Israel approves Lebanon offensive plan

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) — The Israeli army on Tuesday said plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated” amid escalating cross-border clashes with Hezbollah and a relative lull in Gaza fighting.

The war in Gaza has heightened tensions across the region, with Israeli forces and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, exchanging fire on a near-daily basis.

“Operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated” as commanders met for a situational assessment, the army said in a statement.

It came after Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened Hezbollah’s destruction in a “total war.”

“In a total war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be hit hard,” Katz said in a statement from his ministry.

It came after Hezbollah published a more than nine-minute video showing drone footage purportedly taken by the movement over northern Israel, including parts of the city and port of Haifa.

On Wednesday, Israel’s military said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon overnight, while reporting a drone had infiltrated near the border town of Metula.

Hezbollah claimed a drone attack on Israeli troops in Metula. The Iran-backed group also announced the death of two of its fighters.

Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian militants rocked Gaza on Wednesday.

Witnesses and the civil defense agency in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip reported Israeli bombardment in western Rafah, where medics said drone strikes and shelling killed at least seven people.

In central Gaza, witnesses reported gunfire and artillery shelling near the Nuseirat refugee camp, where the civil defense agency said at least 13 people were killed in two separate strikes on a family home and a commercial building.

Al-Awda hospital said it received the bodies of “six martyrs and 15 wounded as a result of Israeli air strikes on various areas in the central and southern Gaza Strip.”

In a statement, the Israeli army said its operations continued Tuesday in central and southern Gaza including Rafah city on the border with Egypt.