Israeli airstrikes toward Hezbollah killed more than 270 people in Lebanon on Monday, marking a major flare in a year-long conflict and Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades, Lebanese officials said.
The minister said 274 people had been killed, including 21 children and 39 women, while more than 1,020 were wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon’s highest daily death toll from violence since the civil war that ended in 1990.
Tens of thousands of people were fleeing southern Lebanon “due to Israeli atrocities,” the Lebanese minister co-ordinating the crisis response, Nasser Yassin, told Reuters.
Israel’s military on Monday targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, eastern Bekaa Valley and northern region near Syria in its most widespread strikes. The military then said Monday evening that it had carried out a targeted strike in Beirut, without giving specific details.
After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to its northern border, from where Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of its ally Hamas. In a statement late Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets.
In a recorded message to Lebanese civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged them to heed Israeli calls to evacuate, saying “take this warning seriously.”
“Please get out of harm’s way now,” Netanyahu said. “Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes.”
Netanyahu, earlier in the day after a situational assessment at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, said Israel faced “complicated days” as it stepped up attacks against Hezbollah, and he called on Israelis to stay united as the campaign unfolded.
The Israeli military said it had struck around 800 targets connected to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in southern Lebanon and the area of the Bekaa Valley on Monday.
In response, Hezbollah said it had targeted a military base in northern Israel with dozens of missiles.
The U.S. said Monday it is sending additional troops to the Middle East as the spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon has raised the risk of a greater regional war.
Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder would provide no details on how many additional forces or what they would be tasked to do. The U.S. currently has about 40,000 troops in the region.
‘A psychological war’
Israeli aircraft are preparing to attack Hezbollah strategic weapons stashed in houses in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, the Israeli military spokesperson said, calling on civilians to evacuate immediately.
“The sights now from south Lebanon are of secondary explosions of Hezbollah weapons, which are exploding inside houses. In every house we are attacking there are weapons. Rockets, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles that were meant for and aimed at killing Israeli civilians,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement.
People in Beirut rushed to schools on Monday to gather children as tensions rose between Israel and Hezbollah. The move came after people in the south received calls from a Lebanese number ordering them to move away from buildings used by Hezbollah.
The airstrikes have intensified pressure on Hezbollah, which last week suffered an attack its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called “unprecedented” in the history of the group, after thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.
The operation was widely blamed on Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.
Residents of southern Lebanon received calls from a Lebanese number ordering them to immediately distance themselves 1,000 metres from any post used by Hezbollah, said a Reuters reporter who received the call in the south.
Evacuation calls have been received on phones as far as the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary said his ministry had received a similar call ordering the building to evacuate, but said the ministry would do no such thing.
“This is a psychological war,” Makary told Reuters.
A Lebanese person living in Beirut’s Manara area told Reuters that her family received a call on their landline.
“So they were freaking out. I am freaking out as well, because we thought somehow the area we live in is safe because we’re surrounded by ambassadors,” said the person.
Lebanon received more than 80,000 suspected Israeli call attempts asking people to evacuate their areas, Imad Kreidieh, the head of telecom company Ogero, told Reuters on Monday.
UN calls to de-escalate in Lebanon, Gaza
The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon expressed “grave concern” for the safety of civilians in the south.
“Any further escalation of this dangerous situation could have far-reaching and devastating consequences, not only for those living on both sides of the Blue Line [the border between Lebanon and Israel] but also for the broader region,” it said in a statement. It added that “attacks on civilians are not only violations of international law but may amount to war crimes.”
Suffering from a financial meltdown, Lebanon can ill-afford to face another war like the one that erupted in 2006, when Israel pounded the country during a month-long conflict with Hezbollah, inflicting heavy damage to infrastructure.
In the eastern Beirut district of Sassine, state employee Joseph Ghafary said he feared Hezbollah would respond to Israel’s intensified strikes and that a full-blown war would break out.
“If Hezbollah carries out a major operation, Israel will respond and destroy more than this. We can’t bear it,” he said. “Israel wants to strike, it wants to keep going, meaning it is squeezing Sayyed Hassan [Nasrallah] to start a war. It is definitely dangerous.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani condemned the strikes and warned of “dangerous consequences” for Israel.