Israel expands ground operations as Iran delivers warning

Israel's military said it had begun ground operations in southwest Lebanon, expanding its incursions to a new zone amid pleas by the UN for a diplomatic solution.

"Yesterday (Monday), the 146th Division began limited, localised, targeted operational activities against Hezbollah terror targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon," the military said in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Iran also warned Israel against any attacks on the Islamic Republic, a week after it fired a barrage of missiles at Israel, putting the Middle East on edge.

Israel's military said it had struck Beirut's southern suburbs overnight and said it killed a senior Hezbollah responsible for the group's budgeting and logistics.

If confirmed, the death of Suhail Hussein Husseini would be the latest in a string of Israel's assassinations of leaders and commanders of Hezbollah and its ally Hamas, which has been fighting Israel in Gaza for a year.

In the biggest blow to Hezbollah in decades, Israel killed its leader Hassan Nasrallah with an air strike in Beirut's southern suburbs late last month.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN's peacekeeping mission in the country said that their repeated appeals for restraint had "gone unheeded" in the year since the exchanges of fire began between Hezbollah and Israel.

"Today, one year later, the near-daily exchanges of fire have escalated into a relentless military campaign whose humanitarian impact is nothing short of catastrophic," they said in a joint statement.

The attacks have raised fears that the US, Israel's closest ally, and the Islamic Republic of Iran would be sucked into a full-blown conflict in the Middle East.

Tension between Iran and Israel is running high after years of shadow war and assassinations have turned into direct confrontations that have put the region on edge.

Israel has been weighing options to respond to Iran's ballistic missile attack last week.

US news website Axios cited Israeli officials as saying Iran's oil facilities could be hit, which would be a serious escalation that could drive up global oil prices.

On Friday, US President Joe Biden said he would think about alternatives to striking Iranian oilfields if he were in Israel's shoes, adding he thought it had not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

Israeli airstrikes have displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon, and Israel's intensified bombing campaign has worried many Lebanese that their country will experience the vast scale of destruction wrought on Gaza by Israel.

Israeli forces issued a warning in Arabic to beachgoers and boat users to avoid a stretch of the Lebanese coast, saying they would soon begin operations against Hezbollah from the sea.

About 2,000 Lebanese have been killed since Hezbollah began firing at Israel a year ago in solidarity with Hamas, most killed in the past few weeks.

The Israeli military has described its ground operation in Lebanon as localised and limited, but it has steadily increased in scale beginning last week.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) says its aim is to clear border areas where Hezbollah fighters have been embedded, with no plans to go deep into Lebanon

Hezbollah meanwhile has fired rockets at Israel's third-largest city of Haifa, saying it targeted an Israeli military base south of Haifa with "Fadi 1" missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65km away.

Hamas vows to 'rise like phoenix'

Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages to Gaza on 7 October last year, according to Israeli figures.

Many Israelis have since regained confidence in their military and intelligence after deadly blows in recent weeks to the command structure of Hezbollah.

"We are changing the security reality in our region, for our children's sake, for our future, to ensure that what happened on 7 October does not happen again," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem marking the Gaza war anniversary.

Israel's war has reduced Gaza to rubble, killed almost 42,000 people and displaced most of its 2.3 million people, Palestinian health authorities have reported.

Israel claims Hamas no longer exists as an organised military structure and has been reduced to guerrilla tactics.

Hamas fighters account for at least a third of the roughly 17,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza, Israeli officials claim. About 350 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat in Gaza.

However, Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said the Palestinian group would rise again and that it continues to recruit fighters and manufacture weapons.

"Palestinian history is made of cycles," Mr Meshaal, 68, a senior figure under overall leader Yahya Sinwar, told Reuters in an interview marking the Gaza war anniversary.

"We go through phases where we lose martyrs and we lose part of our military capabilities, but then the Palestinian spirit rises again, like the phoenix, thanks to God."

Mr Meshaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997 after he was injected with poison and was overall Hamas leader from 1996 to 2017, said the group was still able to mount ambushes against Israeli troops.