Israel attacked hundreds of Hezbollah targets on Monday in airstrikes that Lebanese health authorities said killed at least 274 people, making it the deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly a year of conflict.
After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since the conflict flared, Israel warned people to evacuate areas where it said the armed group was storing weapons.
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.
Israel’s military on Monday targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, eastern Bekaa Valley and northern region near Syria in its most widespread strikes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel faced “complicated days” as it stepped up attacks against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and called on Israelis to stay united as the campaign unfolded.
“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north — that is exactly what we are doing,” he said in a message following a situational assessment at military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Earlier, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the actions would continue until “we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes,” setting the stage for a long conflict as Hezbollah has vowed to fight on until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
At least 274 people, including 21 children and 31 women, were killed and 1,024 wounded in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon on Monday, the country’s health minister said during a press conference.
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.
‘Freaking out’ in Beirut
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, a Reuters reporter in the south, who received the call, said.
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.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 41,455 Palestinians have been killed. It does not say how many were fighters, but says women and children make up over half of the dead.
The heads of UN agencies on Monday called for “an end to the appalling human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip, as world leaders gathered in New York for the annual UN General Assembly.