The Lebanese Shiite leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, today threatened to attack Israeli locations that have not yet been targeted if Israel continues to kill civilians in bombings against southern Lebanon.
"If the enemy continues to attack civilians as it has done in recent days, this will lead us to attack places that we have not attacked until now," said Nasrallah on the occasion of the celebration of Ashura, the most important Shiite Muslim festival.
The Hezbollah leader made the threat a day after at least five civilians, including three children, were killed in Israeli bombings in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese media.
Unicef condemned the "murder of three other children by an airstrike (while they were playing in front of their home) in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, responded to the bombings by launching several volleys of shells at positions in northern Israel.
"The Resistance responded yesterday [Tuesday] night with dozens of rockets, between 60 and 70, in addition to 120 missiles that hit six or seven towns," said Nasrallah, quoted by the Spanish agency EFE.
Nasrallah warned against a hypothetical Israeli land invasion of Lebanon, in a context of escalating tensions between Hezbollah and Israel, after more than nine months of intense cross-border firefights between the two parties.
"If your tanks reach Lebanon, you will not suffer a loss of tanks, because you will not have tanks," he said in a televised speech.
Nasrallah said a threat of war with Israel "does not scare" Hezbollah.
He reiterated that Hezbollah's attacks against Israel will not stop "as long as the aggression against the Gaza Strip continues."
He also said that, if the war in the Palestinian enclave ends, it will be the Lebanese state that will negotiate "the future of southern" Lebanon.
"All the talk about a prepared agreement for the situation at the border is not correct. To date, there is no agreement. There are sketches, ideas, proposals... but let's leave that for the right time," he said.
Israel and Hezbollah have been involved in an intense crossfire since October 8, 2023, one day after the start of the war in Gaza, in the worst clashes between the two parties since 2006.
Clashes in border areas caused 511 deaths in Lebanon, most of them combatants, but including at least 104 civilians, according to the French agency AFP.
On the Israeli side, 17 soldiers and 13 civilians were killed, according to authorities.
Hezbollah is part of the so-called "axis of resistance", a coalition led by Iran that also includes, among others, the Palestinian extremist group Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The ongoing war in Gaza was triggered by a Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which caused around 1,200 deaths and two hundred hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive in the Gaza Strip that caused more than 38,700 deaths and the destruction of much of the infrastructure of the small Palestinian enclave governed by Hamas since 2007.
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