Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Israel would pay the price “in blood” for the killing of Lebanese civilians, signaling that the conflict on the Lebanese-Israeli border could intensify.
Israeli air raids on Wednesday killed at least 10 civilians, including five children, in southern Lebanon. Three Hezbollah fighters were also killed.
In a televised speech on Friday, Nasrallah said: “The response to the massacre should be to continue the work of resistance at the front and to intensify the work of resistance at the front. »
“Our women and children who have been killed in these days, the enemy will pay the price of their shed blood,” Nasrallah said.
He also stressed that the killings had increased Hezbollah’s resolve and said the group would increase its “presence, its force, its fire, its anger” and expand its operations.
Israel “must expect this and expect this.”
Shortly after Nasrallah’s speech, Hezbollah said it had targeted with missiles an Israeli army installation in the Shebaa Farms, occupied territory that Lebanon considers its own, adding that casualties had been inflicted.
“Lebanon will also pay a heavy price”
Hezbollah exchanged fire with the Israeli army across Lebanon’s southern border in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which launched a cross-border attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7. , air and sea.
Cross-border attacks have killed at least 200 people in Lebanon, including more than 170 Hezbollah fighters, as well as 10 Israeli soldiers and five civilians.
Hezbollah officials said they would stop attacking Israeli military posts when the Israeli attack on Gaza ends.
But there are growing fears of a new large-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of people displaced on both sides of the border and regional tensions rising.
The spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, called for an end to the violence and countries such as France also delivered a written proposal to Beirut and Israel aimed at ending hostilities and settling the border controversial between Lebanon and Israel. But there are few signs that these efforts will bear immediate fruit.
On Friday, at the Munich Security Conference, where world leaders and security analysts gathered to discuss solutions to global crises, Lebanese interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati called calm and declared that attacks against civilians must end.
“Just two days ago, an innocent family of seven was targeted in southern Lebanon. The killing and targeting of innocent children, women and elderly people constitutes a crime against humanity,” he said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told the conference that Hezbollah was only a proxy for Iran to maneuver as it saw fit and that Israel would not allow instability in the north to fester. continue indefinitely.
“If a diplomatic solution is not found, Israel will be forced to act to remove Hezbollah from the border and bring our residents home,” he said, referring to some 70,000 displaced Israelis.
“In such a case, Lebanon will also pay a heavy price,” he warned, calling on world leaders to pressure Hezbollah and Iran to stop the attacks.
At a news conference in Beirut last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters that the position of Iran and Lebanon was that “war is not a solution “.
However, he noted that amid Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon, “Hezbollah and the resistance in Lebanon have courageously and wisely played their deterrent and effective role.”
Amir-Abdollahian added that Tehran would continue “its firm support for the resistance in Lebanon, because we consider the security of Lebanon as the security of Iran and the region.”
