Israel preparing for possible ground offensive in Lebanon, military chief says

Israel’s top general has said the country is preparing for a possible ground operation into Lebanon amid growing international pressure for a negotiated ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.

As an intense bombing campaign inside Lebanon stretched into a third day, Israel’s chief of staff, Maj Gen Herzi Halevi, said the airstrikes aimed to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure and prepare for the possibility of Israeli troops crossing the border.

Halevi told troops during a visit to Israel’s north: “We are preparing the process of a manoeuvre, which means your military boots, your manoeuvring boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points and launchpads into our territory [from which to] carry out attacks on Israeli civilians.”

Despite Halevi’s comments, the Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said a ground offensive did not appear “imminent”.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hezbollah aimed a long-range missile at Tel Aviv and Israel targeted the mountains north of Beirut for the first time in the war, drawing an Israeli warning that it was preparing a major response.

Halevi’s comments came amid growing pressure from the US for a pause in the fighting and a warning from Joe Biden over the need to avoid “all-out war” in the region.

“An all-out war is possible,” the US president told ABC, adding that he believed an opportunity also existed “to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region”.

Biden, who has been widely criticised for mishandling the escalating Middle East crisis, suggested that getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire could help achieve a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

But while the US-led initiative to secure a ceasefire with Hezbollah has the support of France and Arab countries, it relies on Hezbollah agreeing to stop firing on Israel before any ceasefire in Gaza is secured. France has called a UN security council meeting on Lebanon for Wednesday to discuss ideas around de-escalation.

Hezbollah has long insisted that any cessation of firing on its part is contingent on an end to Israeli operations in Gaza, where negotiations over a ceasefire-for-hostages deal have been bogged down for months.

It was unclear whether Halevi’s public comments and the diplomatic efforts were connected, with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, due to be out of the country for four days from Thursday for the UN general assembly.

Later on Wednesday evening, Israeli officials were pessimistic about any chance of a ceasefire.

Related: ‘This was a peaceful town. Everything has changed’: the Israelis under Hezbollah fire

In Lebanon, authorities said on Wednesday that the death toll after three days of Israeli bombardment had passed 600, with thousands more injured. The UN said 90,000 people had been displaced since Monday, on top of more than 200,000 people who had left their homes in southern Lebanon over the past year as Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire over the border.

With Israel and Hezbollah now in effect at war, world leaders gathered for the UN general assembly in New York repeatedly warned of the dangers of a full-blown regional conflict.

But as they called for de-escalation, they prepared for the opposite: from Moscow to London to Washington, governments told citizens in Lebanon to return home while they could, as airlines cancelled flights from Beirut.

Israel says its campaign against Hezbollah is needed so 60,000 people evacuated from border regions can return home. It has so far been confined to aerial attacks, but on Wednesday, Israel’s military called up two reserve brigades for operations in the north and signalled that troops would soon be ready to cross the border.

Maj Gen Uri Gordin, the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) northern command, told soldiers from an armoured corps that the war was in a “different phase” and they should “strongly prepare” for action. “We need to change the security situation,” he told troops in a clip shared on army radio.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon to escape Israeli bombs, but Wednesday’s strike on Maysaara, about 60 miles (100km) north of the border, fuelled fears that Israel could also unleash heavy attacks on other parts of the country.

In the scramble to save their lives, thousands of people had reversed the refugee flow seen for more than a decade and crossed from Lebanon into Syria, aid agencies said.

Hezbollah attempted to strike Tel Aviv for the first time on Wednesday but Israel intercepted the surface-to-surface missile with air defences, and no damage was reported.

The Shia militant group said it was targeting intelligence headquarters, in an apparent signal that it can still pose a serious threat even after days of intensive Israeli attacks which have killed many top commanders and destroyed much of its arsenal.

An Israeli military spokesperson said the unguided missile had been heading towards civilian areas along the coast. “The Mossad headquarters is not in that area; it is a bit east and north of that area,” the IDF’s international spokesperson, Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, told a briefing.

In the southern Israeli city of Eilat, a building near the port was struck by a drone, injuring two people in an attack claimed by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.

Israel estimated that Hezbollah had 150,000 rockets and missiles at the start of the war and has not said how many have been destroyed. Senior commanders killed include the head of the elite Radwan force last week, and on Tuesday the head of the missile and rocket force, Ibrahim Qubaisi.

Israel’s successful strikes have decimated the top of Hezbollah’s chain of command, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one of Hezbollah’s key backers, said on Wednesday that the group would survive the death of senior leaders, Reuters reported.

“The organisational strength and human resources of Hezbollah is very strong and will not be critically hit by the killing of a senior commander, even if that is clearly a loss,” he said.

Over decades of conflict, Hezbollah has previously managed to rebound from heavy blows and fight Israeli forces to a standstill, despite a vast disparity in military technology.

As it braces for further retaliation, Israel has brought in tighter restrictions, which include school closures, for more than 1 million people in northern parts of the country, including the city of Haifa. One rocket hit an assisted living home in Safed City, starting a fire, but no casualties were reported.

In Tel Aviv, after the morning missile scare, life returned to something like normal on Wednesday, with kite surfers enjoying the sea off its beaches.

Bar Zinderman, 34, said racing to a bomb shelter with his two-year-old son Ar on Wednesday morning had been frightening, but that he backed the decision to attack Hezbollah.

“I think we are doing the right thing,” he said. “We had no choice but to fight against two enemies at our borders, who forced thousands of my fellow countrymen to evacuate. I hope that our pressure on them will soon lead to an agreement to end this war.”

Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, said he was making “great efforts” to reach a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah, in coordination with the US and his own government. The next 24 hours would be decisive, he added.

Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said the US was the only country that could end the conflict, but expressed disappointment after Biden addressed the UN on Tuesday. His remarks were “not strong” and “would not solve the Lebanese problem”, Bou Habib said.