Israel has declared a 48-hour state of emergency after carrying out a preemptive strike on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, as the Iran-backed militant group launched what it said was its initial response to the killing of its military chief by Israel last month.
The Israeli military said it sent 100 warplanes over Lebanon and shot down thousands of rocket launchers targeting targets in northern and central Israel. Hezbollah then fired hundreds of rockets and missiles into Israel, said army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani.
He said the damage to Israel from the shells was very limited, and that the Israeli operation in Lebanon was essentially over for now, although both sides remained on high alert with occasional gunfire. Hezbollah also said its operation on Sunday was over.
Israel’s main airport outside Tel Aviv was closed for several hours, with incoming flights being diverted to neighboring countries. Shoshani said this was due to concerns that rockets were targeting the center of the country, but that Israeli measures had ended the threat for now.
Although Sunday’s attacks remained within the so-called rules of engagement, they raise fears that the near-daily exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the past 10 months could escalate at any moment into a wider war.
Hezbollah said its attack on Israel was the start of a response to the killing of its commander on July 30 in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The group said it fired more than 320 rockets, followed by drones, targeting 11 military barracks and military sites in northern Israel.
Israel has not confirmed the targets but sirens sounded repeatedly in the north on Sunday morning. The military there limits gatherings to no more than 300 people indoors and 30 people outdoors. It said businesses could operate normally if they were indoors and had quickly accessible bomb shelters.
A Lebanese group allied with Hezbollah said one of its fighters was killed in Sunday’s airstrikes. Two others were killed and several others wounded, according to the state-run National News Agency.
Shoshani said Israel saw Hezbollah preparing to fire rockets and missiles, so it moved preemptively. He added that Israel warned Lebanese civilians in areas where Hezbollah operates to stay out of harm’s way. Israeli actions were limited to southern Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet and said he was “determined to do everything in his power to defend our country, to return the residents of the north to their homes safely, and to continue to abide by a simple rule: whoever harms us, we will harm them.”
The government delegation was due to leave for Cairo on Sunday as scheduled for talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, signaling a resumption of those negotiations. Hamas said on Saturday it would send a team to meet with mediators.
“We continue to monitor the situation closely, and we have made clear that the United States is prepared to support the defense of Israel,” Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said, referring questions on the matter to the Israelis.
Shoshani noted that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke by phone over the weekend and that a senior U.S. commander in the region had visited the area twice recently. He declined to say whether the United States had received advance warning of Sunday’s attack, adding: “This was an Israeli operation.”
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire along the border since October, when the Lebanese group entered the fray in support of the Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed at least 500 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters. In Israel, about 30 soldiers and 18 civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks.
Preventing further escalation of the skirmishes has been at the heart of international diplomatic efforts to ease tensions in the Middle East.
On July 30, an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Hours later, Iran blamed the Jewish state for the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran vowed to retaliate.
The United States is trying to mediate between Lebanon and Israel to reach a settlement over the border disputes. Israel wants Hezbollah to remove its fighters from the border to allow its citizens to return to the north. Tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese have been evacuated from the border area because of the fighting.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, says it will continue hostilities with Israel until the country agrees to a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began on October 7 after Hamas, also backed by Iran, invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping others. According to health officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza, the Israeli response to Gaza has killed at least 40,000 people.