Israel yesterday announced dozens of new airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, a day after 558 people, including 50 children, were killed in the deadliest bombardment since a devastating war in 2006.
Israel’s overnight strikes on southern Lebanon came after it said it had killed a “large number” of militants when it hit about 1,600 suspected Hezbollah targets nationwide.
Hezbollah yesterday said that it had launched volleys of missiles at Israeli military bases, hours after 180 of its projectiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles crossed into Israeli airspace, sending people in the city of Haifa running for shelter.
Photo: AFP
The Israeli military said more than 50 projectiles were fired into northern Israel in less than 10 minutes yesterday morning, most of which were intercepted.
It said it had carried out more strikes during the morning targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.
“The vast majority, if not all, of those killed in yesterday’s [Monday’s] attacks were unarmed people in their homes,” Lebanese Minister of Public Health Firass Abiad said.
The UN said that tens of thousands of Lebanese had fled their homes since Monday, in the face of the intensifying Israeli bombardment.
“Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes yesterday and overnight, and the numbers continue to grow,” UN refugee agency spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said, adding that “the toll on civilians is unacceptable.”
“It was a day of terror,” 41-year-old housewife Thuraya Harb said at a makeshift center for displaced families in Beirut after fleeing her home in south Lebanon.
“I didn’t want to leave my home, but the children were scared,” the mother of four said, adding that the family fled “with nothing but the clothes on our backs.”
Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire for nearly a year, since Palestinian militant group Hamas staged an unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
Hezbollah, which has been fighting Israel for decades, and other Iran-backed militants in the region have been drawn into the violence.
Monday’s bombardment of Lebanon was by far the largest and deadliest, not just in the past year, but since the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006.
That war killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, and devastated large swathes of Hezbollah’s strongholds.
Hezbollah backer Iran, which arms, trains and funds the group, condemned the raids, with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian yesterday saying that its ally “cannot stand alone” against Israel.
“Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by Western countries, by European countries and the United States,” Pezeshkian said in an interview with CNN. “We must not allow Lebanon to become another Gaza at the hands of Israel.”
Other leaders have expressed alarm over the rapid escalation, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman saying he was “gravely alarmed” and High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell warning “we are almost in a full-fledged war.”
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