Israel has begun a ground offensive in Lebanon, intensifying its campaign against Hizbollah after launching waves of devastating air strikes against the Lebanese militant group.
In a brief statement, the Israeli military said in the early hours of Tuesday that it had begun “limited, localised, and targeted ground raids” against Hizbollah in southern Lebanon.
The Israel Defense Forces has given evacuation orders for almost 30 villages and towns in the south of the country, echoing commands issued ahead of big offensives in Gaza throughout the past year.
The IDF has told residents to stay north of the Awali river, which runs as much as 60km from the border with Israel and is far from most of the villages mentioned in the evacuation order.
It had previously warned people to stay north of the Litani river, which is up to 30km from the border and marks the northern edge of a UN-designated buffer zone monitored by peacekeepers.
Israel has launched the incursion despite repeated calls from western allies for a ceasefire.
Denouncing what it described as Israel’s “increasingly barbaric attacks”, the Lebanese army said it was co-ordinating with the UN peacekeepers and had “repositioned” some forward observation posts away from the border.
Hizbollah said claims that Israeli forces had entered Lebanon were “false” and that no direct clashes on the ground had yet taken place.
“The resistance fighters are ready for a direct confrontation with enemy forces that dare to attempt to enter Lebanese territory,” the group said, adding that its firing of missiles on Tel Aviv was “only the beginning”.
People in the vicinity of the border said they had heard heavy artillery fire overnight.
But, while the IDF had previously said that “heavy fighting” was taking place, an Israeli security official said on Tuesday morning that Israeli forces had not yet engaged Hizbollah fighters.
The Israeli military said that forces from only one division — which can number between 7,500 and 10,000 soldiers — were involved in the land incursion. The official declined to give specifics but added: “This is not . . . numbers of a large ground invasion,” contrasting the size of the operation with the number of Israeli troops in Gaza.
The UN’s peacekeeping forces in Lebanon described the offensive as a “dangerous development”, adding that they had received notification from Israel the day before.
The scale of the Israeli incursion was not clear. But there are concerns it could lead to an open-ended occupation of the border region — a fear that is widespread in Lebanon, whose south was occupied by Israeli forces for 18 years.
The incursion is Israel’s first land offensive against Hizbollah since 2006 when it fought a 34-day war with the Iran-backed group that ended in a stalemate. It marks a further escalation of the conflict that has engulfed the region since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
It follows a dramatic two-week escalation of hostilities, during which Israel assassinated Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, decimated its chain of command and launched an overwhelming bombing campaign that has killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon, and displaced as many as 1mn.
The Israeli land offensive was accompanied by heavy bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, shortly after the military issued evacuation warnings to residents of several neighbourhoods.
Local media aired footage showing ravaged buildings and mounds of debris strewn across deserted neighbourhoods.
At least 95 people were killed in the past 24 hours of Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s south, north-east and Beirut, the health ministry said. Israel also struck a building in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, in the country’s south, for the first time, Lebanese media reported.
Israeli forces and Hizbollah began trading fire last year when the Iran-backed militants launched rockets in support of Hamas the day after the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack.
In the ensuing months, the exchanges have displaced 60,000 people on the Israeli side of the border. Israeli forces have pounded southern Lebanon, which is controlled by Hizbollah, for months, causing huge damage and forcing more than 110,000 Lebanese people to flee the region.
For most of that time, the fighting had been contained in a limited strip of land on either side of the border. But as Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has lowered in intensity, its military has shifted its focus to the confrontation with Hizbollah, as well as stepping up strikes on other Iranian proxies elsewhere in the region.
The regional escalation has been accompanied by a ratcheting up of Israel’s rhetoric, with officials talking about “defeating” Hizbollah and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledging last week to “change the balance of power in the region for years”.
Despite the damage to Hizbollah caused by Israel’s strikes, Israeli troops risk being sucked into protracted combat in the militant group’s backyard, eroding some of Israel’s technical military superiority.
The region’s most heavily armed non-state actor, thought to have tens of thousands of battle-hardened fighters and a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles, has continued to launch hundreds of projectiles at Israel since Nasrallah was killed.
Hizbollah said on Tuesday that its fighters fired artillery at the Israeli border town of Metula as well as several rocket and missile salvos on what it said were military targets. Later on Tuesday morning, sirens warning of incoming fire also sounded in Tel Aviv.
Two people were injured after a rocket landed near a motorway about 15km east of central Tel Aviv, local media reported.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday afternoon that 30 rockets had been fired on Upper and Western Galilee in the previous few hours, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
The land offensive comes a week after the US and its western and Arab allies proposed a 21-day truce to the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict, warning of the risks of a wider regional war. A US official said Israel had agreed to the truce before changing its mind overnight when it saw it had an opportunity to assassinate Nasrallah.
But the US administration has also stood by Israel, sending additional troops and fighter jets to the region to help defend its ally and deter Iran.
Asked whether he was aware of reports of Israeli plans for a limited ground invasion and was comfortable with one going ahead, US President Joe Biden said: “I’m comfortable with them stopping. We should have a ceasefire now.”
Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova
