Israel pounds area near Beirut amid signs of a widening offensive

Beirut: The Israeli military kept up its heavy bombardment of a once densely populated area adjoining Beirut on Friday after saying its ground troops were battling new targets in southern Lebanon, signaling a widening of the fighting that could further undercut cease-fire efforts.

The airstrikes on the Dahiya, the area south of the Lebanese capital where the militant group Hezbollah holds sway, were the latest in a string of bombardments this week. The Israeli military issued fresh evacuation warnings just after dawn Friday, and the bombardment began soon afterward -- leveling at least one high-rise residential building and sending thick plumes of smoke and debris through the streets. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

There were also signs that Israel's ground invasion of southern Lebanon was broadening and that its troops were battling Hezbollah fighters deeper inside Lebanese territory.

The Israeli military said in a statement Thursday that its commandos were conducting ground operations against "several new enemy targets" in Lebanon. A senior Lebanese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, said Thursday that Israeli ground forces were operating around the town of Chamaa, roughly 3 miles from the border.

Hezbollah also said overnight that it had attacked Israeli soldiers near Tayr Harfa, a town immediately south of Chamaa that it had described earlier as part of its "secondary line" of defense, and where clashes had not been previously reported.

A widening Israeli offensive would undermine US diplomatic efforts to stem the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The Biden administration has renewed a push to contain the fighting after repeated rounds of shuttle diplomacy over the past year failed.

Although Israel's military leadership had originally hoped to conduct a more limited ground operation that focused solely on the first line of Lebanese villages along Israel's northern border, they have decided to slightly expand that range, Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said in an interview. The reason, he said, was that Israeli military officials realized that they needed to do more to clear out Hezbollah's military installations, and believed that a broader offensive could force the armed group into making a diplomatic settlement on terms more favorable to Israel, he said.

"There's an understanding that we need to ramp up the pressure and clear out a greater area, and that's what they're doing," Avivi said.

But there has been no indication in public that Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, are willing to acquiesce to Israel's demands, which include a withdrawal of the group from areas near the Israel-Lebanon border. While Hezbollah's leaders and weapon stockpiles have been hard-hit, the group still poses a formidable threat, firing scores of rockets and drones into Israel daily and killing six Israeli soldiers Wednesday in southern Lebanon.

A prominent Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met Friday with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss cease-fire efforts, the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said. Hezbollah is Iran's most powerful regional proxy, and any diplomatic settlement would almost certainly be contingent on Iran's approval.

This month, Hezbollah's new leader, Naim Qassem, called US-led diplomatic efforts to stem the conflict with Israel futile, saying the only way to end the war was "on the battlefield." Still, he did not reject the potential for negotiations on suitable terms, noting that Israel must first end its offensive.

"We are ready for a long war," he warned.

Efforts to reach a cease-fire are further complicated by the fact that, even if Hezbollah does agree to disarm in southern Lebanon, it is unclear how such an agreement would be enforced, or by whom. A UN resolution that ended the last major conflict in 2006 also called for Hezbollah to disarm along the border, but it has been considered a failure in the years since.

Israel has also insisted that any cease-fire deal preserve its right to attack Hezbollah again should the militant group violate the terms of a truce, a stance that both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah strongly oppose.

Israel began an intensified military campaign against Hezbollah in September, nearly a year after the group began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli offensive has set off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, displacing nearly a quarter of the population and buckling the country's health system.

On Thursday, the United States said it was opposed to Israel's intensifying bombing campaign in the Dahiya. Asked at a regular news briefing about the latest Israeli strikes, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesperson, said, "We do not want to see these kinds of operations in Beirut, especially as it relates to densely populated areas."