Hezbollah says ready for any Israeli attack

Beirut: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday he had asked his fighters in south Lebanon to be on alert for the possibility of an Israeli attack on Lebanon.

"I have asked the brothers in the resistance in the south specifically to be present, on alert and cautious because we are facing a criminal enemy and we don't know the magnitude of the conspiracies," Nasrallah told a religious gathering in Beirut's southern suburb.

They were his first comments on a bloody Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip.

Nasrallah on Sunday urged Egyptians in their "millions" to take to the streets to force their government to open the country's border with Gaza, where Israel is conducting deadly air raids against Palestinians. "If the people took to the streets by the millions, could the police kill millions of Egyptians?" Nasrallah said in a televised address.

"People of Egypt, you must open this border by the force of your chests," he said. If Egypt did not open the Rafah Crossing to Gaza, he added, it would be considered a partner in the killing of Palestinians by the Israeli military.

Nasrallah says he has asked members of his group to be on alert in southern Lebanon in case Israel attacks.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah is ready to confront any Israeli "aggression" against Lebanon. He did not threaten to open a war with Israel but said he feared a possible attack.

Nasrallah was speaking from a secret location through a giant screen to hundreds of supporters who gathered in Hezbollah's stronghold of Beirut's southern suburbs.

Hezbollah fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006 that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 159 in Israel.