Israel and Hezbollah are trading waves of strikes a day after Israeli attacks targeting the militant group killed more than 500 people across Lebanon. Monday was the deadliest day in Lebanon in nearly two decades.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the people of Lebanon to leave areas where Israel is targeting Hezbollah. Thousands are fleeing their homes, some after receiving automated calls, text messages and broadcasts urging them to evacuate.
An Israeli official told CNN the security cabinet had agreed to continue to raise the level of military operations every day. The Israeli military has not ruled out the possibility of a ground invasion.
Israel and Hezbollah have launched tit-for-tat strikes since the war in Gaza began. But Israel’s escalated attacks on the group over the past week have again heightened fears of a regional war. Israel launched an intense barrage of airstrikes across swathes of Lebanon on Monday in what was the deadliest day for the country since at least the 2006 war fought between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Terror and despair gripped Lebanese residents as Israeli bombs killed more than 500 people, including women and children, and wounded more than 1,800 others, authorities said, as residents fled their homes desperate to reach safety.
Two staff members of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) were among the 558 people killed in Lebanon on Monday, the organization’s chief confirmed on Tuesday.
In a post to X, Filippo Grandi took aim at Israeli airstrikes which he said were “relentlessly claiming hundreds of civilian lives.”
The number of displaced people in Lebanon is only set to rise, the UN refugee agency warned on Tuesday, after tens of thousands fled their homes in recent days. “In terms of the displacement of people, we’re looking at tens of thousands, but we expect that those figures will start to rise,” Saltmarsh told a UN briefing.
Credit: cnn.com
