Israel begins Lebanon ground incursion with ‘limited’ raids on Hezbollah

Israel’s widely expected ground invasion in Lebanon was getting under way early on Tuesday as its military said troops had begun “limited” raids against Hezbollah targets in the border area.

The military said in a statement that its targets were located in villages close to the border that posed “an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.” It said the air force and artillery were supporting ground forces with precise strikes.

Local residents in the Lebanese border town of Aita al-Shaab reported heavy shelling and the sound of helicopters and drones overhead.

An Israeli strike in Lebanon early on Tuesday targeted Mounir Maqdah, commander of the Lebanese branch of the Palestinian Fatah movement’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, according to two Palestinian security officials. His fate was unknown.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said Maqdah’s son and daughter-in-law, as well as another woman and three children, were killed in the airstrike.

The strike hit a building in the crowded Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near the southern city of Sidon, the sources said. It marked the first strike on the camp, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian camp, since cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel broke out nearly a year ago.

The ground operation into Lebanon marks an expansion of Israel’s assaults on multiple fronts since the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, as the Israel Defence Forces hit Houthi targets in Yemen on the weekend and continued their assault on Gaza.

Israel had been amassing troops and heavy armour in recent days near its northern border with Lebanon and mounted commando-style incursions into the country, which had raised the likelihood of an imminent ground invasion to attack Hezbollah fighters.

The mobilization took place as the IDF issued evacuation orders for several areas in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where their bombardment on Friday killed Mr. Nasrallah.

Civilians near several buildings in the Dahiya neighbourhood should evacuate immediately, the IDF said in a statement. About 30 minutes later, the IDF carried out two air strikes in the area, hitting buildings it said contained Hezbollah assets.

The Israeli military urged residents of more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately on Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a statement on X.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he spoke to his Israeli counterpart, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and told him that the United States supported the Israeli raids inside southern Lebanon. “We agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border,” Mr. Austin said.

In its first statement since Israel announced the start of ground operations, Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afifi said reports that Israeli forces had entered Lebanon were “false claims.”

Hezbollah sent some missiles overnight into Israel, the IDF said. Shortly after 2 a.m. local time, it said about 10 missiles had crossed from Lebanon and that some were intercepted while others fell into the sea. There were no immediate reports of missile damage in northern Israel, or clashes with Hezbollah fighters inside Lebanon.

In a post on X, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said late afternoon Monday the government has secured an additional 800 seats on commercial flights over the next three days for Canadians, permanent residents and their immediate family to leave Lebanon. She said the next flight would leave Tuesday.

An Israeli source whose son is serving at the Lebanon border told The Globe and Mail that commanders of the unit had taken the soldiers’ mobile phones away around dusk on Monday in what could be an information security measure ahead of sending the troops across the border. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Mr. Gallant hinted earlier in the day that a ground invasion was imminent. “We will use all our capabilities, including you,” he told troops of the 188th Armoured Brigade and the Golani Brigade.

He said that returning about 60,000 Israelis to their homes near the border with Lebanon, which Hezbollah rocket fire has forced them to flee, was the mission of the Israel Defence Forces. “This is what we will do, and we will deploy whatever is needed – you, other forces, from the air, from the sea, from the land.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a TV address aimed at Iran, Hezbollah’s prime sponsor, reinforced Mr. Gallant’s message by insisting “there is nowhere that we will not go to protect our people and to protect our country.”

Israel has said it wants to push all Hezbollah weapons and fighters north of the Litani river that bisects southern Lebanon. On Monday, Israel announced a closed military zone in Metula, Misgav Am and Kfar Giladi, the three towns in northeast Israel closest to the Litani.

In a video address Monday, Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem said the group was prepared to resist an invasion. He said it had only used a fraction of its fighting capability, including long-range missiles.

He warned that “the battle might be long,” but “we will be steadfast. … We will continue facing the Israeli enemy in support of Palestine and Gaza and in defence of the Lebanese people.”

Opinion: After Hezbollah’s miscalculations, it has lost much of its power

Among the hardest-hit areas in Monday air strikes was the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, which analysts identified as a possible point of incursion by the IDF. For the first time since 2006, Israel also struck central Beirut, killing three leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The IDF said it had also killed Fateh Sherif, a Hamas leader in Lebanon who had been responsible for relations with Hezbollah. Hamas said he was killed in an air strike in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, near the city of Tyre.

Hezbollah began launching rockets at northern Israel on Oct. 8 in “solidarity” with Hamas, which the previous day had launched a surprise invasion of southern Israel from Gaza that left more than 1,100 people dead and saw more than 200 Israelis and foreigners taken hostage. More than 41,600 Palestinians have since been killed in Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian health authority. Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble and more than 100 hostages remain unaccounted for.

At least 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza Strip, Gaza medics told Reuters early on Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, Syrian state media said three civilians were killed and nine others injured in an Israeli airstrike on the capital Damascus, citing a military source. Israel’s military said it does not comment on foreign media reports.

Questions about Hezbollah’s ability to deter an Israeli invasion abounded before the ground operation began. More than a week of strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs have killed at least a dozen top commanders of the group, including Mr. Nasrallah, its chief strategist and driving force. Some weapon depots have also been destroyed.

On Sept. 18 and 19, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded, killing 42 people and wounding thousands in what was certainly the group’s most devastating security breach. Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the attack.

Mr. Nasrallah oversaw Hezbollah’s rise to become the world’s largest non-state fighting force. (Canada, the United States and other countries consider it a “terrorist” group.) However, Mr. Nasrallah made mistakes late in his career that compromised the group’s strength, said Ghassan Moukheiber, a lawyer who was a member of the Lebanese parliament for 16 years, until 2018.

“Hezbollah mistakes were that it misread the capacities of Israel, overrated its own capacities and failed to develop anti-aircraft and anti-drone capabilities,” he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. The “Israelis’ booby-trapping the pagers and walkie-talkies was amazing.”

Lebanese say Israeli surveillance drones fly over Beirut and other parts of the country regularly and are rarely shot down.

But Mr. Moukheiber said counting Hezbollah out as a fighting force because its top commanders have been killed would be a mistake. He said the militants operate as guerrillas and will fight without taking orders from above. “It is decentralized, and the decision-making is decentralized.”

Amine Kammourieh, a prominent Lebanese journalist and regular commentator for Al-Jazeera, agreed that Hezbollah still had ample weapons and fighting capability, but the death of Mr. Nasrallah, whom he described as the “idol” of Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese Shia Muslims, delivered a psychological blow to the group.

“The hardest job will be for the new Hezbollah leader to get the people to believe in him,” he said. “Nasrallah was their hero. The Shia would die for Nasrallah. They might not die for Hezbollah.”

As of Monday evening, local time, Hezbollah had yet to announce Mr. Nasrallah’s replacement. A leading candidate is widely thought to be Hashem Safieddine, the Shia cleric who has served as the head of group’s executive council since 2001 and is a maternal cousin to Mr. Nasrallah.

Mr. Moukheiber said, “he is more likely to be tougher than Nasrallah in military engagement with the Israelis.”

With reports from Reuters and The Associated Press

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