TEL AVIV — Israel dramatically expanded its aerial assaults on Lebanon with airstrikes Monday that killed nearly 500 people, wounded over 1,600 more and appeared to signal the start of a broader military campaign.
Israeli officials said their forces struck 1,300 “terrorist targets” inside Lebanon that were linked to Hezbollah, the militant group that has been trading rocket fire with Israel for nearly a year.
It was not only the highest death toll this year on this front; it was also the deadliest day of conflict with Israel since the 34-day war in Lebanon in 2006.
“These numbers also refer to many terrorists we killed today who were near the weapons,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said when he was asked about the high death toll.
Hezbollah has been hiding weapons in private homes, Hagari said, including “cruise missiles that can reach hundreds of kilometers, heavy rockets with a 1,000-kilogram warhead, medium-range rockets that reach a range of up to 200 kilometers, short-range rockets and armed unmanned aerial vehicles.”
Hagari said Israeli attacks would not let up any time soon.
“Challenging days are ahead,” he said. “We continue to be focused on defense and attack on all fronts.”
Earlier, the IDF said it was expanding the “extensive, precise strikes against terror targets” in the Bekaa Valley along Lebanon’s eastern border and warned civilians to move away from Hezbollah positions.
“Whoever tries to hurt us, we hurt him even more,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the military’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, adding that Israelis face “complex days.”
“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north,” he said. “This is exactly what we are doing. “
Shortly after Hagari spoke, the Lebanese Health Ministry announced that 492 people, including 25 children and 58 women, were killed in the Israeli attacks. It said 1,650 were injured.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been bombarding each other since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas sparked Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Many experts agree neither Israel nor Iran wants a full-blown direct conflict, but they fear escalating strikes may lead to one.
Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli military post in Galilee. It also targeted, for a second day, the facilities of the Rafael defense firm, headquartered in Haifa. Israel said one person was wounded by shrapnel.
But the casualties were far heavier in Lebanon.
Lebanese hospitals in the south and the east were ordered to suspend nonessential surgical procedures to focus on treating the wounded from the strikes. And the Education Ministry closed all high schools and vocational and technical colleges and suspended classes at Beirut’s Lebanese University on Monday and Tuesday.
Israel’s warning for civilians to get away from militant positions is the first of its kind the IDF has issued in Lebanon, an Israeli military official told NBC News. The official added that the current campaign involves only aerial strikes rather than a ground assault.
Israel, the official said, wants to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and create safe conditions for its own citizens to return to the northern part of the country.
About 60,000 people have been evacuated from the Israel side of the border, the government says. In Lebanon, over 100,000 are displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“We have to bring our citizens back to their homes,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an interview with Sky News on Sunday.
“It is clearly a very dangerous situation and clearly has a potential of escalating dramatically,” he said, blaming Hezbollah for starting the conflict.
President Joe Biden has also warned the violence could escalate.
“We’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out,” he told reporters Sunday.
The State Department issued a warning for Americans to leave Lebanon “while commercial options still remain available.”
The U.S. does not support Israel’s stated strategy of escalation with the aim to de-escalate the latest conflict with Hezbollah, a senior State Department official said Monday.
“I can’t recall, at least in recent memory, a period in which an escalation or intensification led to a fundamental de-escalation and led to profound stabilization of the situation,” the senior official said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be working to find an off-ramp from the latest increase in violence at the U.N. this week, the official said, discussing concrete ideas to de-escalate the situation with like-minded partners, including at a dinner with his G7 counterparts Monday evening.
The current crisis erupted after Hamas-led terrorist attack almost one year ago killed 1,200 people Israel and led to 250 more being kidnapped.
Meanwhile, more than 41,000 people have been killed, most of them civilians, in Israel’s ensuing military operation in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities.
In an earlier meeting with reporters, Hagari said Hezbollah had been preparing to launch new strikes against Israel after the heavy exchange of fire over the border over the weekend.
To buttress their case, the Israelis released a map of towns and villages, mostly in the south of Lebanon, which Hagari said Hezbollah has used to “militarize” civilian infrastructure.
The conflict spread deep into the heart of Lebanon last week when, in an apparent coup for Israeli intelligence, pagers and walkie-talkies filled with explosives it had secretly supplied to Hezbollah members began exploding across the country.
That was followed by an airstrike Friday that killed at least 45 people in a densely populated suburb of Beirut. The attack killed two senior Hezbollah members and dozens of civilians.
“We have entered a new phase, the title of which is the open-ended battle of reckoning,” Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told mourners Sunday at the funeral of one of its commanders killed in the strike.
Hezbollah retaliated by firing 150 rockets and cruise missiles at Israel and dispatching drones to launch more attacks.
While Israeli air defenses were able to stop the bulk of the attacks, the IDF said Sunday, “there were a small number of cases of hits and interception debris falling on” Israeli territory.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military is also looking into reports that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was killed in a recent Israeli airstrike, an Israeli official told NBC News. At this point, Israel does not have enough evidence to confirm his death or rule it out, the official said.
Suspicions that Sinwar might have been killed are based on Israeli intelligence that indicates he has not communicated with the outside world in several weeks, said the official, who added there is no positive evidence of his death.
The news was first reported by Axios.
Raf Sanchez reported from Tel Aviv, Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong, Yuliya Talmazan from London and Corky Siemaszko from New York City.
Raf Sanchez
Raf Sanchez is a foreign correspondent for NBC News.
Alexander Smith
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Yuliya Talmazan
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Associated Press
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Abigail Williams
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