Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 50 people were killed and more than 300 wounded, including children, women and doctors, in Israeli strikes on Monday that targeted southern Lebanon.
Israel unleashed its most widespread wave of air strikes against Hezbollah on Monday and warned Lebanese citizens to evacuate areas where the armed group was storing weapons, moving closer to all-out war.
“We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a video published by his office on Monday.
“These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure.”
He was speaking after the Israeli military targeted Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, eastern Bekaa valley and northern region near Syria.
The latest attacks came amid some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire in almost a year of conflict raging alongside the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that air strikes on houses in Lebanon, in which “Hezbollah hid weapons” were imminent.
Residents of southern Lebanon received calls from a Lebanese number ordering them to immediately distance themselves 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) from any post used by Hezbollah, a Reuters reporter in the south, who received the call, said.
Evacuation calls have been received on phones as far as the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Lebanon’s information minister Ziad Makary said his ministry had received a similar call ordering the building to evacuate, but said the ministry would do no such thing. “This is a psychological war,” Makary said.
A Lebanese person living in Beirut’s Manara area said her family received a call on their landline.
“So they were freaking out, I am freaking out as well because we thought somehow the area we live in is safe because we’re surrounded by ambassadors,” said the person.
The Saudi embassy is very close, like two minutes walking distance from us, but apparently they are targeting everyone now. It was a long 30-40 second message.”
In a televised statement earlier, the Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari issued a similar warning and said it was being “distributed in Arabic on all networks and platforms in Lebanon.”
Asked by reporters about a possible Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon, Hagari said “we will do whatever is needed” to return evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes safely, a war priority for the Israeli government.
Hagari presented in a media briefing an aerial video of what he described as Hezbollah operatives trying to launch cruise missiles from a civilian house in Lebanon, and the subsequent Israeli strike moments before it was launched.
“Hezbollah is endangering you. Endangering you and your families,” Hagari said.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon peacekeeping force had “seen an intensification of bombardments throughout the area of operations, close to the Blue Line but also deeper south,” its spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said, referring to the line demarcating the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The Israeli military said it had launched a new wave of attacks against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Monday.
“The IDF (Israel Defense forces) is currently conducting strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in southern Lebanon,” the military statement said.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah. (RSS)
