The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Monday urged the residents of southern Lebanon to vacate the areas where Hezbollah is hiding its terrorist infrastructure.
The warning was followed by waves of Israeli airstrikes on hundreds of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. The IDF, in a press release on Monday, announced the beginning of a campaign to “engage in extensive, precise strikes, against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon.”
The IDF by Monday afternoon successfully hit around “800 terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization,” the Israeli military disclosed.
“We advise civilians from Lebanese villages located in and next to buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes, such as those used to store weapons, to immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety,” the IDF statement urged.
Massive airstrikes on Hezbollah terror targets followed the warning to Lebanese civilians.
“The IDF initiated a major round of airstrikes against Hezbollah on Monday following a warning from IDF spokesperson R. Admiral Daniel Hagari to the general public in southern Lebanon to evacuate areas where Hezbollah has stored rockets or undertaken other actions,” the Jerusalem Post reported Monday. “These waves of air strikes constituted the fifth and sixth round of massive air strikes on Hezbollah since Thursday of last week, especially in southern Lebanon, including further from the border than in some prior cases.”
While Hezbollah fired rockets from civilians’ homes, the IDF made tens of thousands of phone calls to the Lebanese residents in a bid to prevent civilian casualties, media reports confirm. “Imad Kreidieh, the head of Lebanese telecoms company Ogero, told Reuters on Monday that more than 80,000 automated calls asking people to evacuate their areas were detected on the network,” the news agency reported Monday.
As the IDF launches strikes against Hezbollah terrorist build-up in southern Lebanon, the Israeli government is determined to push Hezbollah from the area. “If the world does not remove Hezbollah from north of the Litani River in accordance with Resolution 1701, Israel will do so,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Sunday.
“Israel will take all necessary actions to protect its citizens from Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that has continuously attacked Israel since October 8, killing dozens of Israelis, including 12 children during a soccer game, and leading to the displacement of approximately 70,000 Israelis from their homes,” the Israeli foreign minister reminded.
The 2006 UN resolution bars Hezbollah from maintaining a military presence south of Lebanon’s Litani River. In recent years, the terror group has openly violated the resolution by ramping up its terrorist infrastructure and fighting force in the area along Israel’s northern border.
“Hezbollah’s military activity south of the Litani River in Lebanon, including the use and storage of armaments, is a clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” the IDF has reminded in repeated press statements since October 7.
Iran’s Islamic Guard (IRGC) has literally been bombed back to the stone age, after the terrorist organization ordered its members to “stop using any type of communication devices” in the wake of the recent Hezbollah pager blasts. Dozens of Hezbollah terror operatives were killed and thousands of fighters were injured last week when consecutive waves of blasts hit their pagers, radios and other devices.
The Reuters reports:
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has ordered all members to stop using any type of communication devices after thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon blew up in deadly attacks last week, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.One of the security officials said a large-scale operation is underway by the IRGC to inspect all devices, not just communication equipment. He said most of these devices were either homemade or imported from China and Russia.Iran was concerned about infiltration by Israeli agents, including Iranians on Israel’s payroll and a thorough investigation of personnel has already begun, targeting mid and high-ranking members of the IRGC, added the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.”This includes scrutiny of their bank accounts both in Iran and abroad, as well as their travel history and that of their families,” the security official said. (..)The security official declined to give details on how the IRGC force, comprising 190,000 personnel, are communicating. “For now, we are using end-to-end encryption in messaging systems,” he said.
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