BEIRUT: Israeli air strikes killed almost 200 people, including children, in Lebanon on Monday, the health ministry said, by far the deadliest escalation of cross-border fighting since war erupted in Gaza on October 7.
Monday’s clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces marked a new phase of violence that ignored all red lines.
The Litani River no longer served as a border for Israel’s northward expansion.
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health’s Emergency Medical Center, the initial death toll from more than 350 Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley was 356, including children, women and emergency workers, and 727 were wounded.
The fighting, which Hezbollah has called a “battle of endless finality”, has been raging across southern and eastern Lebanon, with Israel launching a series of widespread airstrikes since early morning.
Dozens of fighter jets simultaneously targeted residential buildings, populated squares, valleys and forests.
The Israeli military claimed Hezbollah was “using civilian homes and civilian facilities as cover for rocket launches,” similar to a war scenario in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said “Hezbollah is hiding guided missiles in civilian homes,” while an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “Hezbollah has used Iranian drones against Israel.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was “holding Lebanese people hostage and threatening them inside Israel with rockets and weapons in their homes and cities.”
He said Lebanese people “should evacuate their homes, which serve as bases of operations for the Hezbollah group, to avoid damage.”
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Israel’s “ongoing aggression against Lebanon is genocidal in every sense of the word, a destructive plan aimed at razing villages and towns and eradicating all green spaces.”
He reiterated his call on “decisive powers to pressure Israel to end its aggression, implement UN Security Council Resolution 2735, and resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of a two-state solution and the adoption of a just and comprehensive peace.”
“We reaffirm our full commitment to Resolution 1701 and, as a government, we are working to prevent a new Israeli war while avoiding, as far as possible, unknown situations,” he said.
Mikati made the remarks as Israeli forces launched a series of major attacks across southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday morning.
The military vowed to target positions deep inside the Bekaa Valley in the afternoon.
Dozens of towns in the border region and in the Tyre region were targeted in the airstrikes.
Israeli forces attacked a house housing seven people in the town of Barich in the Tyre district, killing five people, including a child.
Also targeted were the Nabatiyeh region, the western Bekaa region (specifically Mahgara, Sokhmol, and Yohmol), the Jezzine region, Deir al-Zahrani, and even the towns of Maghdoche and Ghaziya on the outskirts of Sidon.
Reverberations from Israeli airstrikes in the northern Bekaa region reverberated throughout the region.
People spoke of “highly destructive Israeli missiles.”
A loud explosion shook the Hermel Plateau near the Syrian border.
The attack on the heights left one person dead and six injured, two of whom are in intensive care.
The injured children were separated from their families when they were taken to hospital and anyone with information about their relatives is asked to come forward.
Women who were in their homes were buried under the rubble.
Nurses were called upon via social media to show up to overcapacity hospitals and help provide care to those in need.
The Health Ministry asked “all hospitals in the Southern Provinces, Nabatiyeh and Baalbek-Hermel to suspend all non-urgent procedures in order to allocate resources to the treatment of wounded caused by Israel’s ongoing aggression against Lebanon.”
Israeli media reported that some of the airstrikes penetrated as deep as 125 kilometers (78 miles) into Lebanese territory.
Israel Broadcasting Corporation said the air force “strikes an area in the northern Lebanon Valley, about 130 kilometres (80 miles) from Israel’s northern border.”
As part of the invasion, Israeli forces sent recorded voice messages to mobile phones of Lebanese in various parts of the country, from southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley to Beirut and Akkad in the north.
The messages urged people to evacuate their homes near Hezbollah strongholds.
Telecommunications company Ojello reported that Lebanon had received “around 80,000 calls suspected to be from Israel.”
The message instructed people to “evacuate areas within at least 1,000 meters of Hezbollah weapons or infrastructure, or head to local schools and not return until further notice.”
The warning was repeated in a similar statement by an Israeli military spokesman, who addressed “villages in the Bekaa region.”
The airstrikes and phone threats had an immediate effect, with schools cancelling classes and urging parents to collect their children.
Many families rushed to flee southern areas that until recently were considered safe, heading deeper into Lebanon.
Sidon’s entrance to Beirut was jammed with thousands of cars loaded with families and their luggage.
Refugees moved from the south, into the predominantly Christian and Druze mountain region of Lebanon, and into the predominantly Sunni city of Beirut.
Additionally, some displaced people have arrived in Akkad, in Lebanon’s northernmost region, and efforts are underway to provide them with housing.
Israeli military spokesman Avichai Adraei insisted that the army had targeted “only buildings storing Hezbollah weapons.”
He called on residents of Lebanese villages to immediately evacuate their homes where Hezbollah is hiding weapons.
He said Hezbollah “deceives and victimizes you. They claim that you are part of their community and their supporters, but their missiles and drones seem more valuable and important than you.”
Reports on Monday said an Israeli missile fell in a barren area in the Jbeil district in northern Lebanon, which is mainly populated by Christians but also has Shiites.
The Lebanese army is investigating the incident, and security sources suggested the missile may have landed in the area by chance.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, has asked all civilian personnel to evacuate with their families to safety north of the Litani River.
In response to the Israeli attacks, Hezbollah said it had “bombed with dozens of missiles the reserve headquarters of the Israeli Army’s Northern Corps, the Galilee Division reserve base, a logistics warehouse at Amiad base, and the Rafael military-industrial complex in the Zebulun district north of Haifa.”
According to Israeli media reports, sirens sounded in the town of Margariot in northern Galilee.