Hizbullah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel early on Sunday, as Israel’s military said it struck Lebanon with about 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes in more than 10 months of border warfare.
One Israel navy soldier was killed and two wounded during combat in northern Israel on Sunday, the Israeli military said.
It gave no details of the circumstances of the soldier’s death but Israeli media reported it occurred on a naval vessel offshore as an interceptor from Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defence system engaged a drone fired by Hezbollah.
Three deaths were confirmed in Lebanon. Hizbullah indicated it was not planning further strikes yet. Israel’s minister for foreign affairs said the country did not seek a full-scale war.
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Any major escalation in the fighting, which began in parallel with the war in Gaza, risks morphing into a regional conflagration drawing in Hizbullah’s backer Iran and Israel’s main ally the United States.
Sunday’s strikes came as negotiators were meeting in Cairo in a last-ditch effort to conclude a halt to the fighting in Gaza.
The Iran-backed Lebanese group said it had fired 320 Katyusha rockets towards Israel and hit 11 military targets in what it called the first phase of its retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander, last month.
Israel’s military said it had foiled a much larger attack with pre-emptive air strikes after assessing that Hizbullah was preparing to launch the barrage, using 100 jets to strike more than 40 Hizbullah launch sites in southern Lebanon.
The strikes destroyed thousands of launcher barrels, aimed mostly at northern Israel but also targeting some central areas, Israel’s military said.
Hizbullah dismissed Israel’s statement that the group’s attack had been foiled with pre-emptive strikes, saying it had been able to launch its drones as planned and that the rest of its response to Shukr’s killing would take “some time”.
Expectations of an escalation had risen since a missile strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last month killed 12 youngsters and the Israeli military assassinated Shukr in Beirut in response.
Israel’s security cabinet met at 7am (4am Irish time) and the full cabinet is meeting on Sunday afternoon. Minister for defence Yoav Gallant declared a state of emergency and minister for foreign affairs Israel Katz said Israel would respond to developments on the ground but did not seek a full-scale war.
“We are determined to do everything possible to defend our country, to return the residents of the north safely to their homes and to continue to uphold a simple rule: Whoever harms us – we harm him,” prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati met cabinet ministers at a session of the national emergency committee. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will speak on television later on Sunday, the group said.
Flights to and from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv were suspended for about 90 minutes.
Some flights to and from Beirut were halted, stranding passengers. “I just want to get out of here by any means possible,” said Rana Saade, a Lebanese woman living in New Jersey.
In northern Israel, warning sirens sounded and multiple explosions were heard around several areas as Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defence system shot down rockets coming from southern Lebanon.
The ambulance service went on high alert across the country and said there were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Israeli military told people to limit gatherings, a restriction it later lifted, and said people could go to work if they could reach air raid shelters quickly. Israeli media said the barrage hitting northern areas had damaged houses.
A security source in Lebanon said at least 40 Israeli strikes had hit various towns in the country’s south in one of the densest bombardments since hostilities began in October.
One of the strikes on the town of Khiam killed a fighter from the Hizbullah-allied Shiite group Amal, two security sources told Reuters. Amal later announced his death.
An Israeli strike on al-Tiri killed two other people according to a security source and a medical sources. It was not immediately clear if they were fighters or civilians.
A resident of the southern Lebanese town of Zibqeen told Reuters he woke “to the sound of planes and the loud explosions of rockets – even before the dawn prayer. It felt like the apocalypse”.
US president Joe Biden was following events closely, the White House said.
“At his direction, senior US officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts. We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability,” national security council spokesman Seán Savett said.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon and the UN’s special coordinator’s office in the country called on all sides to cease fire, calling the developments “worrying”.
Egypt, one of the mediators in Gaza ceasefire talks, warned against the dangers of a new war front opening in Lebanon.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group congratulated its ally Hizbullah on what it called a “great and brave” attack on Israel.
Hizbullah fired missiles at Israel immediately after the October 7th attacks by Hamas gunmen on Israel. Hizbullah and Israel have been exchanging fire constantly ever since, while avoiding a major escalation as war rages in Gaza to the south.
That precarious balance appeared to shift after the strike in the Golan Heights, for which Hizbullah denied responsibility, and the subsequent assassination of Shukr, one of Hizbullah’s most senior military commanders.
Shukr’s death in an air strike was quickly followed by the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which led to vows of reprisal against Israel by Iran. – Reuters