Israel says it has launched airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah targets, killing at least 492 people and sending tens of thousands fleeing for safety in Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades, according to authorities.
After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since the hostilities flared last October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to leave areas where it said the armed movement was storing weapons.
Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister co-ordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89 temporary shelters in schools and other facilities had been activated, with capacity for more than 26,000 people as civilians fled “Israeli atrocities”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a short video statement addressed to the Lebanese people.
“Israel’s war is not with you, it’s with Hezbollah. For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields,” he said.
Australians urged to leave Lebanon
Foreign Minister Penny Wong called for restraint and de-escalation.
“We are deeply concerned, we’re alarmed by the escalation and the loss of civilian life both in Lebanon and also the attacks into Israel,” she said.
“We have consistently said we wish to see de-escalation. We believe wider regional conflict is not in any interest for peoples of this region.”
Wong said any Australians in Lebanon should leave immediately while commercial flights are available.
Australians in Lebanon can register
After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to the northern frontier, where Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas.
Israel’s military said it had struck Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, east and north.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 492 people had been killed — including 35 children — and at least 1,200 wounded.
One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon’s highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said Monday marked a “significant peak” in the nearly year-long conflict.
“On this day, we have taken out of order tens of thousands of rockets and precise munition. What Hezbollah has built over a period of 20 years since the second Lebanon War is, in fact, being destroyed by the IDF,” he said in a statement.
The Israeli Air Force said on X it had carried out about 650 strike missions in the past 24 hours, attacking more than 1100 targets using more than 1400 munitions, hitting buildings, vehicles and other places where it said weapons were stored.
On Monday evening, Israel launched a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs aimed at senior Hezbollah leader Ali Karaki, the head of the southern front, a security source told Reuters.
Hezbollah later said Karaki was okay and moved to a safe place.
Earlier, Gallant said the campaign would continue until “we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes”.
Hezbollah, for its part, has vowed to fight on until there is a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said it had struck about 800 targets connected to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
“Among the targets struck were buildings where Hezbollah hid rockets, missiles, launchers, UAVs and additional terrorist infrastructure,” it said in a statement.
Hezbollah has not commented on Israeli claims that it hid weapons in houses, which Reuters could not independently verify, but it has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.
In response to the strikes, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern Israel.
Sirens warning of Hezbollah rocket fire sounded across northern Israel, including in the port city of Haifa and in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, the military said.
Israel’s military spokesman said Israeli aircraft were preparing to attack strategic Hezbollah weapons stashed in houses in the Bekaa Valley and urged civilians to leave.
‘This is a psychological war’
The strikes have redoubled the pressure on Hezbollah, which last week suffered heavy losses when.
The operation was widely blamed on Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.
Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded in Lebanon last week. Source: AAP / Wael Hamzeh/EPA
In New York, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel wanted to drag the Middle East into a full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“It is Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict,” he told journalists after his arrival in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, saying the consequences of such instability would be irreversible.
Imad Kreidieh, head of Lebanese telecoms company Ogero, said more than 80,000 automated calls asking people to relocate had been detected on the network.
Lebanese information minister Ziad Makary said his ministry had received an Israeli call with an order to leave its building but that it would not comply.
“This is a psychological war,” Makary told Reuters.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people during the group’s October 7 attack on Israel, taking around 250 hostages.
The Israeli military’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,300 people, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
