TEL AVIV- Israel accused Lebanon’s Hizbullah guerrillas on Wednesday, Jan. 29, of putting “thousands” of bases in residential buildings and said it would destroy these in a future conflict, even at the cost of civilian lives.

The unusually explicit threat by air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel appeared to be part of an effort by Israeli officials to prepare world opinion for high civilian casualties in any new confrontation with Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Israel says Iran and Syria have supplied improved missiles to Hizbullah, which fought the technologically superior Israeli military to a standstill in a 2006 war in Lebanon.

“We will have to deal aggressively with thousands of Hizbullah bases which threaten the State of Israel and mainly our interior,” Eshel said in a speech, citing Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon among the locations of the bases.

Other Israeli officials have alleged that Hizbullah uses Lebanese civilian homes as missile silos or gun nests. Eshel said the guerrillas sometimes had entire floors of residential buildings ready, under lock and key, to be used in combat.

“Above and below live civilians whom we have nothing against – a kind of human shield,” he told the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, a think-tank near Tel Aviv.

“And that is where the war will be. That is where we will have to fight in order to stop it and win. Whoever stays in these bases will simply be hit and will risk their lives. And whoever goes out will live.”

Much of Hizbullah’s attention is currently devoted to Syria, where its fighters have been helping President Bashar al-Assad battle an almost three-year-old insurgency.