Israeli forces have attacked the Qasmiyeh Bridge, a key crossing linking Lebanon’s south to the rest of the country, in an escalation that President Joseph Aoun called a “prelude to ground invasion”.

Sunday’s strike on the vital artery and other civilian infrastructure came after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to destroy all crossings over the Litani River and homes close to the border between the two countries.

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The bombing of the bridge marks an escalation of the Israeli military’s campaign against Hezbollah, which resumed on March 2 after the Lebanese armed group fired rockets into Israel in response to the Israeli-US killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Aoun said the attacks on the bridge were “an attempt to sever the geographical connection between the southern Litani region and the rest of Lebanese territory”.

He said they fell “within suspicious schemes to establish a buffer zone along the Israeli border, solidify the reality of the occupation and seek Israeli expansion within Lebanese territory”.

Katz had earlier said Israel’s strategy of attacking bridges over the Litani River used for “terrorist activity” and homes in “front-line villages” to neutralise threats to Israeli communities was similar to the model used in Beit Hanoun and Rafah in Gaza, where Israel created buffer zones by clearing and demolishing buildings near the border as part of its genocidal war against Palestinians in the territory.

Later on Sunday, the Israeli army chief said the operation against Hezbollah “has only begun” and would be “prolonged”.

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“We are now preparing to advance the targeted ground operations and strikes according to an organised plan,” Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said in a statement.

The Lebanese government has outlawed Hezbollah military activity and said it wanted to engage in direct talks with Israel. Earlier this month, Katz had warned the Lebanese government it would face infrastructure damage and territorial losses unless Hezbollah was disarmed, as agreed in a 2024 ceasefire that ended a year of cross-border fighting.

Wanton destruction

Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, told news agency Reuters that destroying homes in southern Lebanon wholesale would amount to wanton destruction, which is a war crime.

He added that international law requires armed actors to take into account the civilian harm caused by strikes on infrastructure like bridges, even if the targets were being used for military purposes.

“If all these bridges are struck, and the region that is south of the Litani becomes isolated from the rest of the country, then the civilian harm is going to be so immense that you have a humanitarian catastrophe as people still living in the south won’t be able to access food, medicine and other basic needs,” he said.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said four people were killed on Sunday in two strikes in the south. It said 1,029 had been killed and more than one million displaced in almost three weeks of conflict, which erupted amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that the former had repeatedly violated.

Earlier, an Israeli was killed in his car near the border with Lebanon after what the military described as a “launch” from Lebanese territory. It was the first Israeli civilian death linked to fire from Lebanon in the current war. Two Israeli soldiers have also been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot met with his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, in Jerusalem on Friday, telling reporters that he had expressed France’s reservations about a ground operation of “significant scale and duration”.