Key developments amid fears of Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon
Israel continued to stoke fears of a ground invasion in Lebanon as it launched 'targeted operations' in the country after massing hundreds of tanks on the border.
As the Middle East teeters on the brink of all-out war, Israeli forces continued their bombardment of Lebanon, even launching an apparent air strike in the centre of the capital Beirut for the first time since 2006 on Sunday.
Israel also opened a second front on Sunday as they launched "large-scale" air strikes on Yemen against "military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime".
Israel's third front - its ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza - also intensified when Hamas said its leader in Lebanon was killed in an air strike by the Israeli military.
The latest attacks indicate Israel has no intention of slowing down its offensive on multiple fronts even after eliminating the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and much of the militant group's leadership in Lebanon.
Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all part of a so-called "Axis of Resistance", an informal Iranian-led military coalition in the Middle East led by Iran. In response to the latest wave of attacks, Iran said it would not leave any of Israel's "criminal acts" go unanswered.
On Monday, Hezbollah cautioned it was ready for any Israeli invasion.
Read below for the key developments from our media partners, or click the headline to skip ahead
> Israeli troops cross into Lebanon
> Hezbollah ready for Israeli land invasion
> Three-front war fear as Israel strikes Yemen
> Hezbollah leadership ‘wiped out’ by Israel
> Analysis: 'Iran has badly miscalculated Israel'
> How Israel penetrated Hezbollah to kill its leader
Israeli troops cross into Lebanon for ‘targeted operations’
Israeli troops launched targeted operations in southern Lebanon on Monday as the army widened its campaign against Hezbollah ahead of a possible ground invasion.
Israel’s ground operation in southern Lebanon will likely expand in the coming days, a source told the Telegraph, suggesting Israel wanted to strike while they believe Hezbollah is weakened.
An Israeli official added that elite commandos were targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, including weapons sites and command and control centres, in a bid to push its fighters away from Israel’s northern border.
Hezbollah ready for Israeli land invasion
Hezbollah fighters are primed to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, the group's deputy leader Naim Qassem said on Monday in his first public speech since Israeli airstrikes killed its veteran chief Hassan Nasrallah last week.
Israel will not achieve its goals, he said.
"We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement," he said in an address from an undisclosed location.
Three-front war fear as Israel strikes Yemen
Israel opened up a war on three fronts with major air strikes on Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen on Sunday. Huge explosions rocked the Red Sea state as Israel took revenge for missile attacks launched by the Iran-backed group.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed the strikes, describing them as “extensive, intelligence-based aerial operation” involving dozens of aircraft, saying they included "power plants and a seaport used to import oil, which were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transfer Iranian weapons to the region".
Hezbollah leadership ‘wiped out’ by Israel
Israel has claimed to have wiped out much of Hezbollah’s leadership in recent air strikes, as Lebanon said the bombing campaign has now forced a fifth of the country’s population to flee their homes.
The Lebanese militant group has now confirmed the deaths of seven senior officials slain by Israel in just over a week, including its leader of 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah, in a strike Israel claimed also killed 20 other Hezbollah members in southern Beirut on Friday.
Those include founding members of the group first established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 1982, who had previously evaded death or detention at Israel’s hands for decades until Israel’s decision this month to launch its heaviest bombing campaign against Lebanon since the 2006 war.
Analysis: Iran has badly miscalculated the risks Israel is willing to take
Iran has pledged a "decisive reaction" to Israel's onslaught against Iranian allies across the region, but Tehran seems to have badly miscalculated the risk its arch foe is willing to take.
In the face of such a multi-pronged assault, the regime might even be wondering whether they, or rather their nuclear sites - seen as by far the biggest threat to Israel - could be next.
Unspoken rules that have in the past deterred a direct Israeli attack on Iran have been ripped up following the killing of the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the dismantling of much of Hamas in Gaza, and large airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Deep intelligence penetration enabled Israel to kill Hassan Nasrallah
A hundred munitions – including, it is believed, US-made 2,000lb bombs – were used by the Israeli air force in Friday evening’s overwhelming air raid that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an underground complex hidden in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh.
Nasrallah, who was careful to the point of paranoia about his security arrangements and only rarely appeared in public, would have given little notice of his plan to undertake the fateful trip to the meeting.
