BEIRUT, Lebanon
Hezbollah's deputy leader Naim Qassem, in his first public address since Israel assassinated the group's chief Hassan Nasrallah last week, said the movement is ready to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon.
Israel will not achieve its
goals, he said.
"We will face any possibility,
and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance
forces are ready for a ground engagement," he said.
Israeli forces have dealt
multiple blows to Hezbollah in a two-week wave of attacks on targets in Lebanon
that has eliminated several commanders.
The possibility that Israel's
next move might be to send ground troops and tanks over the border is on many
minds.
In other developments, the
Palestinian militant group Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in
Lebanon in the city of Tyre on Monday, and another Palestinian organisation
said three of its leaders died in a strike in central Beirut - the first such
hit inside the capital's limits.
The killings were the latest
in a wave of intensified Israeli attacks on militant targets in Lebanon, part
of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the
occupied West Bank, to Yemen, and within Israel itself.
Hamas said its leader in
Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin was killed along with his wife, son and
daughter, in a strike that targeted their house in a refugee camp in the
southern city of Tyre in the early hours of Monday.People check a damaged building at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Choueifat, southeast of Beirut, September 28, 2024
Another group, the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said three of its leaders were
killed in a strike that targeted Beirut's Kola district.
This was the first time Israel
had struck Beirut beyond its southern suburbs in a campaign which culminated in
the assassination of Hezbollah's veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah last week in a
succession of heavy air strikes.
The strike against the PFLP
hit the upper floor of an apartment building, our reporter witnesses said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The latest attacks indicated
Israel has no intention of slowing down its offensive on multiple fronts even
after eliminating Nasrallah, who was Iran's most powerful ally in its
"Axis of Resistance" against Israeli and U.S. influence in the region.
Israel's intensified attacks
against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi forces in Yemen have
prompted fears that Middle East fighting could spin out of control and draw in
Iran and the United States, Israel's main ally.
Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesperson, Nasser Kanaani, said Tehran would not leave any of Israel's
"criminal acts" go unanswered.
He was referring to the
killing of Nasrallah and an Iranian Guard deputy commander, Brigadier General
Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes on Friday.
Lebanon's Health Ministry says
more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two
weeks, without specifying how many were civilians. One million people - a fifth
of the population - have fled their homes, the government says.
The escalation has put Beirut
on edge, with Lebanese fearful that Israel will expand its military campaign.
"There is nothing else to
say or add, except God save Lebanon," Beirut resident Nawel said.
"What will happen to me is the same as what can happen to anyone."
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