Lebanon's Hezbollah leader said on Wednesday that no part of Israel would be safe if full-scale war broke out between the two sides, and issued a warning to Cyprus and other parts of the Mediterranean.
Hezbollah has been engaged in an artillery exchange with Israel for more than eight months in parallel with the Gaza war.
On Tuesday, the Iranian-backed group released drone footage of a sensitive military facility deep inside Israeli territory.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Wednesday that in the event of a wider war “nowhere will be safe from our missiles and drones” in Israel.
He also said the group had a “range of targets” that could be targeted for precision attacks.
“Israel knows that there is a very big threat in the Mediterranean,” Nasrallah added, without giving details.
The group first demonstrated its ability to attack shipping at sea, attacking Israeli warships in the Mediterranean during the 2006 war.
Media and analysts have long reported that Hezbollah acquired Russian-made Yakont anti-ship missiles after deploying to Syria more than a decade ago to support President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war.
Nasrallah also threatened Cyprus for the first time, saying it was allowing Israel to use its airports and bases for military exercises.
“The Cypriot government needs to be warned that opening Cypriot airports and bases to Israel's enemies to attack Lebanon means that it will become part of the war and the resistance (Hezbollah) will treat it as part of the war,” Nasrallah said.
Cyprus is not known to provide land or basing facilities to the Israeli military, but in the past has allowed Israel to use Cyprus' vast airspace, or Flight Information Region (FIR), to conduct occasional air training, but never during the conflict.
Military bases under British sovereignty are used for operations in Syria and, more recently, Yemen, although the Cypriot government has no say in the matter. There are two British bases in Cyprus, which was a colony until 1960.
