BEIRUT (AP) — Israel has launched small ground raids against Hezbollah as it prepares for a larger ground operation in Lebanon, officials said Monday. Hezbollah vowed to keep fighting even after its longtime leader and other top officials were recently wiped out by Israeli strikes.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel informed the U.S. about the raids, which he said were described as "limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.”
There were no reports of direct clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants on Lebanese soil. The last time the two enemies engaged in ground combat was a monthlong war in 2006.
A Western official, a diplomat in Cairo whose country is directly involved in de-escalation efforts, said an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon is “imminent.” The diplomat said Israel has shared its plans with the U.S. and other Western allies, and that the operation will “be limited.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation. It was not clear if Israel had made a final decision on a broader operation.
The Israeli military did not comment, but has made clear in recent days that it is preparing a possible ground operation. Last week, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told troops that Israel’s punishing airstrikes were designed to "prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
Israeli strikes have killed longime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and six of his top commanders and officials in the last 10 days, and have hit what the military says are thousands of militant targets across large parts of Lebanon. Over 1,000 people have been killed in the country in the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry.
Early Monday, an airstrike hit a residential building in central Beirut, killing three Palestinian militants, as Israel appeared to send a clear message that no part of Lebanon is out of bounds.
Despite the heavy blow Hezbollah has suffered in recent weeks, acting leader Naim Kassem said in a televised statement that if Israel decides to launch a ground offensive, the group's fighters are ready. He said the commanders killed have already been replaced.
He added that Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006, anticipated “the battle could be long.”
A founding member of the militant group who had been Nasrallah’s longtime deputy, Kassem will remain in his acting position until the group’s leadership elects a replacement. The man widely expected to take over the top post is Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah who oversees Hezbollah’s political affairs.
Hezbollah has significantly increased its rocket attacks in the past week to several hundred daily, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas. Several people have been wounded in Israel. There have been no fatalities since two soldiers were killed near the border on Sept. 19.
But Hezbollah’s capabilities remain unclear.
As recently as two weeks ago, a strike like Monday's in central Beirut — outside of the main areas where Hezbollah operates and next to a busy transportation hub normally crowded with buses and taxis — would have been seen as a major escalation and likely followed by a long-range Hezbollah strike into Israel.
But the unspoken rules of the long-running conflict no longer seem to be in effect.
It's possible Hezbollah is holding back to save resources for a bigger battle, including a threatened Israeli ground invasion. But the militant group might also be in disarray after Israeli intelligence apparently penetrated its highest levels.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meeting with Israeli troops Monday, said Israel would “use all the capabilities we have,” hinting at a ground operation. “You are part of this effort,” he added.
Some European countries began pulling their diplomats and citizens out of Lebanon on Monday. Germany, which has been calling on its citizens to leave Lebanon since October 2023, sent a military plane to evacuate diplomats’ relatives and others. Bulgaria sent a government jet to get the first group of its citizens out, with priority given to families with children and vulnerable groups.
In the past week, Israel has frequently targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, including the massive strike on Friday that killed Nasrallah. But it had not hit locations closer to the city center.
The strike early Monday killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small, leftist faction that has not been meaningfully involved in months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel has not claimed the strike but is widely assumed to have carried it out.
Also Monday, Hamas announced that its top commander in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif, was killed with his family in an airstrike on the Al-Buss refugee camp in the southern port city of Tyre. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted him.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Sharif was an employee, and was put on administrative leave without pay in March as it investigated allegations about his political activities. Israel has accused the agency, known as UNRWA, of links to Palestinian militant groups, while the agency says it is committed to neutrality and works to prevent any such infiltration.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles into northern Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack from Gaza into Israel sparked the war in the Palestinian territory. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies and both supported by Iran, and Hezbollah said it would continue the attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians until there was a cease-fire in Gaza.
Israel responded to the rockets with airstrikes in Lebanon, and the fighting has steadily escalated over the past year. The Lebanese government says the fighting may have displaced up to a million people, although the U.N. estimate is around 200,000.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have also been displaced. Israel has vowed to keep fighting until the attacks stop and its citizens can return home.
The United States and its allies have called for a cease-fire, hoping to avoid further escalation that could draw in Iran and set off a wider war. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown little interest, as his country racks up military achievements against a longtime foe.
France, which has close ties to Lebanon, has joined the United States in calling for a cease-fire. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, speaking during a visit to Beirut Monday, urged Israel to refrain from a ground offensive.
Barrot also called on Hezbollah to stop firing on Israel, saying the group “bears heavy responsibility in the current situation, given its choice to enter the conflict.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, speaking after meeting with Barrot, said the country is committed to an immediate cease-fire followed by the deployment of Lebanese troops in the south, in keeping with a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war but was never fully implemented.
Hezbollah, which boasts tens of thousands of battle-hardened fighters and long-range missiles capable of hitting anywhere inside Israel, has long been seen as the most powerful militant group in the region and a key partner to Iran in both threatening and deterring Israel.
But Hezbollah has never faced an onslaught quite like this one, which began with a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies in mid-September that killed dozens of people and wounded around 3,000 — including many fighters but also many civilians.
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This story has been updated to correct that Monday’s strike in central Beirut hit an apartment building, but it did not level it.
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Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, contributed reporting.
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