Israel launched air strikes in Lebanon on Sunday, saying it had destroyed “thousands” of Hezbollah rocket launchers and foiled a major attack, while the Lebanese group insisted it was capable of launching drone and rocket attacks of its own.
The result was possibly the biggest exchange of gunfire in the 10-month war that began with a Hamas offensive from Gaza and has sparked new violence on the Lebanon-Israel border and fears of wider conflict across the Middle East.
The Israeli military said about 100 of its warplanes attacked more than 270 targets, “90 percent” of which were “short-range rockets aimed at northern Israel”.
Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, denied that thousands of launchers had been destroyed or that Israel had thwarted any major attack. It said its own operation was “completed and successful”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the attacks were “not the final step” in the campaign against Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said one soldier was killed and two others wounded in the fighting. One officer told AFP their boat was probably attacked by one of their own army’s air defence interceptors.
During the Gaza war, Hezbollah has exchanged almost daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces, which Hezbollah says is support for its Palestinian ally Hamas.
But fears of a wider regional conflict grew after attacks in late July, blamed on Israel, killed pro-Iran leaders including Hamas’ political chief and Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr, prompting vows of revenge.
Britain and Jordan were among countries on Sunday calling for an end to tensions in Gaza and a ceasefire.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also called on the UN Security Council to take “preventive” and “effective” measures against Netanyahu and his ministers who are “destroying all possibilities of achieving peace.”
House damaged
Hezbollah said its militants fired “a large number of drones” and “more than 320” Katyusha rockets targeting “enemy targets” across the border.
The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, named as the “main target” the Glilot military intelligence base near Tel Aviv, which Israeli media said is the headquarters of the Mossad spy agency.
The Israeli military said there was “no attack” on the base.
Nasrallah said the second target was Ein Shemer, a military airbase used by Israeli drones.
He also said Hezbollah’s retaliation for Shukr’s killing had ended, adding that “if the result is satisfactory” it would mean its response “has been completed.”
An AFP photographer in the Israeli town of Acre, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border, said three houses were damaged by a Hezbollah rocket, one of which hit a roof, shattering windows and destroying a bed.
“There were explosions in the Haifa area,” said Abigail Levy, a resident of the coastal city of Haifa. “I was stopped and told not to go to the beach.”
Dozens of interceptor rockets were fired into dense clouds over the Upper Galilee in northern Israel on Sunday morning, footage released by AFPTV.
An AFP photographer saw a Hezbollah drone explode into a huge fireball after it was intercepted by the Israeli air force.
Hezbollah announced that two of its fighters had been killed, while its ally Amal Movement also reported the death of one member. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Israel.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel was aware that six militants were killed in the attack.
Another military spokesman, Nadav Shoshani, said Hezbollah’s attacks were “part of a major offensive that was planned and we were able to thwart a large part of it this morning”.
The fighting has disrupted air travel between Israel and Lebanon, and British Airways and Air France have both suspended flights to Tel Aviv.
‘Prevent stress from building up’
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, one of several Iran-backed groups caught up in the Gaza war, praised Hezbollah’s attack and declared their counter-attack would “certainly” come.
Fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah has killed hundreds of people, mostly in Lebanon, and displaced thousands on both sides of the border.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said at an emergency cabinet meeting that he was in contact with “friends of Lebanon to prevent the escalation of tensions”.
The US military’s most senior officer, General Charles Brown, arrived in Israel on Sunday evening to meet his Israeli counterpart, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military said.
The United States is Israel’s top military supplier.
A U.S. defense official said Washington had helped monitor Hezbollah’s attacks, though it was not involved in shooting down any drones or rockets or in attacks on Lebanon.
The Flightradar24 tracking website showed on Sunday afternoon that a US Navy surveillance drone was flying over the nearby Mediterranean Sea.
Gaza talks
Hamas described Hezbollah’s Sunday attack as “a slap in the face” to Israel, and the Palestinian movement said Sunday night it fired a rocket toward Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military said it landed in an “open area” south of the city.
Ahead of Sunday’s key talks, Western and Arab diplomats had sought to prevent a regional retaliation, and stressed the urgent need to reach an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose officials have been mediating Gaza ceasefire talks with the United States and Qatar for months, warned “of the dangers of opening a new front in Lebanon” and called for progress in the negotiations “to pave the way for peace and stability in the region,” his office said.
A Hamas official said on Sunday that the group’s delegation had left the Egyptian capital after meeting mediators.
Witnesses in Gaza said fighting was continuing in the Deir al-Balah area in the central part of the territory.
Hamas’ attacks on southern Israel on October 7 killed 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,405 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, though the ministry does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths. The UN human rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Of the 251 people taken hostage by Palestinian Hamas militants in their offensive, 105 remain in Gaza, 34 of whom the Israeli military says are dead.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
