“We know that the battle may be long,” he said. “We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006,” he added, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran, that “there is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country”.
In a three-minute video clip in English that he addressed to the Iranian people, he accused their government of plunging the Middle East “deeper into war” at the expense of its own people, whom it was bringing “closer to the abyss”.
Israeli airstrikes have eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1,000 civilians and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
At least 95 people were killed and 172 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s southern regions, the eastern Bekaa Valley, and Beirut in the past 24 hours, Lebanon’s health ministry said early on Tuesday.
Rescuers stood on a flattened building. “We are rescuing these people, pulling out the living, the torn apart, and the martyrs,” said one, Mazin al-Khatib.
