Israel widened its war against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 490 people and injuring more than 1,650 others in massive new airstrikes that raised fears of an all-out war.
Israel’s military said it attacked more than 1,300 targets, while Lebanon’s state news agency reported heavy strikes across multiple regions in the southern part of the country. Among those killed were 35 children and 58 women, Lebanese health officials said.
The Israeli military warned residents of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon's east to stay away from Hezbollah’s armament supply depots.
"We are continuing to monitor Hezbollah's preparations in the field in order to proactively thwart attacks against Israeli territory, and we are systematically broadening our strikes against Hezbollah," Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters.
In a recorded message to Lebanese civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged them to heed Israeli calls to evacuate, saying they should “take this warning seriously.”
“Please get out of harm’s way now,” Netanyahu said. “Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes.” Thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway north to Beirut.
The Israeli military said Monday evening it had carried out a targeted strike in Beirut but gave no details.
Through a spokesman, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he “is indeed alarmed by the escalating situation” along the Israeli-Lebanon border, especially the large number of civilian casualties and the thousands of displaced persons.
Israeli spokesman Hagari said in a video message that Israeli forces acted in response to indications that Hezbollah was preparing to fire toward Israeli territory.
He said Hezbollah is storing missiles, drones and other weapons in civilian areas, and he said Israel is advising Lebanese citizens to evacuate areas in which Hezbollah is present.
“We are operating to achieve all of our goals of the war,” Hagari said. “In Gaza, to dismantle Hamas and bring back home all the hostages. And in the north, to repeal the threat posed by Hezbollah and enable the residents from the north of Israel safely to return to their homes.
Hezbollah said it responded with dozens of rockets Monday fired at Israeli military targets in northern Israel.
Israeli air defenses also intercepted a drone early Monday launched by a pro-Iranian militant group in Iraq.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it was targeting an Israeli base.
The surge in fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border during the past week prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens to leave Lebanon on commercial flights while they still have the option.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces traded hundreds of missile strikes Sunday, while Netanyahu pledged to do “whatever it takes” to restore safety in northern Israel.
Netanyahu said Israel in recent days had “dealt Hezbollah a series of blows they never imagined,” calling it a “message.”
The back-and-forth attacks included Hezbollah retaliating to an Israeli attack that killed Hezbollah military leaders in Beirut on Friday, while the militants blamed Israel for remotely detonating explosives in pagers and walkie-talkies inside Lebanon earlier last week, killing at least 37 and injuring thousands.
Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem said Hezbollah had started a new phase of its fight against Israel, which he described as an "open-ended battle of reckoning."
In Washington, the Pentagon said that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in a Sunday evening call that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself, but “stressed the importance of finding a path to a diplomatic solution that will allow residents on both sides of the border to return to their homes as quickly and safely as possible.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week” show that Israel and Hezbollah must restrain themselves to keep the conflict from escalating into an all-out war.
“We believe there are better ways … than opening a second front” along the Israeli-Lebanon border beyond Israel’s nearly year-long fight with Hamas militants in Gaza.
“Nobody is Pollyannish [unreasonably optimistic] about how difficult this will be,” Kirby said, but the warring parties should pull back from continued fighting so this doesn’t become an all-out war.
As the Israeli-Hezbollah warfare mounts, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees pointed to ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen, noting that the region is already very fragile.
“An expansion of the conflict may have incalculable consequences,” Filippo Grandi told VOA of the escalation in Lebanon this week.
He said the U.N., particularly its humanitarian agencies, has been making contingency plans for some time should the war spread, but that no one should expect humanitarians “to address all the countless problems, countless challenges, that will emerge from an even greater regional war.”
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza last Oct. 7, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the frontier.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas' October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. More than 41,400 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, with the Israeli military saying the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.
Hamas has been designated a terror group by the U.S., U.K., EU and others.
VOA’s United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report; some material came from The Associated Press.
