By Maya Gebeily and Alexander Cornwell
BEIRUT/TEL AVIV, March 7 (Reuters) – Israel warned Lebanon of a “very heavy price” if it did not rein in Iran-backed Hezbollah on Saturday, as it pounded the group’s strongholds around the country with air strikes and mounted a deadly airborne raid in the east.
Lebanon was dragged into the wider Middle East war on Monday when Hezbollah fired at Israel, which responded with a new military campaign that has forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.
On Saturday morning, more buildings in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut lay as mounds of smoking rubble and twisted metal, Reuters video showed, after heavy Israeli bombardment that followed an evacuation order for civilians.
‘A NIGHT OF HELL’
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, addressing Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun in a statement, said that if the Lebanese government failed to enforce a 2024 agreement to disarm Hezbollah, it and the whole country would suffer.
“If the choice is between protecting our civilians and our soldiers or protecting the state of Lebanon – we will choose the protection of our civilians and soldiers, and the Lebanese government and Lebanon will pay a very heavy price,” Katz said.
He added that Israel had no territorial claims against Lebanon, but would not allow a situation where there could be fire targeting Israel from Lebanese territory.
Overnight, Israeli helicopters dropped troops near the town of Nabi Chit in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley in a rare airborne operation.
Israel’s military said the troops had staged the operation to seek the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli airforce navigator missing in Lebanon since 1986. However, no findings related to him were recovered, it said.
Hezbollah said in a statement overnight that it had fired on Israeli troops dropped near Nabi Chit by four helicopters, and that the troops had withdrawn. The Israeli military said none of its forces were injured.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 41 people had been killed in the last 24 hours in Israeli attacks in the Nabi Chit area. The Lebanese army said three of its personnel were among the dead.
Shawki al-Masri, who lives in a town adjacent to Nabi Chit, described the overnight bombing in the area as “a night of hell”.
“We heard the helicopters over our house all night – they were so low we thought they would land on us,” he told Reuters.
“People in the town woke up and started shooting at them, then the warplanes started bombing. It was a very violent night and only calmed down when the sun came up,” he said.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 200 people across Lebanon, and orders to evacuate have displaced around 300,000 people, only a third of whom are now living in government shelters.
A senior United Nations official described the displacement as “unprecedented” in comments to Reuters on Friday.
HEZBOLLAH WARNS ISRAELIS NEAR BORDER TO FLEE
Hezbollah has also warned Israeli citizens living in communities near the border to flee their homes, though Katz said on Saturday they should not do so. Many northern Israeli communities were evacuated during crossborder bombardment in 2023-24.
Also on Saturday, Hezbollah issued a more specific warning, telling residents of the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shimona to evacuate immediately and head south.
The United Nations on Saturday warned that the conflict was set to get “even worse,” and that talks between Israel and Lebanon “must be pursued with urgency” to end hostilities.
Its Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said in a statement that it was “clear that ongoing military actions will not deliver a lasting win to anyone”.
“They will only deepen instability and inflict further suffering,” she said.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Alex Cornwell. Additional writing by Angus McDowall. Editing by Mark Potter and Jan Harvey)
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