“You can hear the jets overhead, we’ve been attacking all day. It is both to prepare the ground for your eventual entry and to continue humiliating Hezbollah,” Israel’s military chief Herzi Halevi told troops on the border with Lebanon, according to a statement from the Israeli military, according to the Reuters news agency.
He concluded his speech to the soldiers thus:
“Go in and destroy the enemy there, and destroy their infrastructure.”
“Woke up by airstrikes”
SVT’s foreign reporter Stina Blomgren, who is in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, tells how the situation in the country is right now:
– Today there has been extensive bombing. We were woken up by airstrikes and we have heard several explosions.
More than 600 people have been killed in Israel’s attack on Lebanon since the country stepped up its operations on Monday.
– Lebanon is not at all equipped for war and, for example, has no air force. The hospitals are completely overcrowded after this week and half a million Lebanese will be on the run, says SVT’s foreign reporter Stina Blomgren.
Netanyahu: Strikes with full force
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says in a recorded speech that the country’s soldiers have been told to stand ready to enter Lebanon.
– We strike against Hezbollah with a force they could never have imagined. We do it with full force, he says and continues:
– I can promise you one thing – we will not rest until they can return home, he says, referring to the tens of thousands of Israelis who have been forced from their homes in northern Israel for fear of Hezbollah attacks.
Israel calls up reservists
Israel has also called up two reserve brigades “for operational missions to the north”, in what could be seen as a sign of further escalation in the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“It will enable continued battles against the terrorist organization Hezbollah, the defense of the state of Israel and create conditions for the residents of northern Israel to return to their homes,” writes the military.
“Risk of it getting even more bloody”
SVT’s Middle East correspondent Samir Abu Eid took part in Rapport and answered the question what will happen if Israel enters Lebanon with ground troops.
– It will be even worse and more bloody with more dead, he says.