Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warns Hezbollah Gaza missions are almost complete with a new focus emerging

Israeli forces are near to fulfilling their mission in the Gaza Strip and their focus will turn to the country’s northern border with Lebanon as daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah take place, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says.

“The centre of gravity is moving northward, we are near to completing our tasks in the south but our mission here is not yet done,” Gallant told troops on Israel’s northern border in a video sent by his office.

Gallant was attending a ground combat drill, his office said.

“These instructions that you are waiting for here today, I gave in the south and saw the forces operate,” Gallant said referring to Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip three weeks after the October 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.

The Lebanese group Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8 and the two sides have been trading fire since, with tens of thousands of civilians displaced on both sides of the border.

Israeli leaders have said they would prefer to resolve the conflict through an agreement that would push Iran-backed Hezbollah away from the border.

Hezbollah has said that it will continue fighting Israel as long as the war in the Gaza Strip is ongoing.

In separate remarks to journalists on Tuesday, Gallant said: “While we pursue an agreement, I have directed the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) to prepare for every scenario, including directing our attention to the northern arena. We are committed to changing the security situation on the northern front and to bringing our citizens home safely.”

Gallant told reporters that conditions are ripe for at least a six-week pause in the fighting that would include the release of many of the hostages still being held.

However, he would not commit to a permanent end to the fighting - a central Hamas demand.

The Israeli military on Tuesday said it killed a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force.

The group confirmed his death but not his role and said it fired rockets at Israeli army targets across the border in retaliation.

An Israeli strike hit a crowded Palestinian tent camp early on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and wounding 60, Palestinian officials said.

Israel said it targeted senior Hamas militants with precise munitions.

The overnight strike occurred in Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians to seek shelter from the nearly year-old Israel-Hamas war.

The Israeli military on Tuesday released video footage of a Gaza tunnel where it says six hostages were recently killed by Hamas.

The video shows a low, narrow passageway deep underground that had no bathroom and poor ventilation.

The discovery of the hostages’ bodies last month sparked a mass outpouring of anger in Israel, adding to pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining hostages home.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the footage of the tunnel had been shown to the hostages’ families and that it “was very hard for them to see how their loved ones survived in those conditions”.

The Hostages Families Forum, a group representing relatives of hostages, said in a statement that “time is running out” and called for an immediate deal to return those kidnapped.

“Every day that passes is a danger to their lives, hanging by a thread, at the mercy of terrorists capable of the worst crimes against humanity,” the group said.

Pathology tests on the bodies of the six, who were found by the military in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday, August 31, showed they had been killed sometime on the night of August 29, Hagari told reporters.

The United States and mediators Egypt and Qatar have spent much of this year trying to broker an agreement for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages but the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israel and Hamas have accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands.

with AP