Hezbollah's deputy leader goads IDF as he warns 'we are ready' for Israeli ground invasion
Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address
Reuters
Hezbollah's deputy chief has said the militant group is continuing on its path against Israel, adding they are "ready" for a ground invasion.
It comes after the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike over the weekend.
Deputy leader Naim Qassem warned that if Israel wants to launch a ground invasion in Lebanon, its fighters are prepared and ready, adding: "We are confident the Israeli enemy will not achieve its aims.
"We will not budge an inch from our position in supporting Gaza and Palestine and defending Lebanon and its people."
Naim Qassem addressed the people of Lebanon
Reuters
Israeli forces have dealt multiple blows to Hezbollah in a two-week wave of attacks on targets in Lebanon that has eliminated several commanders.
The possibility that Israel's next move might be to send ground troops and tanks over the border is on many minds.
In other developments, the Palestinian militant group Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in Lebanon in the city of Tyre on Monday, and another Palestinian organisation said three of its leaders died in a strike in central Beirut, the first such hit inside the capital's limits.
The killings were the latest in a wave of intensified Israeli attacks on militant targets in Lebanon, part of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, to Yemen, and within Israel itself.
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Rescuers work at the site of Sunday's Israeli attack on the city of Ain Deleb
Reuters
A man mourns people killed in an Israeli attack on Sunday in the city of Ain Deleb in southern Lebanon
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Lebanon will hold a parliamentary session to elect a new president as soon as a ceasefire in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel takes hold, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said after talks with the house speaker.
The latest attacks indicated Israel has no intention of slowing down its offensive on multiple fronts even after eliminating Nasrallah, who was Iran's most powerful ally in its "Axis of Resistance" against Israeli and US influence in the region.
Israel's intensified attacks against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi forces in Yemen have prompted fears that Middle East fighting could spin out of control and draw in Iran and the United States, Israel's main ally.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Tehran would not leave any of Israel's "criminal acts" go unanswered. He was referring to the killing of Nasrallah and an Iranian Guard deputy commander, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes on Friday.
A man walks amidst the rubble at the site of Sunday's Israeli attack on the city of Ain Deleb
Reuters
Germany's Foreign Ministry said Israel's killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a powerful airstrike in Beirut constituted a use of its right to defend itself.
A spokesman said: "Hezbollah is of course a terrorist organization and it was obviously a meeting of the top leadership of Hezbollah, from which one can assume, even from a distance, that they were planning their further operations.
"So in this respect, there are also reasons to believe that the right to self-defence was exercised here."
When asked about the civilian deaths in the incident, the spokesman said: "Every civilian victim is one civilian victim too many."
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