Wave of Hezbollah Rockets Rain Down on Northern Israel as Fears of Wider War in Region Escalate

Hezbollah hits back with more than 100 rockets across a wider and deeper area of Israel.

AP//Ariel Schalit
Municipality workers hang an Israeli flag over a damaged building that was hit by a rocket fired from Lebanon, at Kiryat Bialik, northern Israel, on Sunday. AP//Ariel Schalit

Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets early Sunday across a wider and deeper area of northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa, as Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon. The sides appeared to be spiraling toward all-out war following months of escalating tensions.

The rocket barrage overnight 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. It set off air raid sirens across northern Israel, sending thousands of people scrambling into shelters.

One rocket struck near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a community near Haifa, wounding at least three people and setting buildings and cars on fire. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said that a total of four people were wounded by shrapnel in the barrage.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that three people were killed and another four wounded in Israeli strikes near the border, without saying whether they were civilians or combatants.

The barrage came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday killed at least 45 people, including one of Hezbollah’s top leaders. Hezbollah was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies to explode just days earlier.

Prime Minister 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.

The Israeli military said that it carried out a wave of strikes across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting about 400 militant sites, including rocket launchers. An Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, said those strikes had thwarted an even larger attack. “Hundreds of thousands of civilians have come under fire across a lot of northern Israel,” he said. “Today we saw fire that was deeper into Israel than before.”

The military also said it had 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.

Israel’s Health Ministry said that all hospitals in the north would begin moving operations to protected areas or shelters within the medical centers.

In a separate development, 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.


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