Jerusalem: Israel's military said a large number of Hezbollah militants were killed in strikes targeting the group in Lebanon on Monday, after Lebanon's health ministry gave an overall death toll of at least 356 people, including 24 children, in the deadliest cross-border escalation since the Gaza war erupted.
"Among those killed were a large number of Hezbollah terrorists who were next to the weapons that we targeted," military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press briefing, adding that "secondary explosions" of weapons stores were responsible for some of the casualties. He did not provide a figure.
Arab states sharply condemned Israel over the sharpest escalation in nearly a year of Israel-Hezbollah hostilities.
The war began when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched the worst-ever attack on Israel, with Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups around the region drawn into the violence.
Israel targets Hezbollah southern front commander
Israel said it hit about 1,300 Hezbollah sites in southern and eastern Lebanon in 24 hours, including a "targeted strike" in Beirut. A source close to Hezbollah said the strike in the Lebanese capital targeted Ali Karake, the group's third in command.
"The target of the Israeli strike was Ali Karake, the current commander of the southern front and the third-in-command after" two top commanders who were both killed in Israeli strikes in the southern suburbs in recent weeks, said the source requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. It was unclear whether he had been killed, the source said.
Lebanon's Hezbollah said commander Ali Karake was alive and had moved to safety. In a statement, the Iran-backed movement said "commander Ali Karake is well... and has moved to a safe place".
State media reported new raids in eastern Lebanon, while Hezbollah said it targeted five sites in Israel.
Air raid sirens sound in Haifa
In the coastal Israeli city of Haifa, people were seen running for cover when air raid sirens sounded.
"Sirens sounded in the city of Haifa and surrounding areas, northern Israel," the Israeli army said in a statement.
The strikes by the "Israeli enemy" in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa and Baalbek in the east "killed 356 people, including 24 children and 42 women, and injured 1,246", said the health ministry.
Health Minister Firass Abiad said "thousands of families" had been displaced.
"We sleep and wake up to bombardment... that's what our life has become," said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the southern village of Zawtar.
World powers implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply from Israel's southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.
Egypt - a key mediator in the Gaza conflict - urged the UN Security Council to intervene following Israel's "dangerous escalation", while the Iraqi appealed for an urgent meeting of Arab states on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas
About 5,000 people had been wounded "in less than a week" of Israeli attacks, he said, after Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded and an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs.
That number accounts for about half of the overall wounded toll of "10,000 to 11,000", he said, referring to nearly one year of cross-border clashes between the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israel after the eruption of the Gaza war.
World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply in recent days from Israel’s southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.
More to come
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hezbollah as strikes would “go on for the near future”.
Hagari said Israel’s military “will engage in (more) extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon”.
He told civilians to “immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety”.
The strikes sent hundreds of people fleeing their homes, according to Bilal Kachmar, an official in Tyre.
“Hundreds of displaced people rushed” to a school-turned-shelter in the southern city, he said, with many others “camping out in the streets”.
AFP correspondents saw rows of cars leaving the nearby city of Sidon.
The Israeli military also warned people living in the Bekaa valley, in eastern Lebanon, to flee their homes, as it announced it was “broadening” the scope of its strikes.
Explosions around the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon triggered flashes of fire and sent smoke billowing into the sky.
In divided Lebanon, large parts of the south and east of the country, as well as the southern suburbs of capital city Beirut, are seen as strongholds of Hezbollah, where the group has historically wielded influence and built up services for its Shiite Muslim support base.
The education minister said schools in targeted areas would close for two days.
The official National News Agency said Lebanese had received phone messages from Israel telling them to “quickly evacuate”.
Hezbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, says it is acting in its near-daily battle with Israeli troops along Lebanon’s border in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.
Israel changing ‘security balance’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel was not waiting threats to emerge but was preempting them and was acting to change the “security balance” in the north.
Hezbollah’s deputy chief, Naim Qassem, said the group was in a “new phase, namely an open reckoning” with Israel, and ready for “all military possibilities”.
They spoke after Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel caused damage in the area of Haifa, a major city on Israel’s north coast.
On Sunday morning, hundreds of thousands of people in northern Israel fled to their bomb shelters as Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets across the border.
The attack came after an Israeli air strike in Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold on Friday killed its elite Radwan Force commander, Ibrahim Aqil, along with other commanders and civilians.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, coordinated communications device blasts that Hezbollah blamed on Israel killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000.
On Sunday, Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli military production facilities and an air base in the Haifa area with rockets as “an initial response”.
On Monday the group said it had again fired rockets at military sites near Haifa.
“No country can live like this,” said Ofer Levy, 56, a customs officer, who lives on the edge of Haifa.
Since the cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah began in October, tens of thousands of people on both sides have fled their homes.
An Israeli military official, who cannot be further identified under military rules, on Monday outlined the goals of the military operation.
It seeks to “degrade threats” from Hezbollah, push them back from the border, and then to destroy infrastructure built near the frontier by Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, the official said.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the United Nation and world powers to deter what he called Israel’s “plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns”.
Another Gaza?
US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier, said his administration was “going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out”.
Ahead of the annual General Assembly in New York, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned of Lebanon becoming “another Gaza” and said it was “clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire” there.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages also seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
