Lebanese militant group Hezbollah threatened Tuesday to attack targets across Israel and said it would not be defeated by the ongoing intense bombardment of its strongholds and leadership.
The group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the only solution was a ceasefire.
“I am telling the Israeli home front: the solution is a ceasefire,” he said in a speech broadcast live.
In another day of fighting, the Iran-backed group said it launched a barrage of rockets towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa and targeted Israeli bulldozers and a tank near the border.
Israel responded with fresh air strikes around Lebanon, a day after an estimated 41 people were killed in attacks on the country, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
In a defiant speech, Qassem vowed that the group “will not be defeated” and would begin widening the scope of its targets inside Israel.
“Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place” in Israel, he said.
Only after a ceasefire would residents of northern Israel be able to return home, he said, referring to Israel’s stated war aim.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday told French President Emmanuel Macron he opposed any “unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon”.
Iran, which supports Hezbollah, has in recent days engaged in diplomatic talks around establishing ceasefires in Lebanon and war-battered Gaza amid growing fears of a broader regional conflict.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP that his country was ready to bolster its military presence in the south after any ceasefire, adding that Israeli troops were making brief cross-border incursions.
Security has been tightened in the country’s only airport in Beirut “to remove any pretexts” for an Israeli attack, Mikati added.
Israel has also been intensifying its offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip, which the United Nations warned on Tuesday was suffering under its worst aid restrictions since the war there began over a year ago.
Despite a desperate need for more aid in Gaza, particularly in the north, UNICEF spokesman James Elder lamented that the situation was the worst since the start of Israel’s offensive.
“We see now what is probably the worst restrictions we’ve seen on humanitarian aid, ever,” he told a press conference in Geneva, adding that there were “several days in the last week (where) no commercial trucks whatsoever were allowed to come in”.
For over a week, Israeli forces have been engaged in a sweeping air and ground assault targeting northern Gaza, including the area around Jabalia, amid claims that Hamas militants were regrouping there.
“The whole area has been reduced to ashes,” said Rana Abdel Majid, 38, from the Al-Faluja area of northern Gaza.
Majid said entire blocks had been levelled.
“The children are crying, terrified by the indiscriminate, merciless bombing. It’s like collective extermination,” she said.
