Thousands flee southern Lebanon, as Israel widens deadly assault

TNA's live coverage of the Israeli operation will resume from 8 AM GMT

Israel says it has named its deadly operation in Lebanon 'Arrows of the North'

Hamas' armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said that its field commander in southern Lebanon, Mahmoud al Nader, was killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon on Monday.

Lebanon said that 492 people including 35 children had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country's east and south on Monday -- the deadliest day in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

"The airstrikes have resulted in the martyrdom of 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and the injury of 1,645 others," Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health said in a statement.

At least 356 people have been killed and 1,246 injured in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since the morning, according to the country's Health Ministry

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is "gravely alarmed" by civilian casualties in Lebanon his spokesman said Monday after Lebanese authorities reported more than 350 deaths -- including 24 children -- in Israeli airstrikes.

"The secretary-general is gravely alarmed by the escalating situation... and the large number of civilian casualties, including children and women," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Lebanon's Hezbollah said commander Ali Karake, who a source reported had been the target of an Israeli strike Monday on Beirut, was alive and had moved to safety.

In a statement, the Iran-backed movement said "commander Ali Karake is well... and has moved to a safe place".

Israeli air strikes killed 274 people, including 21 children, in Lebanon on Monday, the Lebanese health minister said, in the deadliest cross-border escalation since war erupted in Gaza on October 7.

Israel said it hit about 1,100 Hezbollah sites in southern and eastern Lebanon in 24 hours, including a "targeted strike" in Beirut.

A source close to Hezbollah said the strike on the capital targeted Ali Karake, the group's third in command after the killing of key commanders in earlier strikes.

Lebanese state media reported new raids in the country's east, while Hezbollah said it targeted five sites in Israel.

Israelis ran for cover when air raid sirens sounded in the coastal city of Haifa, which had been targeted a day earlier.

The Israeli strikes killed 274 people in Lebanon, including 21 children and 39 women, Health Minister Firass Abiad said, adding about 5,000 people had been wounded since Tuesday.

World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply in recent days from Israel's southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.

Turkey warned Monday that Israel's attacks on Lebanon threatened to push the Middle East deeper into "chaos".

"Israel's attacks on Lebanon mark a new phase in its efforts to drag the entire region into chaos," the foreign ministry said in a statement, after Israeli raids on Hezbollah strongholds in southern and eastern Lebanon.

The Israeli military said late Monday that air strikes in Lebanon hit more than 1,100 targets of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah in the previous 24 hours.

The strikes hit "over 1,100 targets", a military statement said, specifying that they included "buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure where rockets, missiles, launchers and unmanned aerial vehicles posed a threat".

Residents of the northern Israeli city of Haifa ran for shelter as sirens rang out Monday evening, an AFP journalist reported.

"Sirens sounded in the city of Haifa and surrounding areas, northern Israel," the Israeli army said in a statement.

Israeli airstrikes have injured six south of Beirut following a strike that killed over 200 people and injured over 1,000.

President Joe Biden said on Monday that the United States was trying to calm the situation in Lebanon after Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds.

"I've been briefed on the latest developments in Israel and Lebanon. My team is in constant contact with their counterparts, and we're working to de-escalate in a way that allows people to return home safely," Biden said as he held talks with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the White House.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is alarmed by the escalating situation in Lebanon and very concerned by the large number of civilian casualties reported by Lebanese authorities, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Monday. 

(Reuters)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanese people to move away from danger as Israel pounded Hezbollah targets in the country's south and east on Monday.

"Please, get out of harm's way now. Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes," Netanyahu said in a video statement shortly after the Israeli army announced it had struck 800 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

State-run Lebanese media said Israel was conducting new raids across Lebanon's east Monday, hours after deadly strikes on the south and east, in the deadliest single day in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

"Enemy raids targeted the mountain" areas in the Baalbek region and several towns and villages, the National News Agency said, adding that "the Israeli enemy" launched a strike on the town of Hermel.

The Israeli military said it had struck around 800 Hezbollah targets on Monday as part of the deadliest strikes on Lebanon since fighting started last October.

"Since this morning, the IDF (military) has conducted proactive and extensive aerial strikes against Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon," a statement said, adding that the strikes hit "approximately 800 Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon and in the area of Bekaa deep inside Lebanese territory".

Unconfirmed information says Israel is targeting a suburb in Beirut, Bir al-Abed.

معلومات أوليّة غير مؤكّدة عن غارة على بئر العبد في بيروت.#الضاحية_الجنوبيّة #لبنان #العدوان_الإسرائيلي #ليبانوس pic.twitter.com/WzyYXyvgZ2

— Lebanos (@lebanosnews) September 23, 2024

According to Haaretz, the Israeli army's target in their airstrike on Beirut was senior Hezbollah commander Ali Karaki, who was killed in a southern Beirut suburb.

