HUNDREDS of Israeli civilians spent their night hiding in bomb shelters after Hezbollah launched over 100 rockets early Sunday.
Dramatic footage showed cars ablaze as the rockets were flying across a wider and deeper area of northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa.
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It comes as Lebanon and Israel appear to be spiralling toward all-out war following months of escalating tensions.
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 around 3,000.
The rocket barrage overnight set off air raid sirens across northern Israel, sending thousands of people scrambling into shelters.
The Israeli military said rockets had been fired toward civilian areas, pointing to a possible escalation after previous barrages had mainly been aimed at military targets.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the IDF said: “Hezbollah’s terrorism targets civilians.
“Hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians spent their night hiding in bomb shelters, while barrages of rockets were flying over their heads, some hitting their homes, and rocket alert sirens were constantly sounding throughout the night.
“Thousands of children will stay in bomb shelters today instead of going to school due to the risk to their lives.
“We must stop this reality.”
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said it treated four people for shrapnel wounds, including a 76-year-old man who was moderately wounded in Kiryat Bialik, a community near Haifa where buildings were damaged and cars set on fire.
It was not immediately clear if the damage was caused by a rocket or an Israeli interceptor.
The barrage came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday killed at least 37 people, including one of Hezbollah’s top leaders as well as women and children.
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Hezbollah was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of personal devices to explode just days earlier.
The Israeli military said it carried out a wave of strikes across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting some 400 militant sites, including rocket launchers.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said those strikes had thwarted an even larger attack.
He said: “Hundreds of thousands of civilians have come under fire across a lot of northern Isreal. They spent the night and now the morning in bomb shelters.
“Today we saw fire that was deeper into Israel than before.”
Israeli media reported that rockets fired from Lebanon early Sunday were intercepted in the areas of Haifa and Nazareth, which are further south than most of the rocket fire to date.
Israel cancelled school across the north, deepening the sense of crisis.
Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles a new type of weapon the group had not 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.
Thousands of children will stay in bomb shelters today instead of going to school due to the risk to their lives
Israel Defense Forces
A 17-year-old was killed and a 20-year-old was injured in a self-inflicted crash as rockets were raining down, Haaretz reports.
It is understood the pair lost control of their vehicle when the air raid alarms were activated in the Jezreel Valley.
Meanwhile, 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.
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.
In recent weeks, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon and vowed to bring back calm to the border so that its citizens can return to their homes.
Hezbollah has said it will only halt its attacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which appears increasingly elusive as long-running talks led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have repeatedly bogged down.
On Friday, an Israeli airstrike took down an eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood in Beiruts southern suburbs as Hezbollah members were meeting in the basement, according to Israel.
Among those killed was Ibrahim Akil, a top Hezbollah official who commanded the groups special forces unit, known as the Radwan Force.
Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, told reporters Saturday that at least seven women and three children were killed in Fridays airstrike on the building.
He said another 68 people were injured, including 15 who were hospitalised.
It was the deadliest strike on Beirut since the bruising month-long war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, and the casualty count could grow, with 23 people still missing, a government official said.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the attack broke up the groups 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.
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Israel launched spy movie pager plot to lure Hezbollah into war…& destroy them once and for all, ex-Mossad agent warns
BY James Halpin, Foreign News Reporter
ISRAEL’S pager plot could be inspired by a spy film and the country is goading Hezbollah into starting a war, an ex-Mossad agent says.
Nearly 3,000 people were injured on Tuesday and 12 were killed in the sabotage attack leaving Lebanon in chaos and hospitals full of bloodied and injured.
Avner Avraham claims Israel is directly challenging Hezbollah to start a war in retaliation, so it can then invade Lebanon and wipe them out.
Avraham says the chess move attack was Israel saying: “Don’t mess with us”.
He said: “The attack on Tuesday was so strong and wide if they [Hezbollah] do start a limited war, they will lose immediately.
“In the north, we have to start a limited war and we prefer that Hezbollah would make the first mistake.
“The response would be a huge damage to Lebanon, it would go 100 years back.”
But, the 28-year spy veteran says Hezbollah has been left weak with so many people injured and Lebanon plunged into chaos.
“Now they don’t have a different kind of communication system, all their hospitals are full with injured people, this is the best time to attack them.”
Avraham said he believed Israel needed to attack Lebanon and create a “dead zone” inside the country where nobody lived.
That buffer would provide safety for the Israelis living in the north of the country – tens of thousands of whom have been displaced since fighting began last year.
“To bring back the families to the north, you cannot bring them to the world without destroying and pushing all the Hezbollah from the border.”
Avraham also said it is possible that the attack could have been inspired by gadgets used in spy films, something he did as an agent.
“Sometimes we use examples ideas from James Bond films, we took ideas, I can tell you this for sure.
He said: “No one could write the script for Tuesday. This is the real example of thinking outside the box… All the world saw what happened Tuesday, this is the money time.
“If Mossad is doing something and wants to declare it, they will declare it… In all cases they just do it and disappear.
“That’s the whole idea, you don’t know who is responsible for this, you don’t have any idea.”
