Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that Israel will receive "just punishment" for the communications device explosions that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 over two days.
Israel will face "tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not," Nasrallah said in his first speech since the blasts, adding that he would not give further details of the place, timing or nature of Hezbollah's response.
Even as he delivered his televised address, Israeli warplanes violently broke the sound barrier over Beirut after flying at low altitude and releasing heat-deflecting balloons.
Nasrallah added that Israel will not be able to return residents of the north displaced by 11 months of cross-border exchanges to their homes through military escalation.
"You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north," Nasrallah said addressing Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He warned that "no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border."
“The only way to return the displaced to the north is to halt the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah also announced the launch of an internal probe into the explosion of the hundreds of communication devices used by group operatives across Lebanon.
Admitting that the deadly device explosions was “a major, harsh and unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah, Nasrallah stressed that “this major and powerful blow has not and will not defeat us.”
“We have received messages that the objective behind this strike is to halt the fighting on the Lebanese front, and threats that there will be more if we don’t stop,” he said, reassuring that “the broad bombings did not affect the resistance’s structure.”
“Readiness was high on the ground as a precaution for any military action,” he revealed.