Lebanon war threat rises as Israel continues Gaza bombardment

Hezbollah on Monday said it launched dozens of rockets at several Israeli military posts after the Israeli army struck targets belonging to the group in southern Lebanon and Bekaa.

"In response to the Israeli enemy attacks that targeted the south and Bekaa areas", Hezbollah fighters bombed two north Israel military positions as well as the "Rafael defence industry complexes" north of the city of Haifa, the group said in a statement.

(Reuters)

Lebanon's education minister on Monday said schools in Lebanon's east and south, as well as in Beirut's southern suburbs, would shut for two days as Israeli strikes intensified.

In a statement, Education Minister Abbas Halabi "announced the closure of public and private schools" Monday and Tuesday in the areas due to "security and military situations" that "pose a danger to the movement of students".

Lebanese official media said Monday that people were receiving Israeli phone warnings telling them to evacuate, and Information Minister Ziad Makary's office told AFP it had received one of the calls.

The reports came after the Israeli military told people in Lebanon to move away from Hezbollah targets and vowed to carry out more "extensive and precise" strikes against the Iran-backed group.

It was the Israeli military's first official warning issued to Lebanese people since the war in Gaza erupted nearly a year ago.

Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) said that "citizens in Beirut and a number of areas are receiving landline telephone warning messages whose source is the Israeli enemy, asking them to quickly evacuate where they are".

It called the phone warnings "part of the psychological war that the enemy has adopted".

The pro-Iranian Islamic Resistance in Iraq militant group said on Sunday it had launched a drone attack on a target in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley.

After 7 October, Iraqi Shi'ite armed factions, like other pro-Iranian groups, pledged to carry out attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Islamic Resistance in Iraq vowed to escalate its attacks.

In a statement, the Israeli military said interceptors were launched towards a UAV (drone) that was launched from Iraq and was identified as crossing from Syria into Israeli territory. No injuries were reported.

The pro-Iranian militant group said its drones hit a location in the Jordan Valley in the "occupied Palestinian territories" but did not elaborate.

(Reuters)

Egypt's foreign minister warned Sunday of the risk of an all-out regional war as fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah intensified, saying the escalation "negatively impacted" Gaza truce talks.

Badr Abdelatty spoke ahead of an annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, with a chorus of international powers calling on Israel and Hezbollah to step back from the brink.

"There is great concern about... the possibility of an escalation in the region leading to an all-out regional war," he told AFP at UN headquarters, adding that the latest spike in violence "negatively impacted" ceasefire negotiations.

"But Egypt, along with Qatar and the United States, has complete determination and commitment to continue" efforts to broker a truce agreement, he said.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that 12 people had been arrested for being operatives collaborating with Israel and planning acts against Iran's security.

"As the Zionist regime (Israel) and their Western backers, most notably the United States, have not succeeded in their sinister goals against the people of Gaza and Lebanon, they are now seeking to spread the crisis to Iran with a series of actions planned against our country's security," the statement said.

The Revolutionary Guards added that members of the network of 12 operatives were arrested in six different Iranian provinces, but did not say when.

(Reuters)

Israel is deepening its attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the public will have to remain calm the next few days, minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday, signalling that he expected intensified fire from across the border.

"We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes," Gallant said in a video published by his office. "These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure."

(Reuters)

Residents of southern Lebanon received calls from a Lebanese number ordering them to immediately distance themselves 1,000 metres from any post used by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, a Reuters reporter in the south said.

The Reuters reporter received the call. In a televised statement earlier, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari issued a similar warning and said it was being "distributed in Arabic on all networks and platforms in Lebanon".

(Reuters)

Israel's military pounded targets in south and east Lebanon on Monday and said more strikes were coming, warning Lebanese to stay out of harm's way despite international calls for restraint.

Hezbollah has said it is ready for "all military possibilities".

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, made a first-of-its-kind appeal to the people of Lebanon.

He told them to avoid potential targets linked to the Iran-backed Hezbollah as new strikes were launched on Monday that would "go on for the near future".

Hagari said Israel's military "will engage in (more) extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon".

He urged Lebanese civilians "to immediately move out of harm's way for their own safety".

Israel is examining a plan to use siege tactics against Hamas in northern Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by several Israeli media outlets as saying on Sunday.

Netanyahu's office did not respond to a request for comment. The reports cited unnamed sources at a closed parliament committee meeting.

The plan, published by retired military commanders and floated by some parliament members this month, suggests Palestinian civilians would be instructed to evacuate northern Gaza, which would then be declared a closed military zone.

(Reuters)