Hundreds of Israeli air strikes pound Lebanon as hostilities escalate

Lebanese residents described continuous bombing that targeted homes, cars and roads in the country’s south and east. Lebanon’s Health Ministry did not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count of the dead and injured, but Health Minister Firas Abiad said Monday evening that 21 children and 39 women were among the dead.

Streets and highways were clogged with traffic across Lebanon as people fled the attacks, which many people fear will continue to widen. Local authorities ordered schools to be closed and the buildings converted into shelters.

Many people are trying to make their way to Beirut, and others, fearing eventual strikes on the capital, are fleeing to mountains in the north. In the southern Lebanese area of Nabatieh, Lebanese state media reported an “unprecedented movement of ambulances” transporting dozens of injured people.

The mayor of Aitroun, a small village close to the border with Israel, said the bombing sounded relentless. “People are definitely leaving. Do you want them to stay and die?” Salim Murad asked in frustration.

For its part, Hezbollah fired about 165 projectiles into Israel on Monday, according to the Israeli military, a day after the group carried out one of its deepest attacks since hostilities escalated in October, targeting an air base in northern Israel located 30 miles from the border. Hezbollah has said it is waging the attacks on Israel in support of the Palestinians in Gaza and will not stop its strikes until there is a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

David Wood, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group focused on Lebanon, said the willingness of both sides in recent days to cause civilian casualties represented a “very worrying shift.” He pointed in particular at Israel, which carried out a wave of attacks targeting Hezbollah over the past week, including triggering explosions of pagers and handheld radios that killed at least 37 people and wounded more than 3,000, including civilians and children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

“Until now, there had been a real effort to minimize civilian casualties because that is what is likely to trigger a massive operation,” Wood said. “But it seems like that thinking might have shifted for Israel.” He said that although the expansion of fighting along the northern border is “not new, the rate of the expansion is really alarming,” adding that if the intensity of strikes continue, then they could constitute a “full-scale war.”

Leaders of both Israel and Hezbollah have signaled that the nature of the conflict has in fact shifted.

“I promised we would change the balance of power in the north — that is exactly what we are doing,” Netanyahu said. “We are destroying thousands of missiles and rockets aimed at the cities of Israel and its citizens.”

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said Sunday that the group had entered an “new phase” in its conflict with Israel. Speaking at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, a top Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike Friday, he promised an “open-ended battle of reckoning.”

Hospitals in southern Lebanon have been ordered to cancel all elective surgeries to ensure they have capacity for casualties, the health ministry said in statement.

In Saida, in southern Lebanon, hospitals are receiving wounded with shrapnel injuries all over their bodies and severe burns, according to a doctor working there. The injured, including a large number women and children, are mostly from nearby areas and said they were wounded when airstrikes hit their homes, the doctor said.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said that Lebanese civilians in the south and east of Lebanon, where strikes were concentrated, were told to evacuate from areas where Hezbollah stores and deploys weapons. The Israel Defense Forces said in particular that warnings had been issued to civilians in the Beqaa Valley, where Hezbollah has a major presence, to “immediately distance yourselves” from such sites.

Some security experts questioned the effectiveness of those orders, which were delivered shortly before the strikes began, saying that evacuation warnings were also sent in parts of Lebanon that were not attacked, leaving residents around the country uncertain how seriously to take the orders. Lebanese officials, describing the warnings as part of Israel’s “psychological warfare,” said they caused confusion and panic.

Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said it is not the responsibility of civilians to “know where military objectives are.” Combatants on both sides have an obligation not to “co-locate” military assets in civilian areas and also to ensure “the risks to the civilian population from an attack should not outweigh the anticipated military advantage.”

Fakih said that evacuation orders like those issued by Israel are “not genuine warnings, but are primarily intended to cause panic or to displace people are prohibited.” She added that such fake warnings also “make people less likely to comply with true warnings.”

Imad Kreidieh, the chair of Ogero, which operates Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure, said that the country received more than 80,000 calls Monday generated by the Israeli military. Lebanon’s information minister, Ziad Makary, said those calls urged residents to evacuate — which he describes as “psychological warfare” — and he called on the public not to give “the matter more attention than it deserves.”

Fahim reported from Istanbul and Chason from Tel Aviv. Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.