BEIRUT, Aug 9: A defiant Hezbollah chief vowed on Wednesday to turn south Lebanon into a ‘graveyard’ for invading Israeli troops, hours after the Jewish state ordered an expanded ground offensive.

In a televised speech, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Israeli attacks had not weakened its rocket capabilities and called on the Arab residents of Haifa to quit the Israeli city to avoid being hurt by the guerilla group’s barrages.

“You won’t be able to stay in our land, and if you come in, we’ll force you out,” said Hassan Nasrallah in a recorded speech shown on Hezbollah’s television station.

“We will turn our precious southern land into a graveyard for the invading Zionists.”

Nasrallah, whose group waged a war of attrition instrumental in ending Israel’s 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, said that the United States was trying to impose Israeli demands on Lebanon through the draft resolution to end the fighting.

Nasrallah said his group supported a decision by the Lebanese government, which includes a Hezbollah minister, to deploy 15,000 troops to the border if that would bolster Lebanon’s calls for the resolution to include a demand for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from the south.

“The least you can say about this resolution is that it is unjust and oppressive,” the Hezb chief said.—Reuters