Israel's goal with the operation is to take over the entire area south of the Litani River and knock out the military infrastructure of the Shiite militia Hezbollah, Israeli and American sources with insight told Axios.
According to Axios, such a ground operation could be the largest Israel has launched against Lebanon since 2006 and would put the country at the center of the escalating war with Iran.
"Not sure"
In Lebanon, 800,000 people have already been displaced by the war, and since March 2, 26 health workers have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Health Ministry. Twelve of them were killed in an attack on a health clinic in southern Lebanon on Friday. Another 50 health workers have been injured in the war.
The attacks on the country continued on Saturday. A residential building in the capital Beirut was hit overnight by an Israeli attack for the second time in two days, Lebanese media reported.
"All the neighbors are scared," says a person in a neighboring house.
There are no reports of fatalities.
"You are not safe anywhere, you never know where an attack will come from," says Hanadi Hachem, who is still wearing pajamas and sleeping with part of her family in the car for fear of attacks.
Israel is also targeting southern Lebanon, where a residential building is reported to have been hit.
"The attacks used to be targeted at a specific area, but now they are attacking everywhere," says a person who fled Beirut.
One dead, two injured in Baghdad
In Eyvan, in western Iran, six people from the same family were killed in a single attack early Saturday morning, the judiciary news website Mizan reported. One of the victims was a six-month-old baby.
The Israeli military also warned residents of an industrial area west of Tabriz in northern Iran on Saturday and urged them to leave the area.
Iran has in turn carried out attacks on Israel and countries around the Persian Gulf. Explosions were heard in the Qatari capital Doha early on Saturday night, according to AFP journalists. The US embassy in Baghdad was damaged in an attack, and one person was reported killed when a house in the capital was hit in another attack.
Tensions are also rising after a US attack overnight on military targets on the Iranian island of Kharg, through which around 90 percent of Iran's oil exports pass.
