Live Updates: Israel Invades Southern Lebanon

Israeli troops crossed the border after a prolonged bombing campaign aimed at killing many of Hezbollah’s top leaders and destroying some of its weapons.

Victoria Kim and Natan Odenheimer

Here are the latest developments.

Israel said early Tuesday that its forces had crossed into Lebanon in an operation aimed at Hezbollah targets in the border region, the first Israeli ground invasion in the country since 2006.

Israel’s military said in a statement around 2 a.m. that its troops had entered Lebanese territory a few hours before. For weeks, Israeli attacks on its neighbor to the north have been escalating, including intense airstrikes and the killing of top leaders of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group backed by Iran. Over the past year, Hezbollah has been attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, the Gaza-based armed group also backed by Iran.

U.S. officials said on Monday that they believed Israel’s invasion would be limited and that they had been assured by Israel that there was no plan for a bigger operation by conventional forces or a prolonged occupation of southern Lebanon.

While Israel said it was conducting “limited, localized and targeted raids” in a narrow strip of land near the border, the number of troops deployed in northern Israel in recent days has fueled speculation that a broader operation could be coming. Three Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter, said that parts of the invasion force could advance several miles beyond the border, instead of staying within a few hundred yards of it.

During its nearly yearlong war in Gaza, Israel has initially downplayed the scale of its military actions several times, including in its ground invasion of Gaza, the push into the southern half of the Gaza Strip and the incursion in Rafah.

Israel said its goal in the Lebanon operation was to eliminate Hezbollah infrastructure that poses an immediate threat to northern Israel so that civilians displaced by rocket fire there can return. The fighting has forced more than 160,000 people from their homes on either side of the border.

Here is what else to know:

• U.S. troops: The United States is sending afew thousand additional forces to the Middle East to bolster the 40,000 already in the region and to help defend Israel, the Pentagon said on Monday.

• Explosions in Beirut: Israel continued carrying out strikes near the Lebanese capital overnight, with explosions and flashes of light accompanied by loud blasts heard in the Dahiya, a densely populated area just south of Beirut. Israel’s military said it had targeted Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites.

• Warning to Iran: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel released an English-language video addressing the Iranian public, saying, “The people of Iran should know Israel stands with you.” He also warned Iran’s government against entering the conflict, saying, “There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country.”

Ronen Bergman, Patrick Kingsley and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

Victoria Kim

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said he spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Monday, signaling U.S. support for Israel’s ground invasion into Lebanon. The two men agreed on the need to destroy Hezbollah “attack infrastructure” along the border, according to a Pentagon statement.

Victoria Kim

Austin said he emphasized the need for a diplomatic resolution “as soon as feasible,” but that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself and that the U.S. is positioned to defend Israel and U.S. troops in the region.

Euan Ward

Explosions have been heard around Damascus, with air defenses engaging targets in the skies above the Syrian capital, according to SANA, Syria’s state news agency.

Ephrat Livni

Shortly after the Israeli military announced that ground troops had entered southern Lebanon for “limited” raids, a military statement said that approximately 10 projectiles had crossed into Israel from Lebanon. It said that some of the projectiles were intercepted and others fell in open areas.

Euan Ward

Hezbollah said in a statement that it had targeted Israeli troop movements across from Lebanese border towns. Rocket sirens were sounded in a number of northern Israeli border communities, including where the Israeli military has announced a “closed military zone.”

Patrick Kingsley

The Israeli military said in a statement early on Tuesday that its troops had “begun limited, localized and targeted raids against Hezbollah” targets in the border area of southern Lebanon. The military added that the targets were “located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel” and that its Air Force and artillery troops were “supporting the ground forces with precise strikes on military targets.”

Christiaan Triebert

Video captured by Reuters shows a large explosion in a southern suburb of Beirut. The New York Times has determined that the blast occurred less than a mile from the airport, which is visible in the background of the video, and next to the Lebanese University’s Hadath Campus.

Hwaida Saad

The Lebanese ministry of health says that 95 people were killed and 172 wounded in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.

Natan Odenheimer

Moran Grunter, a resident of an Israeli village close to the Lebanese border, said in a phone interview that she could hear intense bombardments across the border — more than in recent days.

Helene Cooper

Reporting from Washington

The U.S. is sending a ‘few thousand’ more troops to the Middle East, the Pentagon says.

President Biden is sending a “few thousand” more troops to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Monday, as tensions rise amid Israel’s intensified attacks against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Defense Department officials said the additional forces would bolster security for the 40,000 U.S. troops already in the region and help with the defense of Israel.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said the deployment would include multiple fighter squadrons. Other officials said they would include F-15, F-16 and F-22 fighter jets as well as A-10 warplanes, adding substantially to American air capability.

The Pentagon declined to say exactly how many more troops were being deployed. But one official put the number at between 2,000 and 3,000.

The 40,000 American troops already in the region are stationed on bases in Iraq, Syria and other countries. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, in the Gulf of Oman, is on an extended deployment in the region, and a second aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, left Norfolk, Va., a week ago for the Mediterranean as part of a regularly scheduled deployment.

