Hezbollah fires dozens of rockets deeper into Israel, as IDF launches more strikes on Lebanon

Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets early Sunday across a wider and deeper area of northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa, as Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon. 

The rocket barrage overnight set off air raid sirens across northern Israel, sending thousands of people scrambling into shelters. The Israeli military said rockets had been fired “toward civilian areas,” pointing to a possible escalation after previous barrages had mainly been aimed at military targets.

One rocket struck near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a community near Haifa, wounding at least three people and setting buildings and cars on fire. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said a total of four people were wounded by shrapnel in the barrage.

Avi Vazana raced to a shelter with his wife and nine-month-old baby before he heard the boom of the rocket hitting in Kiryat Bialik. Then he went back outside to see if anyone was hurt.

“I ran without shoes, without a shirt, only with pants. I ran to this house when everything was still on fire to try to find if there are other people,” he said.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Kassem said his group is now in an ″open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel, threatening more displacement for people in Israel’s north.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that three people were killed and another four wounded in Israeli strikes near the border, without saying whether they were civilians or combatants.

The barrage came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday killed at least 45 people, including top Hezbollah leader Ibrahim Akil, as well as women and children. Hezbollah was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of personal devices to explode just days earlier.

Israel says it hit hundreds of militant sites

The Israeli military said it carried out a wave of strikes across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting some 400 militant sites, including rocket launchers. Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said those strikes had thwarted an even larger attack.

“Hundreds of thousands of civilians have come under fire across a lot of northern Israel. They spent the night and now the morning in bomb shelters,” he said. “Today we saw fire that…