“Basically, we are targeting the combat infrastructure that Hezbollah has been building for 20 years,” Halevi added in a statement.
He continued: “This is very important. We are hitting targets and preparing for the next stages,” but he did not go into details and only said that he “will provide clarification soon.”
The Israeli military said on Monday it was expanding its air offensive against what it says are Hezbollah weapons sites in southern and eastern Lebanon.
He added that he expanded his air strikes to include areas in the Bekaa Valley along Lebanon’s eastern border after targeting more than 300 sites in southern Lebanon.
“Destroying Hezbollah’s capabilities”
Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon on Monday destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, adding to the Iran-backed group’s most difficult tragedies in its history.
“Today is an important climax. On this day, we took tens of thousands of missiles and precision munitions out of service. What Hezbollah built over the 20 years since the Second Lebanon War is in fact being destroyed by the IDF,” he added in a statement.
The Israeli security establishment estimates that 50% of Hezbollah’s capabilities have been damaged since the beginning of the war, and that most of the damage occurred in the last two days.
Bloody day in Lebanon
The number of victims of Israeli air strikes on Lebanon rose to 274 dead and 1,000 wounded
Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said 274 people were killed in ongoing Israeli strikes on Monday, with more than 1,000 others wounded.
Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said at a press conference in Beirut that thousands of families had been displaced by the attacks, and that Israeli raids had hit hospitals, medical centres and ambulances.
The Lebanese Interior Minister’s office said that official schools and institutes had been opened as shelters to deal with the “massive displacement from the southern regions.”
Rapid developments
The wave of airstrikes comes after a tense day in which Lebanon’s Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel, some of which landed near the city of Haifa. Israel also carried out hundreds of airstrikes.
Hezbollah’s missile attack came after an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb on Friday that killed a military leader of the Lebanese group and more than a dozen of its members, in addition to dozens of civilians, including women and children.
Last week, thousands of radio communication devices, mainly used by Hezbollah members, exploded in various parts of Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000.
Lebanon blamed the attacks on Israel, but Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
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