Israel tells Lebanon residents to stay away from Hezbollah posts

By Ari Rabinovitch and Maya Gebeily

JERUSALEM, BEIRUT (Reuters) - Residents of southern Lebanon received calls from a Lebanese number ordering them to immediately distance themselves 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) from any post used by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, a Reuters reporter in the south said.

The Reuters reporter received the call on Monday. In his televised statement earlier, the Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari issued a similar warning and said it was being "distributed in Arabic on all networks and platforms in Lebanon."

The Israeli military, meanwhile, launched its most widespread wave of airstrikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah in nearly a year of conflict, simultaneously targeting Lebanon's south, eastern Bekaa valley and northern region near Syria.

Asked by reporters about a possible Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon, Hagari said "we will do whatever is needed" in order to return evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes safely, a war priority for the Israeli government.

The latest attacks came amid some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire in a conflict raging alongside the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Hagari said that Hezbollah over the years has stashed weapons, including cruise missiles, in houses and buildings throughout southern Lebanon, and called on residents to stay away from these sites.

Hagari presented in a media briefing an aerial video of what he described as Hezbollah operatives trying to launch cruise missiles from a civilian house in Lebanon, and the subsequent Israeli strike moments before it was launched.

"Hezbollah is endangering you. Endangering you and your families," Hagari said.

(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, Tom Perry and Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Stephen Coates and Sharon Singleton)