Natalie Melzer & Kareem Chehayeb
AP / September 22, 2024
NAHARIYA, Israel – Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets early Sunday across a wider and deeper area of northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa, as Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon. The sides appeared to be spiralling toward all-out war following months of escalating tensions.
The rocket barrage overnight was in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon that have killed dozens, including a veteran Hezbollah commander, and an unprecedented attack targeting the group’s communications devices. Air raid sirens echoed across northern Israel, sending hundreds of thousands of people scrambling into shelters.
One rocket struck near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a city near Haifa, wounding at least three people and setting buildings and cars on fire. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said four people were wounded by shrapnel in the barrage.
Avi Vazana raced to a shelter with his wife and 9-month-old baby before he heard the boom of the rocket hitting in Kiryat Bialik. Then he went back outside to see if anyone was hurt.
“I ran without shoes, without a shirt, only with pants. I ran to this house when everything was still on fire to try to find if there are other people,” he said.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that three people were killed and another four wounded in Israeli strikes near the border, without saying whether they were civilians or combatants.
Hezbollah responds to unprecedented blows
The barrage came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday killed at least 45 people, including one of Hezbollah’s top leaders and several other fighters, as well as women and children. Hezbollah was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies to explode just days earlier.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take whatever action was necessary to restore security in the north and allow people to return to their homes.
“No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can’t accept it either,” he said.
Hezbollah legislator Hassan Fadlallah, speaking at a funeral for a Hezbollah member on Sunday, said the war had entered a “new phase” and the militant group would keep up its attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
“We have a strong and capable resistance,” he said. “All of its options are on the table, and it is prepared for any scenario, war or confrontation.”
The Israeli military said it carried out strikes across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting about 400 militant sites, including rocket launchers. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said those strikes had thwarted an even larger attack.
“Hundreds of thousands of civilians have come under fire across a lot of northern Israel,” he said. “Today we saw fire that was deeper into Israel than before.”
The military also said it had intercepted multiple aerial devices fired from the direction of Iraq, after Iran-backed militant groups there claimed to have launched a drone attack on Israel.
School was cancelled across northern Israel, and the Health Ministry said all hospitals in the north would begin moving operations to protected areas within the medical centers.
In a separate development, Israeli forces raided the West Bank bureau of Al-Jazeera, which it had banned earlier this year, accusing it of serving as a mouthpiece for militant groups, allegations denied by the pan-Arab broadcaster.
U.N. envoy says the region is on the brink of a catastrophe
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The low-level fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the frontier.
Until recently, neither side was believed to be seeking an all-out war, and Hezbollah has so far stopped short of targeting Tel Aviv or major civilian infrastructure. But in recent weeks, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon. Hezbollah has said it would only halt its attacks if the war in Gaza ends, as a cease-fire there appears increasingly elusive.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. They are still holding about 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It doesn’t say how many were fighters, but says women and children make up more than half of the dead.
Families of the hostages have raised fears that a war in the north would distract from their plight and further complicate the negotiations over their release.
The U.N. envoy for Lebanon called on all parties to pull back.
“With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said in an X post.
Hezbollah says it is using new weapons
Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles — a new type of weapon the group hadn’t used before — at the Ramat David airbase, southeast of Haifa, “in response to the repeated Israeli attacks that targeted various Lebanese regions and led to the fall of many civilian martyrs.”
In July, the group released a video with what it said was footage it had filmed of the base with surveillance drones.
Hezbollah also said it had targeted the facilities of the Rafael defense firm, which is headquartered in Haifa, calling it retaliation for the wireless devices attack. It didn’t provide evidence, and the Israeli military declined to comment on the statement.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel for a wave of explosions that hit pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people — including two children — and wounding about 3,000. The attacks were widely blamed on Israel, which hasn’t confirmed or denied responsibility.
On Friday, an Israeli airstrike took down an eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs as Hezbollah members were meeting in the basement, according to Israel. Among those killed was Ibrahim Aqil, a top Hezbollah official who commanded the group’s special forces unit, known as the Radwan Force.
Lebanese authorities say at least seven women and three children were killed in Friday’s airstrike and that dozens more were wounded. It was the deadliest strike on Beirut since the monthlong war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the attack broke up the group’s chain of command while taking out Akil, who he said was responsible for Israeli deaths.
Akil had been on the U.S. most wanted list for years, with a $7 million reward, over his alleged role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon during the civil war in the 1980s.
Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut
Moshe Edri contributed from Kiryat Bialik
