On Tuesday, Hezbollah and a Lebanese Army source said they have not seen Israeli troops enter Lebanon after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced ground forces were conducting raids across the border.
“All Zionist claims that [Israeli] occupation forces have entered Lebanon are false,” Hezbollah media official Muhammad Afif told Al Jazeera, adding there have been no “direct ground clashes between resistance fighters and occupation forces.”
A Lebanese military source told AFP, “We have not observed any penetration by Israeli enemy forces into Lebanese territory.” UN peacekeepers in Lebanon also said they didn’t observe any Israeli troops cross the border.
The denials of Israeli ground troops entering Lebanon came after the Israeli military said that its forces were conducting “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” in southern Lebanon.
Later on Tuesday, the Israeli military claimed that its commandos had conducted dozens of ground raids in southern Lebanon over the past few months and said the operations would continue until displaced Israelis can return to northern Israel.
“Our soldiers entered Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure, exposed Hezbollah’s hidden weapons caches, and seized and destroyed the weapons, including advanced, Iranian-made weapons,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari.
Also on Tuesday, Israel told people in southern Lebanon to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, which is about 36 miles from the border, and Israeli strikes on Lebanon continued. Since September 23, Israeli strikes on Lebanon have slaughtered over 1,000 people.
