Amid the threat of a wider Middle East war, Israeli warplanes pounded towns and villages in Lebanon on Monday, conducting airstrikes on what the Israeli military said were more than 1,100 Hezbollah targets.
The strikes killed 492 people and wounded 1,645 others, including 58 women and 35 children, Lebanese Health Ministry officials said.
Hezbollah responded by lobbing dozens of rockets into Israel, some reaching as far as Haifa. The group said it was targeting military bases and a weapons manufacturing company.
Late Monday, an evening airstrike hit a building in a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood of Beirut, targeting what the Israeli military said was a senior military commander. Israeli media identified the target as Ali Karaki, head of Hezbollah’s southern forces. Hezbollah officials said he survived the strike.
Monday’s barrage was a sharp escalation in the yearlong fight between Israel and Hezbollah, and the deadliest day for the Lebanese since the 2006 war, when Hezbollah and Israel last faced off in a major conflict.
It comes as Israeli leaders announced a “new stage” in their fight against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite paramilitary faction and political party. Israel says its aim is to push Hezbollah forces away from the border to allow the return of Israeli residents to the country’s north.
The Biden administration has for months urged Israel, Hezbollah and other parties to avoid a wider conflict in the region, where fighting between Israel and Hamas has already convulsed the Gaza Strip. War with Hezbollah could be even more devastating because the militant group is far better armed than Hamas.
The Pentagon said Monday that it is sending additional troops to the Middle East in response to the recent violence.
Ahead of the Israeli strikes, residents across Lebanon reported receiving phone calls on landlines and SMS messages with warnings from the Israeli military to stay away from buildings or areas where Hezbollah was hiding or deploying weapons. Those who received phone calls in Beirut said they heard a prerecorded message with someone speaking with an Egyptian accent. Ogero, the country’s state-owned landline operator, said its systems detected some 80,000 attempted calls that were suspected to be Israeli.
Others reported the same message broadcast on Lebanese radio.
One recipient of a phone warning was the office of Lebanese Minister of Information Ziad Makari, who dismissed the warnings as part of Israel’s “psychological war.”
The Lebanese Health Ministry suspended all non-urgent surgeries so as to make space for treatment of the wounded. Abbas Halabi, Lebanon’s caretaker education minister, ordered all schools closed for Monday and Tuesday in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a dominant presence. Later, Health Minister Firas Abiad issued a statement ordering all nurseries in Lebanon to close Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an exodus began from the country’s south, with motorists reporting extensive traffic jams on the main coastal highway toward Beirut. Social media were deluged with people trying to find or rent accommodation in Lebanon’s north.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement issued by his office that Monday’s campaign was “crushing what was built by Hezbollah for 20 years,” adding that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, “remains alone at the helm” after having lost “entire units” of the group’s elite special forces.
Speaking in a video address Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to press ahead unless Hezbollah backs down.
“I would like to clarify Israel’s policy to whoever does not yet understand: We are not waiting for the threat, we are preempting it — everywhere, in every sector, constantly,” he said. “We are eliminating senior figures, terrorists and missiles — and our arm is still extended. Whoever tries to harm us, we will harm them all the more forcefully.”
In another later statement directed to “the people of Lebanon,” he accused Hezbollah of using them as “human shields.”
“It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage,” Netanyahu said. “To defend our people against Hezbollah strikes, we must take out those weapons.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III conferred with his Israeli counterpart late Sunday for the second time in less than a week to offer support for Israel’s defense but also urge a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
“The secretary expressed his support for Israel’s right to defend itself as Hezbollah extends its attacks deeper into Israel, and stressed the importance of finding a path to a diplomatic solution that will allow residents on both sides of the border to return to their homes as quickly and safely as possible,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement Monday.
The air campaign comes after a bruising week for Hezbollah. In a two-day period beginning Sept. 17, the group suffered a double wave of attacks that saw thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies explode, leaving 39 dead and thousands of Hezbollah fighters, officials and administrators maimed and incapacitated.
The attacks were widely attributed to Israel, which did not claim responsibility.
On Friday an Israeli airstrike hit a residential compound in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing a top Hezbollah commander and 15 of its special forces leadership, along with more than double that number in civilians. Nine people remain missing, according to Lebanon’s civil defense.
Israel is gambling that the escalation will force Hezbollah to suspend its rocket campaign, which the group started on Oct. 8, one day after Hamas’ assault on southern Israel and the fierce Israeli bombardment on Gaza that followed. Hezbollah said it attacked Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in a near-daily exchange of fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border. The fighting has displaced around 110,000 people in Lebanon, and about 60,000 in northern Israel, leaving both sides of the border depopulated.
Shortly before 3 p.m., the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted a message on the social platform X informing residents in the Bekaa Valley who live “inside or near a house containing Hezbollah weaponry” that they had two hours to move 1,000 yards outside their village or head to a “central school close to you,” and not return until further notice.
Hezbollah officials say they have no intention of stopping until a cease-fire is forged in Gaza. On Sunday, deputy leader Naim Qassem said that the group was now in an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel and that the group was ready for “all military possibilities.”
“The support front will continue no matter how long it takes until the war on Gaza stops,” Qassem said.
Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.
