More than 350 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded in heavy Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, the country’s health minister said, after Israel warned it was “deepening” its attacks on the armed group Hezbollah.
Thousands of people fled as the Israeli military struck more than 800 Hezbollah targets and ordered civilians to evacuate areas near the Iranian-backed group’s positions.
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel after the attacks. Israeli paramedics said one person was wounded by shrapnel.
It is the deadliest day in nearly a year of escalating cross-border fighting that has raised fears of all-out war.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Sunday he feared such a conflict could turn Lebanon into “a second Gaza”.
The 11-month-old conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, sparked by the war in Gaza, has left hundreds dead, most of them Hezbollah fighters, and tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border.
Hezbollah has said it supports the Palestinian armed group Hamas and will not stop until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Both groups are backed by Iran and designated terrorist organizations by Israel, the United Kingdom and other countries.
The Pentagon said it would send “a small number” of additional US troops to the Middle East amid the growing crisis.
“Given the heightened tensions in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional U.S. troops to bolster our forces already in the region,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing with reporters.
He declined to answer further questions about the details.
Lebanese media reported that Israeli warplanes carried out the first wave of strikes on the country at around 6:30 a.m. (03:30 GMT) on Monday.
According to the state-run National News Agency (NNA), dozens of locations were attacked in the southern districts of Sidon, Marjayoun, Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil, Tyre, Jezzine and Zahrani, as well as in several eastern districts in the Bekaa Valley.
Later, the NNA reported that Israeli attacks in the south and the Bekaa Valley had intensified, causing casualties and extensive damage.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported Monday evening that 356 people were killed and 1,246 injured in the attacks.
There was no report on how many civilians or fighters were killed, but it was reported that 24 children and 42 women were among the dead.
Health Minister Firass Abiad added that thousands of families have also been displaced by the strikes.
Major traffic jams formed on roads from the southern cities of Tyre and Sidon as civilians fled the Israeli bombardment, and the Israeli military warned them to stay away from buildings and areas near Hezbollah positions and weapons.
A man in Beirut said he took his son out of school after receiving such a warning.
“They are calling everyone and threatening people over the phone. So we are here to pick up my son from school. The situation is not reassuring,” Issa told Reuters news agency.
Information Minister Ziad Makary said his ministry had been ordered to evacuate the building in Beirut, but he insisted it would not engage in what he called a “psychological war”.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said schools would be opened in the south and east, in Beirut and in the northern city of Tripoli as shelters for the displaced.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati told a cabinet meeting: “The ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanon is a war of extermination in the full sense of the word.”
“We are working as a government to stop this new Israeli war and avoid plunging into the unknown,” he added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement Monday afternoon that its aircraft had carried out strikes on some 800 Hezbollah “terror targets” in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
Earlier, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a briefing that videos from southern Lebanon showed “Hezbollah weapons exploding inside homes.”
“Every house we attack contains weapons – rockets, missiles, UAVs that are intended to kill Israeli civilians,” he claimed.
He also warned civilians to immediately move away from Hezbollah weapons and missile caches “for their own safety and protection.”
Earlier, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a video that Israeli forces were “intensifying our attacks in Lebanon.” “The actions will continue until we achieve our goal of returning the residents of the north safely to their homes,” he added.
A senior Israeli military official, meanwhile, insisted that the IDF is “currently only focused on Israel’s airstrikes,” after reporters asked him if a ground invasion of southern Lebanon was imminent.
The official said Israel had three goals: reduce Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets and missiles across the Lebanon-Israel border, push its fighters back from the border and destroy infrastructure built by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force unit, which could be used to attack Israeli communities.
Hezbollah did not comment on Israeli claims that it had hidden weapons in homes, but the group said in a statement that it had responded to “attacks by the Israeli enemy” by firing rockets at three Israeli military bases in northern Israel, as well as at a weapons factory in the coastal area of Zvulun, north of the port city of Haifa.
According to the Israeli military, at least 125 projectiles crossed the border from Lebanon and an unknown number landed in the Lower Galilee and Upper Galilee regions, as well as in the Carmel, HaAmakim and Hamifratz areas, near the coast and in the occupied Golan Heights.
A house in Givat Avni, in the Lower Galilee, was badly damaged by a rocket.
Resident David Yitzhak told the BBC he, his wife and six-year-old daughter were unharmed because they had managed to get behind the sturdy door of the home’s safe room seconds earlier when a warning siren went off.
“It’s a meter from life to death,” he said.
The Israeli ambulance service reported treating a 59-year-old man with shrapnel wounds to his lower legs in the Lower Galilee and another man was injured as he rushed to a shelter.
On Sunday, Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets and drones across the border, while Israeli fighter jets struck hundreds of targets in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah remains stubborn despite last week’s major setbacks.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, 39 people were killed and thousands wounded after thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded. And on Friday, Hezbollah said at least 16 members, including top commanders of its elite Radwan Force, were among 45 people killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut.
Speaking at a funeral on Sunday, Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem said the group would not be deterred.
“We have entered a new phase,” he said, “the title of which is: the open battle for the reckoning.”
