Israeli air raids mostly hitting southern and eastern Lebanon have killed at least 274 people and wounded at least 1,024 others, according to the country’s health minister, in the deadliest day of conflict in Lebanon since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
Firass Abiad said the death toll on Monday included 21 children, 39 women and two medics as the bombardment hit homes, medical centres, ambulances, and cars of people trying to flee.
Thousands of Lebanese fled the south, and the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon was jammed with cars heading towards Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 fighting.
The government ordered schools and universities to close across most of the country and began preparing shelters for people displaced from the south.
The Israeli army has claimed that it had struck more than 800 sites used by Hezbollah.
The increased hostilities raise further fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah or even a wider regional conflagration.
Israel’s military warned civilians to move away from places it claimed were being used by Hezbollah, which launched a barrage of rockets into northern Israel the previous day.
The warnings ignored the possibility that some residents could live in or near targeted structures without knowing that they are risk.
Many people who received warnings told Al Jazeera that they did not know where to go.
Lebanese media reported that people across the country, including the capital, Beirut, in central Lebanon, have been receiving Israeli phone warnings telling them to evacuate.
The intensification of the fighting across the shared border, which has seen low-level skirmishes since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October, follows last week’s explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies which killed dozens in Lebanon.
In the early hours of Monday, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said its forces conducted “extensive strikes” against Hezbollah posts after identifying attempts to fire rockets.
Tel Aviv recently declared that it was shifting more focus to the fighting with Hezbollah in a bid to allow the 60,000 or so Israelis evacuated from the border areas to return.
Asked by a reporter whether the army was planning a ground invasion into the neighbouring country, Hagari added, “We will do everything necessary to return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called on the public to remain calm as the military broadened its assault.
“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 on Monday.
“These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said on Monday after the strikes Israel faced “complicated days” and called on Israelis to stay united as the campaign unfolded.
“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north – that is exactly what we are doing,” he added in a message issued following a situational assessment at military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
On Saturday, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel’s Ramat David Airbase, east of Haifa in its farthest-reaching attack inside Israel.
Monday’s salvo was among the heaviest cross-border fire exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of the war in Gaza.
The two parties have been exchanging nearly daily fire since October 8, with Hezbollah saying it would stop only once a ceasefire was achieved in the Palestinian enclave.
But while those exchanges were largely confined to border areas and were aimed at primarily military targets, they have escalated dramatically this week.
Israel’s shift of focus was initiated in a wave of unprecedented attacks. On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of pagers and other devices exploded in Beirut targeting Hezbollah’s rank and file members, as well as civilians, sending shockwaves across the country.
At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 were wounded in the blasts. These were widely blamed on Israel which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
On Friday, an Israeli strike killed a senior commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan unit, and the second-in-command of the group’s armed force Ibrahim Aqil.
The strike in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh killed at least 45 people, including 10 civilians.
