Israel says intense fighting with Hezbollah in south Lebanon

Israel said intense fighting erupted with Hezbollah in south Lebanon on Tuesday after its paratroops and commandos launched raids there, at the start of a ground incursion and after devastating airstrikes against Hezbollah's leadership.

The Israeli military said the operations in Lebanon began on Monday night and involved the elite 98th division, which was deployed to the northern front two weeks ago from Gaza where they had been fighting against Hamas for months.

It said its air force and artillery supported ground troops engaged in "limited, localised, and targeted ground raids" against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon villages that posed "an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel".

The Israeli military issued a warning to citizens not to move in their vehicles from the area north of the Litani river to its south. It has previously said it wants to clear Hezbollah from south of the river.

Israel has dealt heavy blows to Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful Middle East proxy, assassinating its leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last week, eliminating a towering figure who turned the group into Lebanon's top military and political force.

LEBANESE ARMY PULLS BACK

The Lebanese Army said in a statement on Tuesday that its pullback was part of a regular repositioning of some of its monitoring points in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon's army has historically stayed on the sidelines of major conflicts with Israel, and in the last year of hostilities has not fired on the Israeli military.

Local residents in the Lebanese border town of Aita al-Shaab reported heavy shelling and the sound of helicopters and drones overhead. Flares were repeatedly launched over the Lebanese border town of Rmeish, lighting up the night sky.

An Israeli strike in Lebanon early on Tuesday targeted Mounir Maqdah, commander of the Lebanese branch of the Palestinian Fatah movement's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, according to two Palestinian security officials.

His fate was unknown.

The strike hit a building in the crowded Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near the southern city of Sidon, the sources said. It marked the first strike on Lebanon's largest Palestinian camp since cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel broke out nearly a year ago.

Israel has not commented on the strike.

In Syria, three civilians were killed and nine others injured in an Israeli airstrike on the capital Damascus, Syrian state media said on Tuesday citing a military source. Israel's military said it does not comment on foreign media reports.

Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up raids since the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel's southern territory on Oct. 7, 2023.