A senior Hizbullah official on Wednesday mocked IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, and said all of Israel was within his group's range of fire.
A Hizbullah supporter holds a poster of Nasrallah during a rally to mark the third anniversary of the Second Lebanon War in a southern suburb of Beirut.
Photo: AP
"Ashkenazi's threats are baseless and are an attempt to draw attention away from the enemy's defeat in Gaza and in Lebanon," Mahmoud Kamati said in an interview with Al-Jazeera. He went on to boast that "all the cities and all Israeli military and industrial centers are within Hizbullah's fire range."
Kamati was responding to remarks by Ashkenazi on Tuesday, when he told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that "Hizbullah operatives in Lebanon are in possession of tens of thousands of rockets, with a range of up to 325 kilometers."
The Hizbullah official went on to warn that if the IAF bombed Beirut, Hizbullah would retaliate by bombing Tel Aviv.
"The enemy knows that defeat under the current circumstances would be a critical defeat that would change the balance of power in favor of Hizbullah, leading to the destruction of the Zionist entity," Kamati said.
In the briefing on Tuesday, the IDF chief told MKs that Israel was working to prevent weapons smuggling from a plethora of locations in the region, noting last week's raid on the Francop, on which hundreds of tons of weaponry bound for Hizbullah were discovered.
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski [file]
Kamati, however, denied that the weapons were bound for Hizbullah, calling such claims a "ridiculous lie."
Also on Wednesday, a military court in Lebanon sentenced a Lebanese soldier and his wife to death, after the couple were found guilty of spying for Israel, Israel Radio reported.
The court also sentenced the defendant's sister and her husband, who are reportedly living in Israel, to death.
According to the report, the four were found guilty of contacting Israeli agents in order to assist in case of an Israeli attack on Lebanon.
