JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) -Hezbollah rockets hit Israel’s third largest city Haifa early on Monday as the country looked poised to expand ground incursions into southern Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has spread conflict across the Middle East.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group fighting Israel in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with a salvo of “Fadi 1” missiles and launched another attack on Tiberias, 65 km (40 miles) away.
The growing conflict has raised fears that the United States, Israel’s superpower ally, and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing Middle East.
Israeli police confirmed that rockets had struck Haifa, also a major port, and local media said 10 people were wounded there.
Israel’s military, in a statement, said five rockets were launched at Haifa from Lebanon, adding: “Interceptors were fired. Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review.”
It said 15 other rockets were fired inland at Tiberias in Israel’s northern Galilee region, some of them intercepted. Israel media said a further five rockets hit the Tiberias area.
Police said some buildings and properties were damaged, and there were reports of minor injuries, with some people taken to a nearby hospital.
Israel intercepted early on Monday two aerial targets launched from the east after sirens went off in the central areas of Rishon Lezion and Palmachim, the military said on the first anniversary of the deadly, cross-border Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that ignited the Gaza war.
It gave no further details of the source of the drones.
Many Israelis, demoralized by the catastrophic security failures around the Hamas incursion from Gaza a year ago, have regained confidence in their military and intelligence apparatus after a series of stunning blows against Hezbollah, Iran’s most heavily armed proxy militia, in Lebanon in recent weeks.
Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah is headquartered, were hit by air strikes around midnight as Israel pursued nightly raids on the once-densely populated district.
Israel’s military said it had struck Hezbollah arms storage facilities in the Beirut area, and that secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of weaponry.
There were also airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley area in the east, including weapons storage facilities, infrastructure sites and a command centre, the military said.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of deliberately embedding its command centres and weaponry beneath residential buildings in the heart of Beirut. Hezbollah denies storing weapons among civilians.
Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023 in solidarity with Hamas. After a year of exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel mostly limited to the frontier region, the conflict has significantly intensified in Lebanon.
Israel has carried out ground incursions into Lebanon’s southeast, which Hezbollah says it has repelled.
Israelis marked the first anniversary of the devastating Hamas attack on Monday, including a memorial event for the victims of the Nova Music Festival, a rave party where militants killed 364 people and kidnapped 44 party goers and staff.
Photographs of victims were displayed as people came to pay their respects, carrying Israeli flags amid a tight security presence.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli figures, during their lightning Oct. 7 attack.
Security forces were on high alert across Israel on Monday, the military and police said, anticipating possible Palestinian attacks coinciding with the anniversary.
The Hamas assault unleashed an Israeli offensive on Gaza that laid waste to the densely populated coastal enclave and killed almost 42,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, operating from the shadows of a network of labyrinthine tunnels in the Gaza Strip, appears to have so far survived Israel’s onslaught.
CONFLICT SPREADS
For Israel, the surprise assault by the Palestinian Islamist group, also an ally of Iran, was one of the worst security failures for a country that prides itself on a strong, sophisticated military.
The Gaza war has spiralled into a regional conflict, drawing in Iran’s broader “Axis of Resistance”- Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, Iraqi militia groups – and sparking several direct confrontations between Israel and Iran.
Another heavy air attack is reported to have targeted Hashem Safieddine, who was widely seen as slain leader Hassan Nasrallah’s heir apparent. Safieddine has not been heard from since Thursday and Israeli strikes are blocking rescue workers from carrying out a search mission, officials have said.
Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani, who travelled to Lebanon after Nasrallah’s killing, has also not been heard from since strikes on Beirut late last week, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.
One of the officials said Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as the Dahiyeh, during the strike reported to have targeted Safieddine, but the official said he was not meeting Safieddine.
The Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, supervises dealings with militias allied with Tehran across the Middle East, such as Hezbollah.
Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed over 2,000 people – most of them in the past two weeks – and triggered a mass flight of more than one million people from Lebanon’s south, Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Iran fired scores of missiles at Israel last week in response to Israeli operations in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel, which says its aim is the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to northern homes, vowed retaliation, stoking worries that tensions could boil over into an all-out regional war.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer and Yomna Ehab; Additional reporting by Monica Naime; writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Heinrich)
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