MARJAYOUN, Lebanon –
Israeli strikes on Lebanon Monday killed more than 490 people, including more than 90 women and children, Lebanese authorities said, in the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Israeli military warned residents in southern and eastern Lebanon to evacuate ahead of its widening air campaign against Hezbollah.
Thousands of Lebanese fled the south, and the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon was jammed with cars heading toward Beirut in the biggest exodus since 2006.
Lebanon’s health ministry said the strikes killed 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and wounded 1,645 people — a staggering one-day toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices last week.
In a recorded message to Lebanese civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged them to heed Israeli calls to evacuate, saying “take this warning seriously.”
“Please get out of harm’s way now,” Netanyahu said. “Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes.”
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes on Taybeh village, seen from the southern town of Marjayoun, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the army will do “whatever is necessary” to push Hezbollah from Lebanon’s border with Israel.
Hagari claimed Monday’s widespread airstrikes had inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah. But he would not give a timeline for the ongoing operation and said Israel was prepared to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon if needed.
“We are not looking for wars. We are looking to take down the threats,” he said. “We will do whatever is necessary to do to achieve this mission. We hope to do it as shortly as we can.”
Hagari said Hezbollah has launched some 9,000 rockets and drones into Israel since last October, including 250 on Monday alone.
The military spokesman said Israeli warplanes struck 1,300 Hezbollah targets Monday, destroying cruise missiles, long- and short-range rockets and attack drones. He said many were hidden in residential areas, showing photos of what he said were weapons hidden in private homes.
“Hezbollah has turned southern Lebanon into a war zone,” he told a news conference.
Israel estimates Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including guided missiles and long-range projectiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Earlier Monday evening, the Israeli military said it had carried out a targeted strike in Beirut. It did not give details. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported the Beir al-Abed neighborhood in southern Beirut was hit with three missiles. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said six people were wounded. The area was cordoned off and journalists were not allowed access.
Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad told a news conference in Beirut that the earlier strikes hit hospitals, medical centres and ambulances. The government ordered schools and universities to close across most of the country and began preparing shelters for people displaced from the south.
Some strikes struck residential areas of towns in the south and the eastern Bekaa Valley. One hit a wooded area as far away as Byblos in central Lebanon, more than 80 miles (130 kilometres) from the border north of Beirut.
Israel said it was expanding the airstrikes to include areas of the valley along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria. Hezbollah has long had an established presence in the valley, where the group was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Israel was preparing its “next phases” of operations against Hezbollah, and that its airstrikes were “proactive,” targeting Hezbollah infrastructure built over the past 20 years.
Emergency workers clear the rubble at the site of Friday’s Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburb, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Halevi said more details would be released in the near future, and that the goal was to allow displaced Israelis to return to their homes in northern Israel.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets toward Israel, including at military bases. It also targeted for a second day the facilities of the Rafael defence firm, headquartered in Haifa.
As Israel carried out the attacks, Israeli authorities reported a series of air-raid sirens in northern Israel warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.
The evacuation warnings were the first of their kind in nearly a year of steadily escalating conflict and came after a particularly heavy exchange of fire on Sunday. Hezbollah launched around 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for strikes that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters.
The increasing strikes and counterstrikes have raised fears of an all-out war, even as Israel is still battling Hamas in Gaza and trying to return scores of hostages taken in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Hezbollah has vowed to continue its strikes in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed militant group. Israel says it is committed to returning calm to its northern border.
Graphic by Yasin Demirci/Anadolu via Getty Images
A spokeswoman for U.S. President Joe Biden said the administration was concerned about what’s happening between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and insisted that getting a cease-fire deal between Israel and Gaza was key to easing tensions in the region.
“It’s in everyone’s interest to resolve it quickly and diplomatically,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with Biden to New York, where he is to deliver his final address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
Monday’s death toll far surpassed that of Beirut’s devastating port explosion in 2020, when hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse detonated, killing at least 218 people and wounding more than 6,000.
The Lebanese Health Ministry put the death toll at 274. It asked hospitals in southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley to postpone surgeries that could be done later. The ministry said its request aimed to keep hospitals ready to deal with people wounded by “Israel’s expanding aggression on Lebanon.”
On Monday, residents received text messages reading: “If you are in a building housing weapons for Hezbollah, move away from the village until further notice,” Lebanese media reported.
Lebanon’s information minister, Ziad Makary, said his office in Beirut had received a recorded message telling people to leave the building.
“This comes in the framework of the psychological war implemented by the enemy,” Makary said, and urged people “not to give the matter more attention than it deserves.”
Emergency workers use excavators to clear the rubble at the site of Friday’s Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Communities on both sides of the border have largely emptied out because of the near-daily exchanges of fire.
Israel has accused Hezbollah of transforming entire communities in the south into militant bases, with hidden rocket launchers and other infrastructure. That could lead the Israeli military to wage an especially heavy bombing campaign, even if no ground forces move in.
An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb on Friday killed a top Hezbollah military commander and more than a dozen fighters, as well as dozens of civilians, including women and children.
Last week, thousands of communications devices, used mainly by Hezbollah members, exploded in different parts of Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel for the attacks, but Israel did not confirm or deny any responsibility.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7 attack in what it said was an attempt to pin down Israeli forces to help Palestinian fighters in Gaza. Israel has retaliated with airstrikes, and the conflict has steadily intensified over the past year.
Israel has vowed to push Hezbollah back from the border so its citizens can return to their homes, saying it prefers to do so diplomatically but is willing to use force. Hezbollah has said it will keep up attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, but that appears increasingly elusive as the war nears its anniversary.
Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 captives are still held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead, after most of the rest were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. It says women and children make up a little over half of those killed. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Lidman reported from Jerusalem, and Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.