TEL AVIV: An Israeli security official said on Friday that any ground operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon would be carried out as swiftly as possible.

“We will try to do it as short as we can,” the official told journalists, speaking anonymously in line with security rules. “I think that we are preparing that every day, and for sure that is inside our toolbox.”

The comments came as Israel and Hezbollah traded fire after the United States and its allies failed to secure a halt in clashes that have killed more than 700 people in Lebanon this week.

The Israeli security official said the Israeli strikes had killed many Hezbollah fighters.

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“I think that they lost many capabilities,” the official said.

Beyond degrading Hezbollah’s capacity to fire on Israel, the goal of Israeli military operations in Lebanon are to kill its military leadership and “clean” border areas so displaced Israelis can return to their homes in the north.

Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, raised the possibility of a ground operation against Hezbollah this week, and the security official said on Friday that “all options are on the table”.

Hezbollah began firing on Israel on October 8 last year, a day after Hamas’s brutal attack on southern Israel triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.

Since Monday, Israeli warplanes have bombarded Hezbollah strongholds around the country, sparking an exodus of about 118,000 people, the UN says.

During that time more than 700 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the health ministry.

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The security official pushed back on accusations that the Israeli strikes were killing civilians in large numbers, calling the campaign “very precise, very accurate”.

“It’s not like they publish the names of the dead. Many of them were Hezbollah,” he said, though he also accused Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields.

“This phenomenon of putting ballistic missiles inside an apartment, it’s crazy. Cruise missiles in the living room. Every morning you say hello to your wife, hello to the cruise missile.”