TEL AVIV, September 24. /TASS/. Hezbollah suffered several serious blows and Israel is set to keep them coming, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.

He made the statement as he spoke to troops after a drill that simulated a ground offensive in Lebanon.

"Today’s Hezbollah is not the Hezbollah of a week ago. The sequence of blows it faced to its command and control, its operatives, its weapons, all these things are extremely severe blows," Gallant said in comments released by the Defense Ministry.

"I trust the Israel Defense Forces and everything it does, and we have more blows ready," Galant continued.

He said the Israeli military "knows what to do and how."

"It is necessary to achieve the goal of safely returning the residents of northern Israel to their homes," Gallant said. "You understand that there may come a moment when we give an order and the system will move forward, so it is necessary to make preparations. It is very important."

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from Gaza, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking about 250 hostages, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as retaliation for the aggressive actions taken by Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel declared a total siege of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the crisis, following with air strikes on Gaza and some parts of Lebanon and Syria before starting a ground operation in the Palestinian enclave.

Against this background, tensions continue to rise on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Since October 8, 2023, ongoing cross-border strikes on Israel from Lebanon’s territory have prompted return fire from Israeli forces, who, according to military reports, are targeting Hezbollah sites. To date, approximately 80,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel.