Israeli air strikes killed 356 people, including 24 children, in Lebanon on Monday, the Lebanese health minister said, in the deadliest cross-border escalation since war erupted in Gaza on October 7.
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 said it hit about 1,300Hezbollah sites in southern and eastern Lebanon in 24 hours, including a “targeted strike” in Beirut.
A source close to Hezbollah said the strike on the capital targeted Ali Karake, the group’s third in command after the killing of key commanders in earlier strikes.
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Lebanese state media reported new raids in the country’s east, while Hezbollah said it targeted five sites in Israel.
Israelis ran for cover when air raid sirens sounded in the coastal city of Haifa, which had been targeted a day earlier.
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.
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.
“We sleep and wake up to bombardment… that’s what our life has become,” said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the southern Lebanese village of Zawtar.
The Israeli military said it hit “approximately 800 Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon and the area of Bekaa deep inside Lebanese territory”.
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi said the strikes hit combat infrastructure Hezbollah had been building for two decades.
The 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.
Abiad said, “Thousands of families from the targeted areas have been displaced”.
Explosions near the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon sent smoke billowing into the sky.
Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at military sites near Haifa and later launched “dozens of rockets” at two Israeli bases “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks on the south and the Bekaa”.
Hezbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, has exchanged near-daily fire with Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.
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