Israel Pounds Area Near Beirut Amid Signs of a Widening Offensive

The Israeli military kept up its heavy bombing of a once densely populated area adjoining Beirut on Friday after saying its ground troops were battling new targets in southern Lebanon, signaling a widening of the fighting that could further undercut cease-fire efforts.

The airstrikes on the Dahiya area south of Beirut, where the militant group Hezbollah holds sway, were the latest in a string of bombings this week. The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings just after dawn on Friday, and missiles began landing soon afterward, leveling at least one high-rise residential building that had been identified in the warnings and sending a thick dust cloud through the surrounding streets.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. Most residents fled the Dahiya weeks ago, when Israel’s bombing campaign began.

There were also signs that Israel’s ground invasion was broadening and that its troops were battling Hezbollah fighters deeper inside Lebanese territory.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that its commandos were conducting ground operations against “several new enemy targets” in Lebanon. A senior Lebanese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, said Israeli ground forces were operating around the town of Chamaa, roughly three miles from the border.

Hezbollah also said overnight that it had attacked Israeli soldiers near Tayr Harfa, a town south of Chamaa that it described as part of its “secondary line” of defense and where clashes had not been previously reported. On Friday, the group said it had fired rockets at Israeli troops on the outskirts of Talloussah, another town where fighting had not been previously reported.

A widening Israeli offensive would undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts to stem the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The Biden administration has renewed a push to contain the fighting after rounds of shuttle diplomacy over the past year failed.

Israel has demanded that Hezbollah withdraw from areas near the Israel-Lebanon border as part of any truce. Israel has also insisted that any cease-fire deal preserve its right to attack Hezbollah again should the group violate the terms of a truce, a stance that the Lebanese government and Hezbollah strongly oppose.

There has been no public indication that Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, are willing to acquiesce to Israel’s demands. While Hezbollah’s leaders and weapon stockpiles have been hit hard, the group still poses a formidable threat, firing rockets and drones into Israel daily and killing six Israeli soldiers on Wednesday in southern Lebanon.

A prominent Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met on Friday with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss the cease-fire efforts, the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said. Hezbollah is Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, and any diplomatic settlement would almost certainly be contingent on Tehran’s approval. A day earlier, Mr. Larijani was in Syria, where he met with President Bashar al-Assad.

Two Iranians affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said Mr. Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had passed along messages to Hezbollah from Mr. Khamenei that said he supported ending the war with Israel, and that Iran would continue its support and help the group rebuild its forces and recover from the war.

The Iranians, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the Iranian leader had also told Hezbollah to accept the terms of a cease-fire deal demanding it move its forces north, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a previous round of fighting between Israel and the armed group.

Asked to comment on reports that U.S. officials had given the Lebanese government a draft cease-fire proposal, Mr. Larijani said his visit had not been intended to “undermine” U.S.-led diplomatic efforts, Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported.

“We want to solve the problem,” Mr. Larijani said.

This month, Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the U.S.-led efforts to stem the conflict with Israel futile, saying that the only way to end the war was “on the battlefield.” Still, he did not reject the potential for negotiations on suitable terms.

“We are ready for a long war,” he warned.

Israel began an intensified military campaign against Hezbollah in September, nearly a year after the group began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli offensive set off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, displacing nearly a quarter of the population and buckling the country’s health system.

Although Israel’s military leaders had hoped to conduct a limited ground operation that focused solely on the first line of Lebanese villages along Israel’s northern border, they decided to slightly expand that range, Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said in an interview.

The reason, he said, was that Israeli military officials realized they needed to do more to clear out Hezbollah’s military installations and believed that a broader offensive could force the group into making a diplomatic settlement on terms favorable to Israel.

“There’s an understanding that we need to ramp up the pressure and clear out a greater area, and that’s what they’re doing” Mr. Avivi said.