Hezbollah deputy chief says group aims to inflict pain on Israel

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah's deputy secretary general Naim Qassem said on Tuesday his group has adopted "a new calculation" to inflict pain on Israel, even as he called for a ceasefire.

Israel launched a major offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah on Sept. 23 with the aim of allowing residents of northern Israel to return to homes they had been forced to evacuate during a year of cross-border rocket fire from Lebanon.

"The solution is a ceasefire, we are not speaking from a position of weakness," Qassem said. "If the Israelis do not want that, we will continue," he added in a broadcast speech.

Qassem said that residents of northern Israel would be able to return home after a ceasefire deal is reached through an indirect agreement.

But he threatened that more Israelis will be displaced if the war continues, saying that "the number of uninhabited settlements will increase, and hundreds of thousands, even more than two million, will be in danger at any time, at any hour, on any day".

He added that since Israel has attacked all over Lebanon, the group has the right to attack anywhere in Israel.

"We will focus on targeting the Israeli military and its centres and barracks," he said.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,309 people in Lebanon over the last year, mainly in the last few weeks, according to the Lebanese government. More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam, Maya Gebeily and Clauda Tanios; Editing by Michael Georgy, Tom Perry, Peter Graff)