Hezbollah chief in Lebanon threatens Israel and Cyprus in televised speech

The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Wednesday that no place in Israel would be safe if an all-out war broke out between the two enemies, and also threatened Cyprus and other parts of the Mediterranean, Reuters reports.

Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel for more than eight months, parallel to the Gaza War. On Tuesday, the group published what it said were drone images of sensitive military sites deep within Israeli territory.

In a televised speech on Wednesday, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that “there will be no safe place against our missiles and our drones” in Israel in the event of a wider war.

The group also had “a bank of targets” it could hit in precision strikes, he said.

Israel “knows that what awaits it in the Mediterranean is also very big,” Nasrallah added, without giving further details.

The group first showed it could hit a ship at sea by hitting an Israeli warship in the Mediterranean during the 2006 war.

Media and analyst reports have indicated for years that Hezbollah acquired Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles in Syria, after its forces were deployed there more than a decade ago to help President Bashar Al-Assad fight the country’s civil war.

Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus for the first time, saying it had allowed 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. .

Cyprus is not known for offering any ground or base facilities to the Israeli military, but in the past it has allowed Israel to use its vast airspace – its flight information region (FIR) – to occasionally conduct aerial exercises, but never during conflicts. .

British sovereign military bases have been used for operations in Syria and, more recently, Yemen. The government of Cyprus has no say in this matter. There are two British bases in Cyprus, which was a colony until 1960.

With information from Reuters.