At least 10 firefighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike in a border area in southern Lebanon on Sunday evening, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
Firefighters were “ready to go on rescue missions” from a municipal building in Baraachit when it was hit, a ministry statement said on Monday.
The Israeli army told the BBC on Tuesday that it had carried out a “precise” attack on “several Hezbollah terrorists who used a fire station as a military post during fighting”.
The army also said it carried out airstrikes on 120 Hezbollah targets in the south in just an hour on Monday afternoon, after Lebanese media reported intense Israeli bombardments in the region.
The state news agency said Israeli planes hit more than 30 towns and villages around the southern coastal city of Tire alone.
The BBC’s Orla Guerin, who lives in Tyre, said some of the affected sites were in the hills close to the border with Israel, but at least one hit a built-up area of the city.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the targets of the attacks belonged to three regional units of Hezbollah’s Southern Front: the elite Radwan Force, the Missiles and Rockets Force and the Intelligence Directorate.
The IDF also said it had carried out a “targeted” attack in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where a thick plume of smoke was reported.
Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon also appeared to be expanding, with the IDF saying a third division had joined the ground operation it launched six days ago to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.
The IDF also ordered the evacuation of another 20 communities in the south, including the coastal town of Naqoura where UN peacekeepers in Lebanon are headquartered.
Three weeks of intense Israeli and other attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 1,400 people, including 22 on Sunday, and displaced another 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.
Hezbollah – a Shiite Islamist political, military and social organization that wields significant power in Lebanon – has remained defiant despite a series of devastating blows in recent weeks, including the assassination of its leader and most of its top military commanders.
On Monday, the group insisted it had “confidence… in the ability of our resistance to resist Israeli aggression.”
It came hours after Hezbollah rockets struck the northern Israeli port of Haifa and the city of Tiberias, causing damage and wounding nine.
According to the IDF, another 135 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Monday. Police said a road was damaged in the Lower Galilee region between Haifa and Tiberias.
The Israeli government – which labels Hezbollah a terrorist organization – has pledged to make it safe for tens of thousands of displaced people to return to their homes near the Lebanese border after a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the Gaza war.
Hostilities have steadily escalated since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on October 8, 2023, the day after ally Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Monday that the “counterattack against our enemies in the Iranian axis of evil is necessary to secure our future and guarantee our security.”
