Israel said it launched a wave of air strikes on 120 sites in Lebanon within an hour as its campaign against Hezbollah expanded across the country, while the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it fired rockets at Haifa and other targets in northern Israel.
The latest exchange underscored how quickly the fighting had moved from border clashes into a broader conflict involving Beirut’s southern suburbs, southern Lebanon and the Israeli north. According to the supplied evidence, the Israeli military also said it would soon launch operations on Lebanon’s southern coast and warned people to stay off beaches and the sea along a 60-kilometre stretch of coastline.
The heaviest immediate toll described in the reporting fell on civilians and first responders. The evidence says an earlier strike near Bint Jbeil killed at least 10 Lebanese firefighters. It also says dozens of first responders had been killed in recent weeks, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Those deaths added to a wider humanitarian toll that included more than one million displaced people in Lebanon, according to local authorities cited in the report.
The fighting was also moving into new terrain. Hezbollah said it launched a series of rocket attacks on northern Israel, including near Haifa, and later said it targeted areas north of the city with another round of rockets. The Israeli army said about 135 rockets had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory by late afternoon. The first attack on Haifa wounded at least 10 people and marked the first time the port city had been hit since cross-border fire began in October last year.
The report also described repeated Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, including more than 30 overnight strikes that Lebanese state media said were the heaviest bombardment there since September 23. Those targets included a petrol station on the road to Beirut airport and a warehouse for medical supplies.
On the southern frontier, Hezbollah said it was attacking Israeli troops in Maroun al-Ras and Blida, villages where the Israeli military said it had begun targeted ground raids. The Israeli military said two of its soldiers were killed in border-area combat, bringing its death toll inside Lebanon to 11 so far, and said it had deployed another division to take part in operations.
The United Nations also appeared increasingly concerned about the risk to peacekeepers. A UN official told the Associated Press that the Israeli military was setting up a forward operating base close to a UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, a move the official said put peacekeepers at risk. UNIFIL said it was concerned about recent Israeli military activity near Maroun al-Ras and noted it was close to a position held by Irish peacekeepers. The mission had previously refused an Israeli request to vacate positions before a ground incursion.
The reporting from the ground suggested a widening conflict with little sign of immediate restraint. Israel’s evacuation orders had expanded to cover 130 towns and villages in southern Lebanon, according to the source, while the UN refugee chief said Lebanon was facing a major displacement crisis and that parts of the campaign may have violated international law.
The situation now combines military escalation, civilian displacement and direct pressure on international peacekeepers. For residents along both sides of the border, the message from the latest exchanges is the same: the war is deepening, and the space for safe movement is narrowing fast.
