Iran-backed Hezbollah militias in Lebanon and Israel stepped up their rhetoric on Sunday as violence along their border continued with no end in sight.
Lebanon reported three deaths in an Israeli airstrike, while Hezbollah said it attacked a military base near the port city of Haifa in northern Israel on Sunday morning.
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naeem Kassem said at the funeral of top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Akil, who was killed by Israelis on Friday, that the conflict was entering a new phase.
“We will now determine how we respond to the aggression. We have entered a new phase with the Israeli army, the ‘Battle of the Open Account’,” Kassem said.
“We are following the front of support and confrontation… we will kill them and fight from where they expect and from where they do not expect,” said Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general Sheikh Naeem Kassem, referring to the Israelis. He was speaking at Akil’s funeral.
The death toll from an Israeli raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a hotbed of the Hezbollah movement, has risen to 45, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Sunday.
Israel plans to carry out further attacks on the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in the coming days, Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi said.
The killing of Akil and other senior commanders in an Israeli airstrike near Beirut on Friday had “shocked” the organization, the chief of the general staff said.
The message Israel is now sending to Hezbollah and other parties in the region is: “We can reach anyone who poses a threat to Israeli civilians,” Halevi said, noting that Israel has other capabilities but has not yet used them.
Halevi said Israel would ensure that those living in the north of the country could return to their homes. “And if Hezbollah has not understood this, then it will receive another blow and another blow – until the organization understands it.”
The country remains on heightened alert for attack and defense, he said, without mentioning any form of ground invasion.
Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Hezbollah is increasingly under pressure from Israeli military power and that there is now a sense that it is being pursued by the country.
The Israeli air force has reportedly struck hundreds of Hezbollah positions. In turn, Hezbollah has attacked northern Israel with intense rocket fire.
Hezbollah fires on Haifa
Hezbollah said on Sunday it had carried out an attack on an industrial complex and an Israeli military base near the port city of Haifa. Hezbollah said it was in retaliation for a “brutal massacre” in Israel last week, in which coordinated explosions involving electronic devices killed and injured people across Lebanon.
The Israeli military reported on Sunday that Hezbollah had carried out about 115 attacks on civilian targets in northern Israel.
Israeli forces were on high alert in the region to repel the attacks and “intensify” attacks on Hezbollah, the report said, with the attacks penetrating further south than before.
Air raid sirens were also heard southwest of Nazareth, which is inland from Haifa.
Hospitals in Northern Israel to Move Patients to Bunkers
As rocket attacks from Lebanon increase, hospitals in northern Israel have been ordered to move patients to shelters, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
Rambam Hospital in Haifa, the largest hospital in the region, announced that it would transfer patients to its underground emergency room starting at noon, in line with army guidelines.
Rambam’s so-called “bunker hospital,” built in 2014 and located more than 16 meters underground, can accommodate up to 1,400 patients, both soldiers and civilians, according to its website.
Normally the site is used as a parking lot, but it is also protected against biological and chemical attacks.
There have been almost daily military clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah in the border area between the two countries since the start of the Gaza war, with deaths on both sides. Most of the dead were Hezbollah militias.
There are growing concerns that the Israeli military could launch a ground offensive in southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah units from the border and allow thousands of Israeli civilians to return to their homes in the region.
UN warns of ‘looming catastrophe’ in Middle East
The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, has warned that the situation in the Middle East is dire, saying the region is “on the brink of imminent catastrophe”.
She said: “It cannot be stressed enough: there is no military solution that can make either side more secure.”
