Israel launched an intense wave of air raids on southern Lebanon on Monday, with 100 aircraft targeting about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the country’s military.
An IDF Arabic spokesperson issued an urgent warning to Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.
The wave of strikes came as Israelis marked the anniversary of last year’s 7 October attacks by Hamas, the trigger for a year of escalating war in the region.
The IDF also announced on Monday that it had designated a new closed military zone in northern Israel, the fourth closed area since the ground invasion started, running eastward from the Mediterranean coast.
“These targets belonged to various units of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation, including regional units of Hezbollah’s southern front, the Radwan Forces, the Missiles and Rockets Force, and the Intelligence Directorate,” the IDF said in a statement.
“This operation follows a series of strikes aimed at degrading Hezbollah’s command, control, and firing capabilities, as well as assisting ground forces in achieving their operational goals.”
As memorial events took place across Israel, violence continued to rage on multiple fronts, with Israel also expanding its ground operation into Lebanon with elements of a third division joining the fighting.
Amid clear evidence that Israel is rapidly ramping up its military operations against multiple Iran-allied proxies, Hamas fired rockets out of Gaza to coincide with memorial events, vowing to continue with a “long and painful war of attrition” against Israel.
Hamas’s ability to fire rockets, although massively constrained by 12 months of a devastating Israeli offensive that has claimed more than 41,000 Palestinian lives, comes despite periodic statements from the IDF declaring the group effectively beaten.
Despite the quickly increasing tempo of Israeli military operations, Hezbollah also fired scores of missiles at Israel throughout the day on Monday, while a ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis was shot down as evening fell.
Fears of a wider regional escalation, not least from the anticipated “significant” retaliation that Israel has promised for Iran’s large-scale missile attack last week, were underlined by the UK’s announcement that it had withdrawn family members of diplomats in the country.
“As a precautionary measure following escalation in the region, family members of British embassy staff have been temporarily withdrawn,” the Foreign Office travel advice webpage for Israel reads. “Our staff members remain.”
With expectation high that Israel could launch a major retaliation against Iran at any moment, Tehran repeated its own insistence that it would respond to any Israeli attack on its soil.
In Lebanon, where Israel insisted its week-long ground operation was to be “limited” and “targeted”, elements of three divisions are now involved in the fighting, after the IDF said in a statement that its 91st division had joined the ground incursion overnight.
Night-vision images released on Monday showed a column of infantry moving into Lebanon with heavy rucksacks and sleeping pads, suggesting it was more than a short raid.
According to the statement, the division’s forces were redeployed to northern Israel over the last two weeks, joining units from the 36th and 83rd divisions already involved in the fighting in Lebanon.
The widening conflict risks further drawing in the US, which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support to Israel. Iran-allied militant groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have joined in with long-distance strikes on Israel.
A fresh round of airstrikes hit Beirut’s suburbs late on Sunday as Israel also intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza, calling for evacuations of the north of the territory amid renewed military operations.
In southern Lebanon an Israeli strike killed at least 10 firefighters, the latest in a series of strikes that have killed dozens of first responders, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
It said they were in a municipality building in the southern town of Baraachit that was hit as they prepared for a mission. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 30 strikes overnight into Sunday, while Israel’s military said about 130 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
Last week, Israel launched what it called a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon after it killed the longtime Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his top commanders in a series of attacks. The fighting is the worst since Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.
At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes. Israel says it aims to drive the militant group from the blue line boundary between the two countries so tens of thousands of Israeli citizens can return home.
The Israeli military is setting up a forward operating base near a UN peacekeeping mission on the blue line in southern Lebanon. The base put peacekeepers at risk, said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion, refused the Israeli military’s request to vacate some of its positions in advance of the ground incursion. Hezbollah said it would not target Israeli forces near the base, and accused Israel of using human shields.
In Gaza, where there has also been a sharp rise in Israeli military operations, Israeli tanks advanced into Jabalia on Monday, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic urban refugee camps, after encircling it, residents said.
“We are in a new phase of the war,” the Israeli military said in leaflets dropped over the area. “These areas are considered dangerous combat zones.”