JERUSALEM, Israel - Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah warned Friday that Tel Aviv will be the first target in the next war with Israel, the Lebanese paper al-Akhbar reported.
Nasrallah's remarks referred to the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, when Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 Katyusha rockets on northern Israel. A cross-border attack by a Hezbollah terror cell on an IDF base sparked the month-long war.
"If Israel decided to wage a war against Lebanon, we will not only break the Israeli soldiers' bones, we will smash them," Nasrallah told Hezbollah members, according to the report.
"The war would be waged without any red lines," he warned, adding that the terror group "has many surprises that will change the face of the region."
Nasrallah has laid low since July, when the U.N. Special Tribunal on Lebanon issued arrest warrants for four senior members of Hezbollah for the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Nasrallah has consistently denied that Hezbollah had any part in the roadside bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others.
Last January, Hezbollah brought down the government of Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri, son of the slain premier, when he refused to distance himself from the U.N. Tribunal.
Five months later, Lebanon formed a new government, replacing Hariri with Sunni businessman Najib Mikati, who is said to have close ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.