About 5,000 people had been wounded "in less than a week" of Israeli attacks, he said, after Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded and an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs.

That number accounts for about half of the overall wounded toll of "10,000 to 11,000", he said, referring to nearly one year of cross-border clashes between the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israel after Israel's war on Gaza.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said the death toll in Israeli strikes on Monday rose to 274, including 21 children and 31 women, the bloodiest daily toll in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

The toll stood at "274 dead including 21 children and 39 women -- that's who we know about until now", Abiad told reporters, adding "thousands of families from the targeted areas have been displaced".

The dead also included two rescuers, with 16 other emergency workers wounded, he said, adding that "two ambulances, a fire truck and a medical centre were targeted".

The attacks wounded 1,024 people who were treated in 27 hospitals, Abiad said.

The United States is concerned by the Israeli army raid and shutdown of media network Al Jazeera's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday.

"This action is inconsistent with U.S. support for freedom of the press in the West Bank and all over the world," the spokesperson said. They said the US is still gathering information about the army's operation on Sunday.

(Reuters)

Warning sirens sounded in the northern part of the occupied West Bank on Monday as Hezbollah rocket fire extended further south from the border areas in northern Israel, which have been most heavily targeted in the latest exchange of fire.

Alarms were also sounded in areas across northern Israel, the military said. 

(Reuters)

Lebanon's Hezbollah group said it targeted two more Israeli bases on Monday in retaliation for the deadliest strikes on the country's east and south in nearly a year of clashes.

Hezbollah launched "dozens of rockets" at two Israeli bases "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks on the south and the Bekaa" in Lebanon's east, after targeting three other sites earlier in the day as part of their retaliation.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday accused Israel of seeking a wider conflict, which he said would not benefit anyone, as he insisted Tehran was not destabilizing the region.

"We know more than anyone else that if a larger war were to erupt in the Middle East, it will not benefit anyone throughout the world. It is Israel that seeks to create this wider conflict," he told a roundtable with journalists as he attended the UN General Assembly in New York.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the military was changing the "security balance" along the northern border after launching the deadliest strikes on south Lebanon since fighting started last October.

"I promised we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north -- and that is exactly what we are doing," Netanyahu said during a security meeting, adding that Israel's policy was to preempt threats rather than "wait" for them.

Iran's foreign ministry warned Israel on Monday of "dangerous consequences" following deadly strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani called the Israeli strikes "insane" and warned of "the dangerous consequences of the Zionists' new adventure".

Kanani said Israel's "crimes" in Palestinian territories and their "expansion to Lebanon are a clear example of a serious threat to regional and international peace".

He strongly criticised US support for Israel and called upon the United Nations Security Council "to take immediate action to stop these crimes".

The Palestinian group Hamas on Monday condemned Israeli strikes on south Lebanon which saw the deadliest bombardment in nearly a year of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.

"We, in the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, affirm that this wide-scale barbaric aggression is a war crime," Hamas said in a statement, adding that the group reaffirmed "our solidarity... with our brothers in Hezbollah and the brotherly Lebanese people".

Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed 182 people and wounded over 700 so far, said the Lebanese health ministry.

The death toll from Friday's Israeli airstrike south of Beirut has reached 54 people, with 66 injured and six still missing, Lebanon's civil defence said Monday.

The civil defence is continuing its search after the air raid brought down an entire residential building, also killing some of Hezbollah's top commanders.

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday that at least 41,455 people have been killed in Israel's war on Gaza, now in its 12th month.

The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 95,878 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said on Monday it would launch more air strikes targeting eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and warned residents to move away from Hezbollah sites in the area.

"We are preparing for a large-scale and targeted strike in Bekaa Valley," military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at a media briefing, adding that residents should "distance themselves" from Hezbollah sites "for your safety and protection".

"The sights now from south Lebanon are of secondary explosions of Hezbollah weapons, which are exploding inside houses. In every house we are attacking there are weapons. Rockets, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles that were meant for and aimed at killing Israeli civilians," Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Shiite Islam's highest authority in Iraq, appealed Monday for "every possible effort" to end Israeli "aggression" against Lebanon, where it is targeting the Shiite Hezbollah movement.

Sistani called for "the exercise of every possible effort" to end this "barbaric aggression and to protect the Lebanese people".

Lebanon received more than 80,000 suspected Israeli call attempts asking people to evacuate their areas, the head of telecoms company Ogero, Imad Kreidieh, told Reuters on Monday.

Such calls were "psychological warfare to make havoc and chaos", he added.

(Reuters)

Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south killed 100 people and wounded more than 400 others on Monday, the worst toll in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

"Enemy raids on southern towns and villages since this morning... killed 100 and injured more than 400," the health ministry said in a statement updating earlier figures, adding that "children, women and paramedics" were among the casualties.

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)