Israeli forces begin ground operations in Lebanon: US

Israeli forces have launched limited incursions in Lebanon, the US said Monday, as Israel vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah and sealed part of its northern border.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned the battle was not over even after the massive Friday strike on Beirut that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, dealing the group a seismic blow.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said more than 1,000 people have been killed since September 17.

World leaders have urged diplomacy and de-escalation, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric saying: “We do not want any sort of ground invasion.” Israeli officials “have informed us that they are currently conducting… limited operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure near the border”, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists.

Hezbollah fighters were “ready if Israel decides to enter by land”, deputy leader Naim Qassem said in a first televised address since Nasrallah’s death.

Lebanon’s national army, dwarfed by Hezbollah’s military power, was “repositioning” troops farther from the border, a military official said.

And UN peacekeepers in Lebanon were no longer able to conduct patrols “given the intensity of the rockets going back and forth”, Dujarric said.

US President Joe Biden indicated he opposes an Israeli ground operation.

“We should have a ceasefire now,” he said.

In northern Israel, near the Lebanese border, Gallant said that “we will use all the means that may be required… from the air, from the sea, and on land” to restore calm.

He said the killing of Nasrallah “is an important step, but it is not the final one.” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported “heavy artillery shelling” at a border village in the country’s south.

On Monday the army declared an area of the border strip a “closed military zone”.

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon have killed hundreds of people over the past week and forced up to a million to flee their homes, according to Lebanese officials.

Hezbollah and other groups launched rockets, drones and some missiles at Israel over the same period, causing some injuries but no deaths.

Iran has said Nasrallah’s killing would bring about Israel’s “destruction”, though the foreign ministry said that Tehran would not deploy any fighters to confront Israel.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called for a ceasefire based on a recent US-French proposal, urging “an end to the Israeli aggression against Lebanon”.

Most of Israel’s strikes have targeted Hezbollah strongholds in eastern and southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the group’s main bastion.

Hamas said its leader in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amine, was killed along with his wife and two children in a strike on Al-Bass refugee camp in south Lebanon. The Israeli military confirmed it had killed Sharif.

An Israeli strike hit a building in central Beirut, with an armed Palestinian group saying it had killed three of its members.

The strike, the first in the city centre in years, sparked panic.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, the first high-level diplomat to visit Beirut since the Israeli strikes intensified, urged Israel “to refrain from any ground incursion”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said diplomacy was the best path forward for the region.

Washington “will continue to work… to advance a diplomatic resolution” for the Israel-Lebanon border, and for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal, he said.

The US, Qatar and Egypt tried for months to broker such a deal, which Netanyahu’s domestic critics accused him of obstructing.