Lebanese flee homes as Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah intensify

Thousands of Lebanese are fleeing their homes in the country’s south as Israel intensifies its military campaign against Hezbollah, raising fears of an all-out war a day after a barrage of strikes killed hundreds in the country.

In the early hours of Tuesday, the Israeli military launched dozens more airstrikes against Hezbollah after downing projectiles fired from Lebanon. The attacks followed roughly 1,600 Israeli strikes Monday against Hezbollah’s military infrastructure and militants.

The impact of Israel’s strikes on Tuesday wasn’t immediately clear. Hezbollah said it had targeted six Israeli military sites overnight.

Roads were blocked as people fled southern Lebanon, pictures and videos online showed, after the Israeli military broadcast evacuation orders on Monday that it said were designed to move civilians out of harm’s way. The Lebanese minister of health said Monday that thousands had been displaced from the targeted areas.

The surge in fighting risks spiraling into an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah after nearly a year of lower-intensity fighting, sparked by the conflict in Gaza.

Monday’s strikes were by far the deadliest day of skirmishes in the current hostilities and one of the worst bouts of bloodshed between Israel and Hezbollah since their monthlong conflict in 2006. In all, the strikes killed almost 500 people, including dozens of women and children, and wounded more than 1,600, according to Lebanese authorities.

The Israeli military has said Hezbollah uses civilian infrastructure to launch attacks on Israel and published what it said were pictures of weapons, including long-range missiles, inside homes in Lebanon.

The U.S. has relentlessly sought to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that could also calm fighting with Hezbollah.

The Pentagon said Monday that it was sending additional forces to the Middle East but didn’t say how many, for how long or for what mission.

Israel’s goal in raising the intensity of airstrikes is to force Hezbollah to stop firing on cities and towns in Israel’s north, so tens of thousands of displaced residents can return to their homes.

Hezbollah began firing on Israel on Oct. 8 in support of Hamas, a day after the Palestinian militants launched a cross-border attack on Israeli communities that ignited the current conflict.

The Israeli bombing campaign over the past week, which its military has dubbed “Northern Arrows,” has come alongside the targeted killings of Hezbollah commanders and attacks on its members involving exploding pagers that were attributed to Israel.

Israel “is not interested in a full-scale war,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to the United Nations Security Council. Katz urged the U.N. to enforce Security Council resolution 1701, a decision intended to settle the 2006 Lebanon war between Israel and Hezbollah and which called for a withdrawal of armed groups from south of Lebanon’s Litani River.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to speak later this week at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. His government on Monday approved a one-week “special situation” for the country, which gives the government the power to impose restrictions on communities due to the security situation. Such restrictions already exist in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon but have now been expanded.

More than 8,800 rockets, missiles and drones have been fired by Hezbollah into Israel since Oct. 8, according to Israel. The Israeli military has also struck Lebanon more than 8,000 times by air, drone, missile and artillery in the same period, according to the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.