beirut, killed four people. Another three were killed in Maaysra, a village in a Christian mountain area just north of Beirut.
Eight people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south, the ministry said.
A Hezbollah official said that last week’s pager and walkie-talkie attacks put 1,500 fighters out of action due to injuries, with many having lost their hands or sight.
The figure represents a significant blow, however it is a small fraction of Hezbollah’s overall strength which is believed to be 40,000-50,000.
Israel’s military has denied Hezbollah’s claims it targeted the Mossad headquarters, located just north of Tel Aviv, in a missile strike on Wednesday morning.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said: “The result was a heavy missile, going… towards civilian areas in Tel Aviv. The Mossad headquarters is not in that area.”
He called the strike “psychological warfare” committed against Israeli citizens.
The missile, he said, had a “heavy warhead” but declined to confirm whether it was a ballistic missile.
Fadi, a type of rocket used for the first time by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah against Israel, has more explosive power and range others, but lacks precision, experts say.
“In an initial response” to the explosions of pagers and two-way radios, Hezbollah on Sunday said it had hit military centres and an airbase in northern Israel with “dozens” of Katyusha, Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets.
According to the Iranian news agency Mehr, Fadi is a tactical multi-use ground-to-ground rocket.
Its design is based on the Syrian Khaibar rocket, which itself is based on the design of China’s WS-1, said Elliot Chapman, a regional expert for British security firm Janes.
The rockets’ precision however, is not high, judging from the discrepancy between announced targets and actual impact locations, Mr Chapman said.
It’s unclear whether the weapons are manufactured in Lebanon, or how many Hezbollah have. 
War Noir, co-founder of the US site Militant Wire, that if Hezbollah can survive Israeli airstrikes, “these heavy artillery rockets will probably be used much more frequently”, including against targets deeper inside Israel.
The Israeli military said it was carrying out “extensive” air strikes in south Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa after Hezbollah fired a ballistic missile that reached the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
It said it was striking Hezbollah targets and weapons storage facilities, while the Iran-backed terror group had launched at least 40 projectiles into northern Israel.
The death toll from Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has gone up to 41,495, authorities in the Hamas-run Strip said.
Another 96,006 people have been wounded in those attacks, according to Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and combat deaths.
 
Killing Hezbollah commanders will not bring the group to its knees, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, said on Wednesday, after a series of targeted strikes on the terror group’s senior leaders.
“The organisational strength and human resources of Hezbollah is very strong and will not be critically hit by the killing of a senior commander, even if that is clearly a loss,” Khamenei said.
The Kremlin on Wednesday urged Russian nationals to leave Lebanon as soon as possible for their own safety on commercial flights.
Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, made the statement after warning a day earlier that Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon had the potential to “destabilise the entire Middle East”.
Strikes hit a moutain village north of Beirut for the first time Wednesday, residents said, with at least three killed and nine injured.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported “two rockets fell in Maaysra” a Shiite-majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area about 15 miles from Beirut, with residents confirming the strike hit their village, destroying a house and a cafe.
Israel said it was carrying out “extensive” strikes on Hezbollah strongholds. The fresh attacks could signal Israel is moving further north with its offensive.
Norway’s security police have begun a preliminary investigation into reports that a Norwegian-owned company was linked to the sale of pagers to Hezbollah that exploded last week.
Over a two-day period last week, thousands of pagers, as well as walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, blew up in Lebanon, killing at least 39 people and wounding thousands. The attacks were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
It is not clear how and when the pagers were weaponised so they could be remotely detonated. Taiwan, Hungary and Bulgaria are already investigating possible links in the supply chain.
Around 700 UK troops will move to Cyprus following the increased risk of conflict in the Middle East.
Military teams are being supported by Border Force and FCDO officials.
The Government continues to advise against all travel to Lebanon, as the situation continues to deteriorate rapidly, with devastating consequences.
Defence Secretary John Healey MP said: “Events in the past hours and days have demonstrated how volatile this situation is, which is why our message is clear, British nationals should leave now.”
Read the full story here.
The foreign ministers of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan condemned Israel’s “aggression” against Lebanon Wednesday, warning that it is “pushing the region towards all-out war”.
The ministers said that stopping the “dangerous escalation under way in the region… begins by halting Israel’s aggression in Gaza”, in a joint statement issued after a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Hezbollah late on Tuesday confirmed the death of one of its top commanders, Ibrahim Kobeisi, who was killed in an Israeli strike in a southern Beirut suburb.
The strike hit three floors of a six-story building. It was Israel’s third strike on the Lebanese capital in less than a week
Israel earlier had confirmed Kobeisi’s death, saying he was a top Hezbollah commander with the group’s rocket and missile unit.
The Iran-backed terror group said it had targeted Israeli spy agency Mossad’s headquarters, who it said was responsible for assassinating its leaders and blowing up its pagers and walkie-talkies.
Israel’s military said it was the “first time ever” that a missile fired by Hezbollah had reached the Tel Aviv area before it was intercepted by its air defences. It reported no injuries from the attack, but said it carried a “heavy warhead”.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that for the “first time ever” a missile fired by Hezbollah reached the Tel Aviv area and was intercepted by Israel’s defence system, an army spokesman told AFP.
The US late on Tuesday approved the sale of $740 million in Stinger missiles to Egypt, which has become an increasingly close partner over the Gaza crisis despite concerns on rights.
The State Department informed Congress that it was approving the sale of 720 Stinger missiles for use on existing systems. Congress can still block the sale, but such attempts are usually unsuccessful.
The sale will help “improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East,” it said in a statement said.
The deal is likely to add to a backlog of military supplies by the US, which has received orders from Taiwan and Nato allies and has been ramping up arms both to Ukraine and Israel in their respective wars.
We’re bringing you all the latest updates from the conflict in the Middle East as Israel carries out day three of “Operation Northern Arrows” on Lebanon.