The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Wednesday said that nowhere in Israel would be safe if a full-fledged war breaks out between the two foes, and he also threatened Cyprus and other parts of the Mediterannean.
Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel for more than eight months in parallel with the Gaza War. On Tuesday, the Iran-backed group published what it said was drone footage of sensitive military sites deep in Israeli territory.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that “there will be no place safe from our missiles and our drones” in Israel in the event of a broader war.
Photo: al-Manar, via AFP
The group also had “a bank of targets” that it could target in precision strikes, he said.
Israel “knows that what also awaits it in the Mediterranean is very big... In the face of a battle of this magnitude, it knows that it must now wait for us on land, in the air and at sea,” Nasrallah added.
The group first showed it could hit a vessel at sea by striking an Israeli warship in the Mediterranean during their 2006 war.
Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus for the first time, accusing it of allowing Israel to use its airports and bases for military exercises.
“The Cypriot government must be warned that opening Cypriot airports and bases for the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon means that the Cypriot government has become part of the war and the resistance [Hezbollah] will deal with it as part of the war,” Nasrallah said.
There was no immediate comment from authorities in Cyprus.
Cyprus is not known to offer any land or base facilities to the Israeli military, but has in the past allowed Israel to use its vast airspace — its flight information region — to occasionally conduct air drills, but never during conflict.
Sovereign British military bases have been used by the UK for operations in Syria and more recently, Yemen. The Cypriot government has no say in the matter. There are two British bases in Cyprus, which was a colony until 1960.
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