BEIRUT: US President Joe Biden warned Wednesday of the possibility of an "all-out war” in the Middle East as the Zionist entity put troops on alert for possible entry into Lebanon and the war in Gaza grinds on. "An all-out war is possible,” Biden told ABC chat show "The View”. "What I think is, also, the opportunity is still in play to have a settlement that could fundamentally change the whole region.”

The Zionist army chief told soldiers on Wednesday to prepare for a possible ground offensive to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon as the air force conducted hundreds of deadly strikes around the country. "We are attacking all day, both to prepare the ground for the possibility of your entry, but also to continue striking Hezbollah,” Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told a tank brigade, according to a statement from the military. Lebanon’s health minister said Wednesday’s strikes killed 51 people and

injured 223, including in mountainous areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds. Hezbollah said it had targeted the Zionist entity’s Mossad spy agency on Tel Aviv’s outskirts in the morning — the first time it has fired a ballistic missile in almost a year of cross-border clashes sparked by the Gaza war. In response, the Zionist entity said it hit 60 Hezbollah intelligence sites, among hundreds of the group’s targets struck across Lebanon. It came amid escalating cross-border clashes, after Zionist raids on Monday killed at least 558 people in the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

Biden appeared to raise the possibility of a ceasefire in Lebanon. "They have a possibility – I don’t want to exaggerate it – there’s a possibility if we can deal with a ceasefire in Lebanon that it can move into dealing with the West Bank as well,” said Biden. The Zionist entity has been carrying out deadly raids in the occupied West Bank since late August.

Biden added however that "we also have Gaza to deal with”, as efforts stall to get a ceasefire deal to end the Zionist war in Gaza. "But it’s possible and I’m using every bit of energy with my team to get this done. There’s a desire to see change in the region,” he said.

The US president also pressed Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to drop his opposition to an independent Palestinian state to end the crisis. "I don’t agree with his (Netanyahu’s) position. There needs to be a two-state solution,” Biden told the show’s all-women panel, led by US comedian Whoopi Goldberg.

Nour Hamad, a 22-year-old student in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, described living "in a state of terror” all week. "We spent four or five days without sleep, not knowing if we will wake up in the morning,” she said. In Tel Aviv, sirens sounded following Hezbollah’s unprecedented missile launch. Tel Aviv resident Hedva Fadlon, 61, told AFP: "The situation is difficult. We feel the pressure and the tension... I don’t think anyone in the world would like to live like this.”

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Hezbollah’s attack on Tel Aviv was "deeply concerning” but added there was "still time and space for a diplomatic solution here to de-escalate the tensions and to prevent an all-out war”. The Zionist military said "over 280 Hezbollah” targets had been struck across Lebanon on Wednesday, adding the strikes were ongoing.

The United Nations Security Council said it would hold an emergency meeting on the crisis in New York, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the situation was critical. The UN’s International Organization for Migration on Wednesday said 90,000 people had been displaced in Lebanon since Monday. Among them, "many of the more than 111,000 people displaced since October... are likely to have been secondarily displaced”, a statement from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added.

Hezbollah on Tuesday confirmed a Zionist claim that it had killed their rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi in a strike on the Lebanese capital. At the UN General Assembly in New York, Secretary-General Guterres issued a stark warning. "We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,” he said, while cautioning against "the possibility of transforming Lebanon (into) another Gaza”.

Netanyahu delayed his departure for New York until Thursday, where he too is due to speak at the General Assembly. "During the day, the prime minister will hold consultations to discuss the continuation of the attacks in Lebanon,” his office said. Netanyahu defied international calls for restraint, vowing on Tuesday to keep up the Zionist entity’s campaign against Hezbollah.

Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer, condemned the Zionist raids, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying the recent killing of Hezbollah commanders would not crush the group. "Some of the effective and valuable forces of Hezbollah were martyred, which undoubtedly caused damage to Hezbollah, but this was not the sort of damage that could bring the group to its knees,” he said.

The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 41,495 people in Gaza, most of them civilians. The Zionist entity returned the bodies on Wednesday of 88 Palestinians killed in its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which the territory’s health ministry refused to bury before the Zionist entity discloses details about who they are and where it killed them. The bodies were brought into Gaza in a container loaded on a truck through a Zionist-controlled crossing, but, according to Palestinian officials, there was no information provided about the names or ages of the victims or locations where they died. – Agencies