Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah issued explicit threats towards Israel this week, boasting that the Lebanese terror group could defeat the Jewish state in a future conflict by targeting the city of Haifa’s ammonia storage tanks, resulting in mass Israeli fatalities.
In a speech that was broadcast by the Lebanese Naharnet news site on Tuesday, Nasrallah said an attack on Haifia would result in casualties equivalent to those that would be caused by a nuclear attack. He stated: “This would be exactly as a nuclear bomb, and we can say that Lebanon today has a nuclear bomb, seeing as any rocket that might hit these tanks is capable of creating a nuclear bomb effect”.
Hours after Nasrallah issued the threat to strike Haifa, Environmental Protection Minister Avi Gabbai said he had ordered that the ammonia storage facility be moved to the Negev desert.
In his speech however, Nasrallah dismissed reports of a possible outbreak of hostilities with Israel.
The Hezbollah leader has made a number of similar statements threatening Israel in recent times. In January 2015, Nasrallah said that his organisation “have made all necessary preparations for a future war with Israel”, in an interview aired on Lebanese TV.
In November 2014, he stated that Hezbollah’s rockets are capable of striking “every inch” of Israel, and warned that Israel would “have to close down the Ben Gurion Airport and the Haifa port”.
Hezbollah forces are currently deeply engaged in supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, providing thousands of fighters over three and a half years, of which hundreds have reportedly been killed.
