BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: The Zionist entity warned Iran on Monday that nowhere in the Middle East was beyond its reach and hinted at a land invasion of Lebanon after assassinating the leader of the Tehran-backed Hezbollah group, one of its biggest adversaries, in a Beirut suburb last week. “There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a three-minute video clip in English that he addressed to the Iranian people.

But in his first public speech since Zionist airstrikes killed Hasan Nasrallah last week, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said his fighters were primed to confront a ground invasion and thwart its aims. “The resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said in an address from an undisclosed location.

Friday’s assassination of Nasrallah – the most powerful leader in Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” against Zionist and US interests in the Middle East - was one of the heaviest blows in decades to both Hezbollah and Iran. After two weeks of intensive airstrikes and a string of assassinations of Hezbollah commanders, the Zionist entity, which has been training its troops for a ground invasion, indicated that a land invasion was an option in Lebanon.

Speaking to troops deployed along the Zionist entity’s northern border, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Zionist entity would do whatever it takes to ensure the return of citizens who have fled Hezbollah rockets during nearly a year of border warfare. “We will use all the means that may be required – your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land. Good luck,” said Gallant, who was briefed by commanders.

“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one. In order to ensure the return of (the Zionist entity’s) northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you.” The Washington Post cited an unidentified US official as saying the Zionist entity had already told the US it was planning a ground operation that may start imminently. Asked about the reports, US President Joe Biden, who has so far had little success urging the Zionist entity to rein in its campaigns, called for a ceasefire, telling reporters: “I’m comfortable with them stopping.”

Zionist airstrikes in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon continued, extending a two-week-old campaign that has eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1,000 civilians and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government. The death toll from a Zionist strike on the southern Lebanese town of Ain Deleb rose to 45, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Monday. Rescuers stood on a flattened building. “We are rescuing these people, pulling out the living, the torn apart, and the martyrs,” said one, Mazin Al-Khatib.

Nasrallah’s killing, along with the assassinations and systematic attacks on the group’s communications devices, constitute the biggest blow to the movement since Iran created it in 1982 to fight the Zionist entity. Nasrallah built Hezbollah up into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with a wide reach across the Middle East. Now it must replace a charismatic, towering leader who was a hero to millions of supporters because he stood up to the Zionist entity – even though the West branded him a terrorist mastermind.

Qassem said it would “choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity ... and fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis”. He said Hezbollah had continued to fire rockets as deep as 150 km into Zionist territory. “What we are doing is the bare minimum ... We know that the battle may be long,” he said. “We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006,” he added, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes.

The Zionist entity, which has also assassinated leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza war, says it will do whatever it takes to return its citizens to evacuated communities on its northern border safely. Hours before Qassem spoke, Hamas said a Zionist airstrike had killed its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his wife, son and daughter in the city of Tyre on Monday.

Another faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said three of its leaders had died in a strike in Beirut’s Kola district, the first strike so close to the city center. The strike, the first in the city center in years, sparked panic, with 41-year-old resident Mohammed Al-Hoss saying “the kids were in shock” after his house was damaged. “Our country is in a wretched state. They (the Zionist entity) finished with Gaza and they have come to Lebanon,” he said. Another resident, 42-year-old Kahier Bannout, said central Beirut was “supposed to be a safe area – not a war zone”.

Zionist airstrikes pounded areas across the Gaza Strip on Monday killing 12, including a journalist and her family, medics said. Palestinian health officials said Wafa Al-Udaini, who wrote articles about the war in English advocating the Palestinian viewpoint, was killed when a missile struck her house in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, also killing her husband and their two children.

Udaini’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the Zionist offensive since Oct 7 to 174, the Gaza government media office said. In another strike, a Palestinian was killed and several were wounded in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, while in the northern town of Beit Hanoun an airstrike killed one man and injured others, medics said. Later on Monday, a Zionist air strike on a house in Nuseirat, one of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed six people, health officials said.

A UN Satellite Centre assessment issued Monday said “two-thirds of the total structures in the Gaza Strip have sustained damage” in nearly a year of war. The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 41,615 people in Gaza, most of them civilians.

The Zionist attacks on militant targets in Lebanon are part of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank to Iranian-backed groups in Yemen and Iraq. The escalation has raised fears that the United States and Iran will be sucked into the conflict. The latest actions indicated the Zionist entity had no plans to slow down its advanced military machine even after eliminating Nasrallah. Netanyahu accused the Iranian government of plunging the Middle East “deeper into war” at the expense of its own people, whom it was bringing “closer to the abyss”.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Tehran would not let any of the Zionist entity’s “criminal acts” go unanswered, referring to the killings of Nasrallah and an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps deputy commander, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes.

The Zionist entity’s closest ally, the United States, has not wavered in its support despite concerns over heavy civilian casualties. And while Arab states have condemned the Zionist entity’s actions, none have taken concrete steps to pressure it to rein in its warplanes, angering Beirut residents like Abou Imad. “You are watching as they (the Zionist entity) take over all the Arab countries and take us all,” he said. “This indifference is shameful, for the Lebanese and Palestinian people.” – Agencies