Israeli troops gear up for a ground invasion of Lebanon

Starmer tells Britons to leave as Biden warns of all-out war’

- RACHEL HAGAN , TOM WATLING

Israel is preparing for a potential ground invasion of Lebanon, army chiefs said yesterday, as US president Joe Biden admitted “all-out war” is possible and Sir Keir Starmer urged British nationals to leave the area immediately.

Airstrikes in Lebanon are laying the groundwork for a possible operation to push Hezbollah back and “safely return” displaced Israeli citizens, said Israeli army general Lt Gen Herzi Halevi.

He told troops on Israel’s northern border the military is “preparing the process of a manoeuvre, which means your military boots, your manoeuvring boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts”.

Following a day of heavy cross-border attacks, with Hezbollah firing dozens of projectiles into Israel – including its deepest strike yet, targeting Tel Aviv – Lt Gen Halevi’s statement was the strongest suggestion yet that Israeli troops could move in.

The intensified violence has led to hundreds of deaths in Lebanon, forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the north to huddle in air raid shelters and prompted the displacement of 90,000 Lebanese people from their homes.

The prime minister renewed his calls for British nationals to get out “while commercial flights are available” – though most, if not all, are sold out and others cancelled, leaving some people stranded. “The time to leave is now,” he said.

If Israel bombs Lebanon’s only commercial airport in Beirut, as it did in the 2006 war against Hezbollah, it would sever the only means of escape. Britons in Lebanon have told The Independent how they are considering routes out of Syria as they see no other means of escape.