JERUSALEM: Israel said it had launched airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah targets on Monday, killing 492 people and sending tens of thousands fleeing for safety in Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades, according to authorities.

After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since the hostilities flared last October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to evacuate areas where it said the armed movement was storing weapons.

After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to its northern frontier, from where Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of its ally Hamas.

Israel’s military on Monday struck Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, eastern Bekaa valley and northern region near Syria in its most widespread strikes.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 492 people had been killed, including 35 children and 58 women, and 1,645 wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon’s highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel faced “complicated days” as it stepped up attacks in southern Lebanon and called on Israelis to stay united as the campaign unfolded.

“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north — that is exactly what we are doing,” he said in a message following a situational assessment at military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli military said it had struck about 800 targets allegedly connected to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the area of the Bekaa valley. “Among the targets struck were buildings where Hezbollah hid rockets, missiles, launchers, UAVs and additional infrastructure,” the military said in a statement.

Reuters could not independently verify Israel’s allegation that Hezbollah had stored weapons in homes and villages.

Hezbollah has not commented on the Israeli claims it hid weapons in houses, but it has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.

In response to the strikes, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern Israel.

Warning sirens sounded in the northern part of the occupied West Bank on Monday as Hezbollah rocket fire extended further south from the border areas in northern Israel, which have been most heavily attacked in the latest exchange of fire.

Alarms were also sounded in areas across northern Israel, including in the port city of Haifa, the military said.

More attacks in Lebanon were expected. Israeli aircraft are preparing to attack Hezbollah’s strategic weapons in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, the Israeli military spokesperson said, calling on civilians to evacuate immediately.

The strikes have raised pressure on Hezbollah, which last week suffered an attack its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called unprecedented in the group’s history, after thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2024