Lebanon latest: Israel tells US it plans to launch limited ground incursion into Lebanon

Israel has notified the United States it intends to launch a limited ground incursion into Lebanon, US officials said.

The operation could start as soon as Monday, an official told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

Israel’s defence minister earlier implied the army was preparing for a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

Yoav Gallant told troops near the Lebanese border they were prepared to use forces “from the air, sea, and land” to target Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader said it was ready for an Israeli ground offensive, just days after Israel assassinated the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut.

Gallant told Israeli troops at the border that the military would use all “the means at our disposal” to allow displaced Israelis to return home in the north of the country.

In a short video, he said the “elimination” of Nasrallah “is a very important step, but it is not everything”.

He added that “everything that needs to be done – will be done” and that “we will use all the forces from the air, sea and land”.

The New York Times reported that Israeli commando units have already made brief incursions into Lebanese territory to prepare for a possible wider invasion.

Hezbollah’s deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said it was ready for an Israeli ground offensive, and will keep up the fight against Israel.

He said the group is continuing its operations – describing its attacks on Israel so far as the “minimum” – while adding that the battle could be long, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas have both confirmed the killing of the head of Hamas in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon.

Israel’s military said Sherif was “responsible for coordinating Hamas’s terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives”.

Another Israeli strike in the central Beirut neighbourhood of Kola early on Monday killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the group said in a statement.

The PFLP is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a coalition recognised at the UN as the official representative of the Palestinians. The group is also considered a terrorist organisation by both the US and EU.

The statement named those killed as military security chief Mohammad Abdel-Aal, military commander Imad Odeh, and fighter Abdel Rahman Abdel-Aal.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) director of communications for Lebanon, Jinane Saad, told the BBC that “we don’t really know where is safe or not” after the strike on the Kola neighbourhood.

“What is safe today might not be safe in an hour or tomorrow,” she said.

Israeli planes also attacked the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah in Yemen on Sunday, causing a huge explosion.

The previously sporadic cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated on 8 October, 2023 – the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip – when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

However, things have escalated dramatically in recent weeks.

Hezbollah has experienced mass casualties from exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, a wave of assassinations of Hezbollah military commanders, devastating air strikes which have killed civilians – and the use of bunker-busting bombs in Beirut, which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

Lebanese officials say more than 1,000 people have been killed in the past two weeks, while up to a million may now be displaced.