Nasrallah vows response to any Israeli attack in Lebanon

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday pledged to respond against any Israeli attack in Lebanon following last week's major cross-border escalation.

Describing the flare-up as “an important and major event,” Nasrallah said that Hezbollah’s “policy of silence is the best choice in managing the battle with the enemy.”

“There is no need to delve into details or answer questions that the enemy is still confused about,” Nasrallah added.

“The Israelis themselves acknowledge that the balance of deterrence is what made their response to what happened in the South limited and silly,” Hezbollah’s leader went on to say.

He added: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Netanyahu is threatening the resistance and threatening me personally, and we as a resistance in Lebanon also tell him, ‘We will see.’ Days are between us and his calculations and interpretation might be wrong.”

Nasrallah accordingly vowed that Hezbollah “will respond in the appropriate manner against any attack or security act in Lebanon.”

Nasrallah also said that Israel did not hit Hamas or Hezbollah targets in last week's strikes on southern Lebanon.

The strikes last Friday in south Lebanon came a day after militants fired nearly three dozen rockets from there at Israel, wounding two people and causing some property damage. The Israeli military said it had targeted installations of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, in southern Lebanon.

Speaking at an a ceremony in Beirut's southern suburbs marking "Quds Day," or Jerusalem Day — an annual show of support for the Palestinians held on the last Friday of every Islamic holy month of Ramadan — Nasrallah called the Israeli statements "a barefaced lie" and that "no Hezbollah or Hamas infrastructure was struck."

Rather, he said, the Israelis hit "banana groves" and a water irrigation channel. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

While Israeli military officials have not said they hit any Hezbollah targets, Netanyahu in a speech Monday said Israel had targeted both Hamas and Hezbollah infrastructure. Nasrallah called this "the biggest lie."

According to Associated Press reporters on the ground, several missiles fired by Israeli warplanes struck an open field in the town of Qlayleh, near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, close to the coastal southern city of Tyre.

Others struck a bridge and power transformer in the nearby town of Maaliya and a farm on the outskirts of Rashidiyeh, killing several sheep. No human deaths were reported.