Hezbollah
fired over 100 rockets early Sunday across northern Israel, with some landing
near the city of Haifa, as Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon. A
Hezbollah leader declared an “open-ended battle” was underway as both sides
appeared to be spiraling closer toward all-out war.
The
overnight rocket barrage was in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon that
have killed dozens, including a veteran Hezbollah commander, and an
unprecedented attack targeting the group’s communications devices. Air raid
sirens across northern Israel sent hundreds of thousands of people scrambling
into shelters.
One
struck near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a city near Haifa, wounding
at least three people and setting buildings and cars ablaze. Israel’s Magen
David Adom rescue service said four people were wounded.
Avi
Vazana raced to a shelter with his wife and 9-month-old baby before he heard
the rocket hitting. Then he went back outside to see if anyone was hurt.
“I
ran without shoes, without a shirt, only with pants. I ran to this house when
everything was still on fire to try to find if there are other people,” he
said.
Lebanon’s
Health Ministry said three people were killed and four wounded in Israeli
strikes near the border, without saying whether they were civilians or
combatants.
Hezbollah responds to unprecedented
blows
The
rocket attacks followed an Israeli airstrike Friday in Beirut that killed at
least 45 people, including Ibrahim Akil, one of Hezbollah’s top leaders,
several other fighters, and women and children.
Hezbollah
was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of pagers
and walkie-talkies to explode just days earlier. But it faces a difficult
balance of stretching the rules of engagement by hitting deeper into Israel,
while at the same time trying to avoid large-scale attacks on civilian areas
and infrastructure that could trigger a full-scale war that it would rather not
start and take the blame for.
Hezbollah’s
deputy leader Naim Kassem said Sunday’s rocket attack was just the beginning of
what’s now an ″open-ended battle” with Israel.
“We
admit that we are pained. We are humans. But as we are pained — you will also
be pained,” Kassem said at Akil’s funeral. He vowed Hezbollah will continue
military operations against Israel in support of Gaza but also warned of
unexpected attacks “from outside the box,” pointing to rockets fired deeper
into Israel.
Late
Sunday night, Hezbollah announced a series of strikes on military sites in
northern Israel with missiles and artillery shelling. It was not immediately
clear if there were any casualties or damages.
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take whatever action was
necessary to restore security in the north and allow people to return to their
homes.
“No
country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can’t accept it
either,” he said.
Other
funerals were held Sunday for those killed in the airstrike. Seven people,
including three women and two children, were buried in the southern Lebanese
town of Mays al-Jabal, where Christian Lebanese lawmaker Melhem Khalaf said
Israel “relies on the laws of the jungle instead international conventions,
especially with protecting civilians.”
White
House national security spokesman John Kirby told ABC’s “This Week” that the
U.S. has been “involved in extensive and quite assertive diplomacy.” He added:
“We want to make sure that we can continue to do everything we can to try to
prevent this from becoming an all-out war there with Hezbollah across that
Lebanese border.”
Israel says it thwarted an even
larger Hezbollah attack
The
Israeli military said it struck about 400 militant sites, including rocket
launchers, across southern Lebanon in the past 24 hours, thwarting an even
larger attack.
“Hundreds
of thousands of civilians have come under fire across a lot of northern
Israel,” said Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. “Today we saw
fire that was deeper into Israel than before.”
The
military also said it intercepted multiple aerial devices fired from the
direction of Iraq, after Iran-backed militant groups there claimed to have
launched a drone attack on Israel.
School
was canceled across northern Israel, and the Health Ministry said all hospitals
in the north would move operations to protected areas in the medical centers.
Separately,
Israeli forces raided the West Bank bureau of Al Jazeera, which it had banned
earlier this year, accusing it of serving as a mouthpiece for militant groups,
allegations denied by the pan-Arab broadcaster.
U.N. envoy says the region is on
the brink of catastrophe
Israel
and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza nearly a
year ago, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the
Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The low-level fighting has
killed dozens in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands
on both sides of the frontier.
Until
recently, neither side was believed to be seeking an all-out war, and Hezbollah
has so far stopped short of targeting Tel Aviv or major civilian
infrastructure. But in recent weeks, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to
Lebanon. Hezbollah has said it would only halt its attacks if the war in Gaza
ends, as a cease-fire there appears increasingly elusive.
The
war in Gaza began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian
militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. They are
still holding about 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Over
41,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It
doesn’t say how many were fighters, but says women and children make up more
than half of the dead.
“With
the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated
enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,”
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. envoy for Lebanon, said on X.
Families
of Israeli hostages and residents of Gaza expressed fears the fighting in Lebanon
will divert international attention from their own plights.
“I’m
incredibly concerned with the increased tensions with Hezbollah because, my
biggest concern is that, all the public’s attention and the world’s attention”
would be distracted, said Udi Goren, a relative of Tal Haimi, an Israeli who
was killed Oct. 7 and whose body was taken into Gaza.
Enas
Kollab, a Palestinian displaced from Gaza, voiced similar fears. “We are afraid
that the situation in Lebanon will affect us -- that all attention will turn to
Lebanon and we will become forgotten,” she said.
Hezbollah says it’s using new
weapons
Hezbollah
said it had launched dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles — a new weapon the
group hadn’t used before — at the Ramat David airbase, southeast of Haifa, “in
response to the repeated Israeli attacks that targeted various Lebanese regions
and led to the fall of many civilian martyrs.”
In
July, the group released what it said was video it had taken of the base with
surveillance drones.
Hezbollah
also said it had targeted facilities of the Rafael defense firm, headquartered
in Haifa, calling it retaliation for the wireless devices attack. It didn’t
provide evidence, and the Israeli military declined to comment.
Hezbollah
vowed to retaliate for a wave of explosions that hit pagers and walkie-talkies
belonging to Hezbollah members on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37
people — including two children — and wounding about 3,000. The attacks were
widely blamed on Israel, which hasn’t confirmed or denied responsibility.
An
Israeli airstrike Friday took down an eight-story building in a densely
populated Beirut suburb as Hezbollah members met in the basement, according to
Israel. Among those killed was Akil, who commanded the group’s special forces
unit.