Israel and Hezbollah exchange heaviest strikes since Gaza war began

Miriam Hadad, 60, sits with her neighbours Bashira Bahdadt, 68, left, and Edmund Muklashi, 78, on the porch of her home in Haifa on Sunday. Photo / Heidi Levine for The Washington Post

Israel and Hezbollah yesterday exchanged their heaviest strikes since the Gaza war started in October, with Israeli war planes bombing sites across southern Lebanon and Hezbollah firing a barrage of drones and rockets across the border, pulling the region closer to a wider outbreak of war that had been feared for weeks.

Israel said its attack was a preemptive strike on “thousands” of Hezbollah rocket and missile systems that were about to launch a major attack on Israeli targets. The Israeli airstrikes hit the outskirts of almost 30 small towns across southern Lebanon, according to state-run media, damaging electricity and water infrastructure.

At least three people were killed, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said on Sunday. Hezbollah said that two of the dead were its militants, and the other was a fighter from the Amal Movement, an organisation it is allied with.

The Israel Defence Forces said it struck additional Hezbollah targets later Sunday.

“Nasrallah in Beirut and Khamenei in Tehran should know that this is another step on the way to changing the situation in the north,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday as he gathered his Cabinet in Tel Aviv, referring to the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, and the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israeli officials said most of the barrage from Hezbollah, which they said numbered more than 150 rockets and drones, was intercepted by air-defence systems. They were still assessing damage from those that made impact but said there were no immediate reports of injuries or major damage.

However, the military, saying a major Hezbollah attack was still possible, ordered emergency restrictions on civilian movements and limited outdoor gatherings to 30 people in northern parts of Israel. Officials briefly halted flight activity at Ben Gurion Airport as a precaution, although flights had resumed by 7am local time. Tel Aviv closed beaches and restricted recreational activities and said it was opening 240 air raid shelters.

Israel’s Home Front Command sounded an all-clear shortly after noon, lifting the restrictions in most parts of the country. But the military activity led multiple airlines – those that had not already suspended services to the war-rattled region – to cancel flights into Tel Aviv and Beirut.

Smoke from Israeli shelling rises above the southern Lebanese village of Khiam in July. Photo / Getty Images

Tensions have mounted for weeks between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group, following last month’s targeted killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, which Hezbollah promised to avenge. Israel said Shukr was instrumental in dozens of cross-border strikes in recent months, including a rocket blast on a soccer field that killed 12 last month in an Israeli Druze village.

Iran, too, has threatened to launch retaliatory attacks against Israel following the brazen assassination in Tehran in July of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was visiting the city for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel declined to comment publicly on the operation, but told US officials immediately afterward it was responsible.

With all sides on edge, US and regional diplomats have scrambled to head off a wider regional conflict even as they struggle to resuscitate deadlocked cease-fire talks aimed at ending the fighting in Gaza. Negotiators, including CIA Director William J. Burns, were expected to convene on Sunday in Cairo. An Israeli delegation will arrive in Egypt on Sunday, according to an Israeli official.

The IDF said it struck the Hezbollah targets on Sunday after obtaining intelligence that the group was poised to launch a major attack on targets across northern and central Israel. Among the targets was the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad covert-operations agency at a military base, according to reports in Israeli media. IDF officials would not comment on Hezbollah’s specific targets.

Shortly before 5am, after what it called “relevant conversations” with American and other allied officials, the IDF said it deployed more than 100 aircraft to strike Hezbollah sites clustered in 40 areas of southern Lebanon.

“In the past hour, we identified extensive preparation by the Hezbollah terrorist organisation to fire toward the Israeli Home Front,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a recorded statement posted on X at the time of the strikes. “After extensive identification, the [Israeli Air Force] and Northern Command began proactively and broadly striking Hezbollah targets in order to remove the threats aimed at the citizens of Israel.”

A US National Security Council spokesman, Sean Savett, said President Joe Biden is “closely monitoring” events in Israel and Lebanon. “At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts,” the NSC statement said.

Both sides signalled a desire to stop short of all-out war, at least for now. Hezbollah, in a statement, declared its attacks on Sunday a “complete success,” claiming a barrage of more than 320 Katyusha rockets fired at 11 military sites had “crossed the Lebanese-Palestinian border toward the desired target”.

The group announced around 9am local time that it had completed operations targeting Israel “for today”. The attack, apparently Hezbollah’s largest on Israel since the current round of exchanges began in October, was meant as the “first phase” of its retaliation for Shukr’s killing, the group said. It denied Israeli claims of destroying the bulk of Hezbollah’s readied rockets before they could be launched.

‘Every day there are more dead’

Residents of Haifa, a port city in northern Israel, woke up to the sounds of explosions, which continued into the morning. While some residents retreated to fortified safe rooms in their homes, less wealthy families complained they had nowhere to go amid a lack of government-provided facilities.

“Nobody I know has a shelter,” said Miriam Haddad, an Arab Christian woman who lives on a hill overlooking the port, which came under heavy fire during the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.

“If the IDF ended the war in Gaza, this all would be finished,” said Bashira Bahdadt, a 68-year-old Muslim resident of Haifa. “Every day there are more dead, dead, dead.”

Outside a Haifa coffee shop, Nurit Livnet Levanson and her partner, Galit, stood beside their 19-year-old daughter, Mika, who is serving in the Israeli Air Force. “We’re doing our best to be prepared for whatever will come,” Mika said.

Nurit Livnet Levanson, 47, left, and Galit Livnet Levanson, 55, with their daughter Mika Livnet Levanson, 19, a commander in the Israeli Air Force, sit outside a cafe in Haifa on Sunday. Photo / Heidi Levine for The Washington Post

Her mother criticised Netanyahu, saying he was looking out for his own political survival rather than the safety of people in the north. “Our prime minister is not doing his job,” she said. “We just hope for peace.”

Lebanese civilians said they were awoken by explosions far louder than the usual thud of Israeli strikes. Some ran into streets from shaking buildings, others sheltered in doorways and corridors.

“We do not have shelters and did not leave the house because we didn’t have any place to hide,” said Hasan Zoubie. The father of two in the village of Mansouri jumped from bed when the attacks began shortly after 4am. It was too dark to go outside, so he gathered his family into a corner to wait out strikes that lasted for hours.

“Not even during the 2006 [war] did we hear these loud, scary sounds,” said Samah Kashmir, 36, who lives farther north in Wadi Al Hujair. She and her extended family huddled on a balcony as the sounds of explosions rattled doors and broke windows inside their home.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz issued a message Sunday to dozens of foreign ministers, urging them to support Israel amid Hezbollah’s retaliation. He said Israel “launched a preemptive strike to thwart the attack” but stressed that Israel “is not seeking a full-scale war and will act according to developments on the ground”.

Hezbollah said Nasrallah would address the latest escalation in an appearance later Sunday. Netanyahu said in a statement that the military remained under instructions to “act proactively” against Hezbollah.

But regional leaders condemned the sides for flirting with a wider regional conflict. Egypt called for concerted international efforts to keep a new “war front” from opening along the Israel-Lebanon border even as negotiators worked to end the fighting in Gaza.

The pace of cross-border violence had picked up in recent days. Israel killed seven Hezbollah fighters on Friday, the highest single-day toll for the group since March. In response, Hezbollah conducted a higher than average salvo of 15 attacks on Israel, hitting the Meron Airbase and other military bases.

At least 126 civilians and noncombatants and almost 400 Hezbollah fighters have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon during the tit-for-tat exchanges in recent months, according to figures compiled by the Washington Post. Hezbollah strikes have killed at least 24 civilians and 19 soldiers in that period, Israeli officials said.