Israel launched a relentless wave of air strikes against what it said were Hizbollah targets on Monday, killing almost 500 people in Lebanon’s deadliest day for decades and pushing the region closer to all-out war.
Israeli warplanes struck hundreds of targets across the country, including Beirut’s southern suburbs, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government stepped up its assault on Hizbollah in a “new phase” of the war that it has named Operation Northern Arrows.
The bombardment heightened concerns about escalating hostilities in the Middle East and spread panic across Lebanon, sending tens of thousands fleeing targeted areas.
Monday’s death toll was the highest since Israel launched a ground offensive against Hizbollah in 2006, and came despite the US on Sunday warning the Jewish state against opening a full-blown war with the Iranian-backed militant group.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 58 women and 35 children were among 492 people who had died, with a further 1,645 injured.
Roads in southern Lebanon were packed with cars as civilians fled north towards Beirut and schools across the country were turned into emergency shelters for the displaced.
The US late on Monday repeated its warning about the risk of the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict escalating. “The risk of escalation is real,” said White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre. “We continue to believe a diplomatic resolution is both achievable and urgent.”
She added the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah has gone on “long enough”, and “it’s in everyone’s interest to resolve it quickly and diplomatically”.
The Israel Defense Forces said they had hit some 1,300 Hizbollah targets and would continue to strike buildings where it believed the militant group was storing weapons, warning civilians to evacuate.
“We are not waiting for the threat, we are pre-empting it,” Netanyahu said as the Israeli prime minister warned of “complex days” ahead.
“We are eliminating senior figures, terrorists and missiles . . . I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north — that is exactly what we are doing.”
The Israeli cabinet approved a “special [emergency] situation” across the country that allows the military more latitude to restrict civilian life and activities because of the war in anticipation of a fierce Hizbollah response.
Israel issued several warnings throughout the course of Monday, urging civilians to leave any buildings where Hizbollah stored weapons, first in southern Lebanon and then in the Bekaa Valley in the country’s east. Both are areas where Hizbollah has long had a major presence.
Beirut residents said they received warning calls on their landlines from the Israeli military ordering inhabitants of villages in targeted areas to leave.
Lebanon’s health minister Firas Abiad said the Israeli strikes had targeted medical centres, ambulances, and fire trucks, adding two paramedics had been killed and 16 injured.
“They even targeted caravans of the displaced — people’s cars as they were fleeing to safer areas,” he told reporters.
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response, Hizbollah said it had fired dozens of missiles at multiple targets in northern Israel including a site owned by the Rafael defence company north of Haifa.
It stressed the attacks “in defence of Lebanon and its people” were focused on military targets.
Hizbollah also said one of its senior commanders, Ali Karaki, was “alive and well” after media reports that he had been targeted in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The US embassy in Israel on Monday evening issued a travel advisory restricting American government employees from travelling in certain northern areas of the country, saying “any official travel in this area will require approval”. It added that approved travel must take “place only in armoured vehicles”.
Sirens sounded multiple times in northern Israel throughout the day. But fewer rockets hit population centres in Israel than on Sunday, when Hizbollah hit the suburbs of Haifa.
One strike hit a private home in the village of Givat Avni in the Galilee, Israeli media reported.
Rockets were also intercepted over the occupied West Bank, a regional council for Israeli settlements in the area said.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told the country’s citizens to prepare for a more intense response. “We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the sequence of operations continues,” he said. “Ahead of us are days when the public will have to show composure, discipline.”
The escalation has stoked fears a full-blown land war could be imminent.
Asked about the possibility of a land incursion into southern Lebanon, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, said the country would continue to “do whatever is needed” to prevent Hizbollah from being able to strike northern Israel and to allow local residents to return to their homes.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel was seeking to “trap” his country in a wider war. “They are dragging us to a point where we do not wish to go,” he told reporters.
The Israeli air strikes prompted chaotic scenes across Lebanon.
Videos in Lebanese media showed explosions rocking villages in the Bekaa Valley, and paramedics and residents picking their way through rubble following one strike. Schools closed across Lebanon’s southern and Bekaa regions as well as in southern Beirut.
The Lebanese health ministry asked all hospitals in the country’s south and east to halt non-urgent surgeries to make room for those injured in the Israeli strikes. Hospitals in the north of Israel also began relocating operations further south away from the fighting.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said during a cabinet meeting that the Israeli attacks were a “war of extermination”.
Citing UN secretary-general António Guterres, who warned on Sunday that southern Lebanon could turn into “another Gaza”, Mikati called on the international community “to pressure Israel to end its aggression”.
The hostilities follow mass detonations last week of Hizbollah’s communications devices that killed 37 people and injured more than 3,000 across Lebanon, and which the militant group blamed on Israel.
The Jewish state has not directly confirmed or denied responsibility.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz and Mehul Srivastava
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