This escalation between Israel and the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, raises fears of an uncontrollable spiral, worrying the international community.
The Israeli army, which is pounding the south and east of the neighboring country, also announced a “targeted strike” in Beirut. A source close to Hezbollah said that the commander of the southern front of this formation had been targeted in the southern suburbs of the capital, without specifying his fate.
The human toll has continued to rise over the hours. The Israeli strikes have left 356 dead, including 24 children, and more than 1,240 injured, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced in a new tally this evening.
“Plan of destruction”
In a video, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recommended at the end of the day that the Lebanese “move away from dangerous areas” while waiting for the end of the “operation”.
His Lebanese counterpart, Najib Mikati, denounced “a plan to destroy” his country, where schools will remain closed on Tuesday.
“It’s a catastrophe, a massacre,” Jamal Badrane, a doctor at the Secours Populaire hospital in Nabatiyeh, a southern city, told AFP. “The strikes haven’t stopped, they bombed us while we were removing the wounded,” he said.
Hezbollah’s “800 targets”
Thousands of families have been displaced from bombed areas in panic, Abiad said. Concern has also spread to the capital, Beirut, where residents and offices have received Israeli warning messages on their phones.
Displaced people from the south were streaming into the capital and Saida in the evening, being taken in by reception centres, AFP photographers observed.
The Israeli army announced that it had struck “around 800 targets” of Hezbollah during the day, which has been firing rockets into Israeli territory for nearly a year in support of the Palestinian Hamas, which is at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
“We are mainly targeting combat infrastructure,” said army chief of staff Gen. Herzi Halevi, adding that the army was “preparing for the next phases” of the operation.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel was shifting the “balance of power” in the north of the country, where it is determined to allow the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents, during a security meeting in Tel Aviv, according to his office.
The army announced new “large-scale” strikes on the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon, whose residents, like those in the south, have been urged to move away from the Islamist movement’s weapons depots.
Warning sirens in Haifa
Hezbollah, for its part, claimed to have responded with dozens of rockets fired into northern Israel, specifying that they had targeted the army’s “main warehouses” in the area, and a military barracks.
Early in the evening, air raid sirens sounded in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, as residents rushed to air raid shelters. Rocket fire hit the Haifa area for the first time on Sunday.
In nearly a year, violence between Israel and Hezbollah has left hundreds dead in Lebanon, mainly fighters, and dozens dead in Israel and the occupied Golan.
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel that killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that include hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
(afp)
