Israel's strikes in Lebanon kill more than 270 people, Lebanese officials say

Caption

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese village of Khiam, near the Lebanon-Israel border, on Monday. / AFP via Getty Images

BEIRUT — Fighting has escalated at the Israeli-Lebanese border, as Israeli strikes killed more than 270 people largely in southern Lebanon on Monday, according to Lebanese health authorities, in one of the deadliest days of nearly a year of conflict in the region.

Lebanon's Health Ministry put the latest death toll at 274, including children and women, with more than 1,000 people injured, in Israeli cross-border attacks.

Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been trading large numbers of attacks back and forth across the border since the war in Gaza began in October last year. Hezbollah's leadership says it is acting out of solidarity with Palestinians and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli military says it is fighting Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to prevent an assault in northern Israel similar to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. Israel says it wants to degrade Hezbollah's rocket-launching capabilities, push Hezbollah fighters away from the border and allow Israeli families who evacuated the northern region to return home, as NPR's Daniel Estrin reported on Morning Edition.

The Israeli military says its forces struck more than 300 targets, many of which it described as Hezbollah weapons storage depots. Strikes damaged several buildings inside populated areas in Lebanon's south as well as farther east in the country's Bekaa Valley, but at least one landed some 80 miles north of the border near the city of Byblos, according to Lebanon's state-run broadcaster.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel in recent days, following the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members last week, which killed dozens of people and injured thousands mainly in Lebanon. Israel has not publicly acknowledged a role in the blasts. But a U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told NPR that Israel notified Washington it carried out last Tuesday's attacks in Lebanon.

Hezbollah's leadership said in a statement Monday it was targeting dozens of rockets at an Israeli military post in northern Israel. Residents in the city of Nazareth told NPR it was a "scary night" into early Monday morning, with "rockets and interceptions over us all night."

Israeli authorities acknowledge there have been repeated air raid sirens in the country's north, indicating incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.

On Friday, an airstrike over the Lebanese capital city, Beirut, killed at least 50 Hezbollah fighters and civilians, including children. Israel's military said that the strike had targeted a senior Hezbollah commander.

Across villages and towns in southern Lebanon, residents have been departing for safer parts of the country farther from the border. Several months ago, Israeli military officials ordered residents living in communities on the Israeli side of that border to also evacuate as skirmishes and tit-for-tat missile barrages intensified.

The Israeli military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, warned people living in southern and eastern Lebanon to leave their homes as the air campaign against Hezbollah's fighters and positions increases to widen.

Residents in southern regions received messages in Arabic instructing them to move away from known weapons storage sites controlled by Hezbollah, according to local Lebanese media, prompting a large migration of people inside Lebanon.

Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary criticized the evacuation warning messages that he said even his ministry received, calling them "part of the psychological warfare of intimidation adopted by the Israeli enemy."

Cars filled the main road out of the southern city of Sidon, northward up the coastline toward Beirut, even as some Israeli airstrikes continued to land dozens of miles inside Lebanese territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later issued a call for people in Lebanon to heed Israel's warning to evacuate their homes. “Please get out of harm’s way now,” Netanyahu said in a video recording.

The United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said on social media it has “grave concern for the safety of civilians in southern Lebanon amidst the most intense Israeli bombing campaign since last October.”

For more coverage and analysis, go to npr.org/mideastupdates.

Willem Marx wrote from London and Jane Arraf reported from Beirut. Daniel Estrin contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel, and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed from London.