It was the deadliest day in decades of hostilities between Israel and the militants, who stepped up their own barrage of rockets.
Dozens of Israeli fighter jets bombed Hezbollah targets in southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, killing hundreds and wounding more than a thousand others, Lebanese officials said, in the deadliest attacks in the country since 2006, when Israel and Hezbollah fought their last all-out war.
As Israeli warplanes raced through Lebanon’s skies, Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia backed by Iran, launched its own barrage at Israel. Air-raid sirens there rang out repeatedly as roughly 250 rockets and other munitions crossed the border, according to the Israeli military. Most of the projectiles were intercepted by Israel’s antimissile defense system, and there were no immediate reports of deaths or serious casualties.
The widespread airstrikes in Lebanon — and warnings by Israel to Lebanese to flee areas where it said Hezbollah was stashing weapons — set off fear and confusion among civilians. Many pulled their children from school and left home. Cars clogged main roads to Beirut, the capital, as people fled cities, towns and villages in southern Lebanon, where many of the heaviest strikes landed, witnesses said.
Lebanon’s health ministry said the bombardment had killed at least 492 people, including at least 24 children, and injured more than 1,600. The ministry, which counts casualties reported to hospitals, did not say how many of the dead were Hezbollah fighters.
The single-day death toll was nearly half the total toll in Lebanon in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, which lasted 34 days.
