JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The Israeli military said on Saturday Israel is on high alert for a broader conflict after it claimed to have killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, and also said it hoped his reported death will cause the group to change course.
“We hope this will change Hezbollah’s actions,” Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said in a media briefing after the military said it had killed Nasrallah.
But he said it would still take time to degrade the Iran-backed Hezbollah’s capabilities.
“We’ve seen Hezbollah carry out attacks against us for a year. It’s safe to assume that they are going to continue carrying out their attacks against us or try to,” he said.
Shoshani said that there had been no new instructions given to Israeli civilians regarding home front readiness, as current guidelines already put much of the country on high alert.
“Hezbollah has been escalating this for a year…Iran is obviously behind this, it’s no secret. They’re backing Hamas, they’re backing Hezbollah and other proxies. They even attacked us directly in April,” he said.
“So are we ready for a wider escalation? Yes. We’ve been in a wider escalation, a multi-front war, for a year. Our forces are on high alert, our intelligence is up and looking for these types of threats.”
(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; editing by James Mackenzie and Angus MacSwan)
