Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has admitted his powerful group has suffered an “unprecedented” blow after communications equipment belonging to thousands of activists exploded, a blow he blamed on Israel.
Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 in Lebanon over two days, but has said it will expand its war in Gaza to include the Lebanese front.
Giving a speech after the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday that sent panic across Lebanon, Nasrallah warned of retaliation in a defiant tone.
Describing the attacks as a potential “act of war,” he said Israel would face “severe retaliation and just punishment where it expects it and where it does not expect it.”
He said the attacks were a “massacre” that “could have been a war crime or a declaration of war”, accusing Israel of wanting to “kill at least 5,000 people in two minutes”.
Nasrallah also pledged that Hezbollah would continue fighting against Israel until there was a ceasefire in Gaza.
“Despite all this bloodshed, the Lebanese Front will not stop until the offensive on Gaza stops,” he said.
‘Stop’ the Gaza war
Nasrallah also spoke about Israeli authorities’ promises to return thousands of Israelis displaced by shelling across the Lebanese border to their homes.
“You will not be able to send the people of the north back to the north”, he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killing, no assassination and no all-out war can send the residents back to the border”.
He said the only way to send the displaced people back north was to stop the war on Gaza.
Hezbollah is an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking the deadliest war yet in Gaza.
Till now the focus of the Israeli army was on Gaza only.
But Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has seen exchanges of gunfire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants almost every day since October 8.
The violence has killed hundreds of people on the Lebanese side, mostly fighters, and dozens on the Israeli side.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported that Israeli fighter jets broke the sound barrier over Beirut while Nasrallah was speaking, and AFP correspondents in Beirut reported loud explosions.
Nasrallah has announced the launch of an internal investigation into the attacks, which experts and some Israeli media have said bear all the hallmarks of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
