• Two Israeli troops killed in ‘border-area combat’
• Around 100 Israeli jets hit 120 targets in Lebanon
• Hamas targets Tel Aviv with rocket salvo
• Hezbollah hits base of Israeli intel unit

JERUSALEM: 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, the Palestinian group fighting Israel in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with ‘Fadi 1’ rockets and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65km away.

Hezbollah said it also targeted areas north of Haifa with rockets later in the day.

Israel’s military said around 135 projectiles had entered Israeli territory on Monday. 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 the border-area combat.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 10 firefighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a municipal building in the town of Bint Jbeil.

The Israeli military has described its ground operation as “localised, 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.

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 rocket 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.

Haifa attacked

An Israeli military statement said five rockets were launched towards Haifa 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.

Hamas meanwhile targeted Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv with a rocket salvo, the group said, setting off sirens in central areas of the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a special cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, “We are changing the security reality in our region…to ensure that what happened on Oct 7 does not happen again.”

Israeli airstrikes have displaced 1.2 million people 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 Hamas fighters killed 364 people and took away 44 partygoers and staff.

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

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.

On Monday night, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in central Israel after five projectile launches were identified crossing from Lebanon. The military said some projectiles were intercepted, while the rest fell in open areas.

Hezbollah later issued a statement saying they launched a rocket operation targeting a military intelligence unit near Tel Aviv.

A rocket launch operation was carried out on the Glilot base of the military intelligence unit 8200 located in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, it said.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2024