By Timour Azhari and Muhammad Al Gebaly
BEIRUT/CAIRO (Reuters) – Israel and Lebanon exchanged heavy fire on Sunday, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the heaviest bombardment in nearly a year of war in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah claimed rocket attacks on military targets in northern Israel.
The Israeli military said it struck around 290 targets on Saturday, including thousands of Hezbollah rocket-propelled guns, and said it would continue to attack targets of the Iran-backed movement.
Israel closed schools and restricted gatherings in many areas of the country’s north and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights early Sunday.
Sirens wailed throughout the night as multiple rockets and missiles were fired from Lebanon and Iraq, most of which were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems, the military said.
Israeli media reported that several buildings were hit directly or by falling missile debris, and ambulance services said they had treated some people with minor injuries. No serious casualties were reported.
Hezbollah said it attacked Israel’s Ramat David airbase with dozens of missiles in response to “repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon,” the group posted on its Telegram channel early Sunday.
The successive rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah against Ramat David are the most in-depth attacks it has carried out since hostilities began.
Iran-backed Iraqi militants also claimed responsibility in a statement for an explosive drone attack on Israel early Sunday.
ATTACKS ON THE RISE
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, officials said.
Hezbollah, a powerful Iranian-backed group, said 16 members, including its leader Ibrahim Aqil and another commander, Ahmed Wahbi, were among those killed Friday in the deadliest attack in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.
Israel’s military said it attacked a clandestine meeting of Aqil and leaders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, and had almost completely dismantled their military chain of command.
The attack destroyed a multi-storey residential building in the populous suburb and damaged a nearby nursery school, according to a security source. Three children and seven women were among the dead, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Friday’s attack dramatically escalated the conflict and dealt another blow to Hezbollah after two days of attacks that blew up pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members.
The death toll in those attacks, believed to have been carried out by Israel, has risen to 39 and more than 3,000 wounded. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
In what it said was an initial retaliation for the explosive device attacks, Hezbollah posted on its Telegram channel on Sunday that it had fired rockets at Israeli military industry facilities.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he was concerned about an escalation but that Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah leader had brought justice to the group, which Washington labels a terrorist group.
“While the risk of escalation is real, we believe there is also a different path to a cessation of hostilities and a lasting solution that makes people on both sides of the border feel safe,” Sullivan told reporters.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has cancelled a planned trip to the UN General Assembly in New York.
Israel prepares for retaliation
Hezbollah has said it will continue to fight Israel until it agrees to a ceasefire in its war against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, triggered by a Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7.
U.S. officials say that is unlikely to happen in the near future. Israel wants Hezbollah to cease fire and withdraw its forces from the border region, in compliance with a U.N. resolution signed with Israel in 2006, regardless of any agreement on Gaza.
Anticipating retaliation, the Israeli military restricted gatherings and raised the alert level for residents of northern communities. The alert reached as far south as the coastal city of Haifa, indicating that Israel believed Hezbollah could strike deeper than it had since the war with Hamas began.
In southern Lebanon on Saturday, people described huge explosions lighting up the night sky and shaking the ground as Israel carried out its latest attacks.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said last week that 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 fled their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border since Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
A statement 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 into the region,” but did not specifically mention the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
With at least 70 people killed in Lebanon over the past week, the death toll from the conflict in the country since October has surpassed 740 during the worst clash between Israel and Hezbollah since the 2006 war.