Last week, the Pentagon announced it was deploying additional troops to the region but declined to give a number.

Israeli commando units have made brief incursions into Lebanon in recent days to prepare for a possible wider ground invasion, according to several Israeli officers and officials and a senior Western official. But American officials said on Monday that they believed that the invasion would be limited.

The Israeli and Western officials said the raids were focused on gathering intelligence about Hezbollah’s positions near the border, as well as identifying the Iranian-backed group’s tunnels and military infrastructure, in order to attack them from the air or the ground. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter. The Israeli military declined to comment.

Hezbollah began attacking northern Israel soon after Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire since then.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned that “should Iran, its partners or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every necessary measure to defend our people,” according to a Pentagon statement.

Julian E. Barnes and Michael Crowley

Reporting from Washington

U.S. officials believe they have talked Israel out of a full Invasion of Lebanon.

American officials said on Monday that they believed they had persuaded Israel not to conduct a major ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

The understanding came after intense talks over the weekend. The United States saw some signs that Israel was preparing to move into Lebanon, and some American officials believed a major ground operation was imminent.

After the discussions, U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and diplomatic negotiations, said they believed Israel was planning only smaller, targeted incursions into southern Lebanon. The raids by Israeli special operations forces would be designed to eliminate fighting positions from which Hezbollah has attacked towns in northern Israel.

But Israeli officials assured their American counterparts that they did not intend to follow up those incursions with a bigger operation by conventional forces or by occupying parts of southern Lebanon. U.S. officials said they believed the commandos would quickly pull back after the operations were finished.

Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said Israeli officials told the United States that they were conducting “limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border” between Israel and Lebanon.

“Israel has a right to defend itself against Hezbollah,” Mr. Miller said, adding that “we want to ultimately see a diplomatic resolution to this conflict, one that allows citizens on both sides of the border to return to their homes.”

It is not clear if Israel has made a final decision, and it is possible that a full-scale invasion could still follow targeted raids, despite the White House’s concerns.

On Monday, after the raids became public, U.S. officials said the possibility of “mission creep” remained, and that Israel could decide it needed to support the raids with a larger force. But for now, American officials believe, Israel will not conduct a full-scale invasion.

U.S. officials have tried to prevent a wider regional conflict since the war in Gaza began last October after Hamas-led attacks in Israel.

Israel eventually cut back the intensity of its bombing campaign in Gaza, but months after the U.S. military had urged a shift to more targeted operations. The United States wanted the Israeli military to eschew major combat operations and said that operations in the city of Rafah needed to be more precise. The eventual Israeli operations in Rafah were extensive.

This month, some officials in the U.S. government have watched the Israeli operations against Hezbollah anxiously, fearing that the extensive attacks would provoke Iran to join the fight far more openly. But other officials believe that Israel’s actions have dramatically curbed Hezbollah’s military power. The risk of Iranian intervention remains, American officials said.

Still, to keep the wider conflict in check, American officials want to persuade Israel not to move large numbers of forces into Lebanon, and U.S. and French officials had been pushing for a cease-fire proposal. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel authorized the strike on Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the cease-fire plan was thrown into question.

At the State Department briefing, Mr. Miller said the proposal unveiled last week, which called for a 21-day cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, remained on the table. The United States is also pursuing a long-term diplomatic resolution which would require Hezbollah to withdraw forces from the border in accordance with United Nations requirements that Hezbollah has flouted.

“We should be clear that the burden of that diplomatic resolution falls not just on Israel, but on Hezbollah as well,” he said.

Despite hitting pause on the effort to broker a cease-fire, Americans have tried to convince Israeli officials that a ground invasion would be counterproductive.

American intelligence agencies stuck by their assessment throughout September that any sort of large-scale invasion of southern Lebanon would court disaster. While Israel’s strikes have diminished Hezbollah’s caches of weapons and hurt its ability to launch rocket attacks, the group’s forces maintain dug-in positions in the hilly and easily defended terrain of southern Lebanon.

The Hezbollah tunnel network largely remains intact, and American officials assessed that Hezbollah fighters would be able to move through it quickly to ambush advancing Israeli forces. Many of the tunnels are far bigger than the network Hamas built under Gaza, allowing Hezbollah to move large numbers of missiles and vehicles around southern Lebanon undetected.

Lauren Leatherby

Israel’s attack in central Beirut was its first there in years.

The overnight strike in the Cola neighborhood in Beirut appeared to have been the first known Israeli strike in the city center since 2006. Israel has struck the densely populated Dahiya area to the south many times recently, with most of those strikes coming after a massive bombing attack on Friday that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah there.

Israel struck the Dahiya on Jan. 2 for the first time since the war in Gaza began last October, targeting a Hamas official. It struck one other time before September, killing the senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr on July 30.

Along with Mr. Shukr, Israel killed two other members of Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council, in the area: Ibrahim Aqeel and Ali Karaki, who was killed alongside Nasrallah.

The strike on Mr. Aqeel killed at least 45 people, according to Lebanese authorities, including three children.

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