Israel and Lebanon exchanged heavy fire into Sunday, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the most intense bombardment in almost a year of war across Lebanon's south, while Hezbollah claimed rocket attacks on military targets in Israel's north.
The Israeli military said it struck around 290 targets on Saturday including thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels and said it would continue to strike targets of the Iran-backed movement.
Israel closed schools and restricted gatherings in many northern areas of the country and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights early on Sunday.
Sirens sounded all night as multiple rockets and missiles were fired from Lebanon and Iraq, most of which were intercepted by Israeli aerial defence systems, the military said.
Israeli media reported that a number of buildings were hit directly or by falling missile debris, and ambulance services said they treated some lightly injured people. No serious casualties were reported.
Hezbollah said it targeted the Israeli Ramat David Airbase with dozens of missiles in response to "repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon", the group posted on its Telegram channel early on Sunday.
The successive barrages of rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah at Ramat David are the deepest strikes it has claimed since hostilities began.
Iran-backed Iraqi militants in a statement also claimed an explosive drone attack on Israel early on Sunday.
ESCALATING ATTACKS
The escalating attacks come less than 48 hours after an Israeli airstrike targeting Hezbollah commanders killed at least 37 people in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, according to authorities.
Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed group, said 16 members including senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another commander, Ahmed Wahbi, were among those killed on Friday in the deadliest strike in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.
Israel's army said it hit an underground gathering of Aqil and leaders of Hezbollah's elite Radwan forces, and had almost completely dismantled its military chain of command.
The attack levelled a multi-story residential building in the crowded suburb and damaged a nursery next door, a security source said. Three children and seven women were among those killed, according to Lebanon's health ministry.
Friday's strike sharply escalated the conflict and inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.
The death toll in those attacks, widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, has risen to 39 with more than 3,000 injured. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
In what it said was the initial retaliation for the attacks with the exploding devices, Hezbollah on Sunday posted on its Telegram channel that it had launched rockets at Israeli military-industry facilities.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he was worried about escalation but that the Israeli killing of a top Hezbollah leader brought justice to the group, which Washington designates terrorists.
"While the risk of escalation is real, we actually believe there is also a distinct avenue to getting to a cessation of hostilities and a durable solution that makes people on both sides of the border feel secure," Sullivan told reporters.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati cancelled a planned trip to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
ISRAEL BRACES FOR RETALIATION
Hezbollah has said it would keep fighting Israel until it agrees to a ceasefire in its war against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza - triggered by a Hamas-led rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
U.S. officials say that is unlikely anytime soon. Israel wants Hezbollah to cease fire and withdraw forces from the border region, adhering to a U.N. resolution signed with Israel in 2006, irrespective of any Gaza deal.
Anticipating retaliation, the Israeli military restricted gatherings and raised the alert level for residents of northern communities. The alert went as far south as the coastal city of Haifa, signalling Israel thought Hezbollah could strike deeper than it had since the war with Hamas began.
In southern Lebanon on Saturday, people described huge explosions that lit up the night sky and shook the ground as Israel carried out its latest strikes.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who said last week Israel was launching a new phase of war on the northern border, posted on X: "The sequence of actions in the new phase will continue until our goal is achieved: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes."
Tens of thousands of people have left their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border since Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel in October in sympathy with Palestinians in Gaza.
A communique from a U.S. summit hosted by President Joe Biden with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia stressed the need to prevent the Gaza war "from escalating and spilling over in the region" but did not specifically mention the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
With at least 70 people killed in Lebanon over the past week, the conflict toll in the country since October has surpassed 740 during the worst Israel-Hezbollah flare-up since a 2006 war.
Hezbollah launches its deepest strike on occupied territories since Oct.
Press TV reported, Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has launched its farthest-reaching strike against the occupied Palestinian territories since October, when the Israeli regime escalated its aggression on Lebanon.
On Sunday, the movement fired “dozens of Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 missiles” against Ramat David, an Israeli air force base located in the northern part of the territories, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of the city of Haifa.
It specified Fadi-1 as a 220-milimeter caliber missile with a range of 80 kilometers (49 miles), and Fadi-2 as a 303-milimeter caliber projectile that can fly as far as 105 kilometers (65 miles).
The strike was followed by two more barrages, during which 15 and 20 rockets were respectively fired towards the base, which houses warplanes and helicopter gunships as well as offensive electronic warfare systems among other military equipment.
Hezbollah has been staging numerous such strikes against the occupied territories since October 7, when the regime notably escalated its attacks on Lebanon, especially its southern areas, after launching a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The movement’s operations have been aimed both at retaliating against the regime and displaying support for the war-hit Gazans.
Describing its Sunday operation, the movement likewise said it had carried out the strike “in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in support of their brave and honorable resistance.”
The operation was also meant as a response to “the repeated Israeli attacks that targeted various Lebanese regions and led to the fall of many civilian martyrs,” it added.
The strike came two days after at least 38 people, including three children, seven women, and a senior Hezbollah commander, named as Ibrahim Aqil, were killed during an Israeli attack on residential building in a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital Beirut.
The Israeli military carries out an airstrike against the Lebanese capital Beirut, killing five children.
Earlier, numerous explosions had targeted pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon, killing at least 37 people and wounding thousands of others, including Hezbollah’s members.
