Israel has warned that it will use “all the means” at its disposal to attack the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah amid growing fears of a ground assault on Lebanon.“The next phase in the war against Hezbollah will begin soon,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told a meeting of local council heads in northern Israel on Monday.
He said the next stage of the war would support the aim of returning Israelis who have fled Hezbollah attacks during nearly a year of border warfare.
Earlier, Gallant told troops that Israel would “use all the means that may be required … from the air, from the sea, and on land.”
Hezbollah began low-intensity strikes on Israeli targets a day after Israel launched its assault on Gaza last October in response to an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas.
Israel and Hezbollah have since traded near-daily fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, prompting tens of thousands of people on both sides to flee their homes.
Some Israeli forces have already conducted small-scale ground operations in Lebanon, several international media outlets reported, and Israel’s air force has bombarded targets across the country in recent days.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Monday that Israel had informed the US it was carrying out “limited operations focused on H …
