Hezbollah missiles hit Haifa, Israel steps up bombings in south Lebanon

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT

Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s third largest city Haifa on Monday as Israeli forces looked poised to expand ground raids into south Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has spread conflict across the Middle East.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with “Fadi 1” missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65 km (40 miles) away.

Hezbollah said it targeted areas north of Haifa with missiles later in the day. Israel’s military said around 135 projectiles had entered Israeli territory on Monday as of 5 p.m. (1400 GMT). Ten people were reported injured in the Haifa area and two others further south in central Israel.

Israel’s military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon, and that two Israeli soldiers were killed in border-area combat, taking the military death toll inside Lebanon so far to 11.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 10 firefighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a municipal building in the border-area town of Bint Jbeil, and that other aerial attacks on Sunday killed 22 people in southern and eastern Lebanese towns.

The Israeli military has described its ground operation as “localized, limited and targeted” but it has steadily increased in scale since it began last week.

On Monday, the military said soldiers from its 91st Division had moved into southern Lebanon after a year of operations in northern Israel, where Israeli forces have been engaged in cross-border fire with Hezbollah for the past year.

Last week, the military said regular armored and infantry units had moved into Lebanon after commando units crossed the border a day earlier.

It has not said precisely where the troops are operating but it has said there were no plans to send them deep into Lebanon and that their aim was to clear border areas where Hezbollah fighters have been embedded.

Also on Monday, around 100 Israeli fighters carried out a wave of strikes, hitting 120 targets in southern Lebanon within the space of an hour, including Radwan special forces units, Hezbollah’s missile force and its intelligence directorate.

“This operation follows a series of strikes aimed at degrading Hezbollah’s command, control, and firing capabilities, as well as assisting ground forces in achieving their operational goals,” the military said in a statement.

The spiralling conflict has raised concerns that the United States, Israel’s superpower ally, and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing Middle East.

Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on Oct. 1. Israel has said it will retaliate and is weighing its options. One possible target is Iran’s oil facilities.

An Israeli military statement said five rockets were launched toward Haifa, also a major Mediterranean port, from Lebanon and interceptors were fired at them. “Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review.”

It said 15 other rockets were fired inland at Tiberias in Israel’s northern Galilee region, some of which were shot down. Israeli media said five more rockets hit the Tiberias area later.

A surface-to-air missile fired at central Israel from Yemen was also intercepted, the military said. The Iran-backed Houthi movement which controls northern Yemen has attacked Israel during the past year in what it says is solidarity with the Palestinians.

Hamas, which triggered the Gaza war with a surprise attack on Israel a year ago, meanwhile targeted Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv with a missile salvo, the group said, setting off sirens in central areas of the country.

Many Israelis have regained confidence in their long vaunted military and intelligence apparatus after a series of deadly blows to the command structure of Hezbollah, Iran’s most formidable Middle East proxy force, in Lebanon in recent weeks.

“Our counterattack on our enemies in Iran’s axis of evil is necessary for securing our future and ensuring our security,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a special cabinet meeting in Jerusalem marking the Gaza war anniversary.

“We are changing the security reality in our region, for our children’s sake, for our future, to ensure that what happened on Oct. 7 does not happen again,” Netanyahu said.

Israeli airstrikes have displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon and as the bombing campaign intensifies, many are afraid their country will face the vast scale of destruction wrought on Gaza by Israel’s air and ground onslaught there.

Israeli forces also issued a warning in Arabic to beachgoers and boat users to stay away from a swathe of the southern Lebanese coast, saying its navy would soon begin operations against Hezbollah from the sea.

Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023 in solidarity with Hamas. After a year of exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel mostly limited to the frontier region, the conflict has significantly escalated in Lebanon.

Israelis marked the first anniversary of the Hamas attack with ceremonies and protests on Monday including a memorial event for victims of the Nova Music Festival where militants killed 364 people and kidnapped 44 partygoers and staff.

In their shock rampage through Israeli towns and kibbutz villages near the Gaza border a year ago, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

The huge security lapse led to the single deadliest day for Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, shattered many citizens’ sense of security and sent their faith in its leaders to new lows.

The Hamas assault unleashed an Israeli offensive on Gaza that has largely flattened the densely populated enclave and killed almost 42,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say.