Israel’s air force pounded targets in Lebanon as its soldiers clashed with Hezbollah militants in the southern part of the country, the military said on Sunday. Lebanon’s government said that at least 23 people had been killed over the past 24 hours.
The Lebanese Red Cross said overnight that it was responding to a “major strike” in the southern city of Nabatieh, posting an image on social media that showed flames and rubble. Lebanon’s civil defense said on Sunday morning one person had been killed and four others wounded.
The civil defense also said its teams had completed a search and rescue operation shortly before dawn after an attack a day earlier on the town of Al-Maaysra in the central Keserwan district. It said that 17 people — including two women and three children — had been killed and 12 others wounded. The Health Ministry listed a series of other attacks in which it said that at least six people had been killed and dozens of others injured since Saturday.
On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that its jets had hit around “200 Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon and southern Lebanon” over the past day as part of its multipronged fight against the Iranian-backed militant group.
Hezbollah started firing on northern Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks last year, setting off back-and-forth exchanges of fire that displaced communities on both sides of the border. Israel, which is also fighting in Gaza against Hamas, stepped up its bombardment in recent weeks before invading southern Lebanon with ground troops.
The Israeli bombardment and ground invasion have killed at least 2,000 people and caused significant destruction and forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee their homes. Aid agencies have warned it is compounding a humanitarian crisis prompted by the war in Gaza.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, said on Sunday that he had just visited Lebanon where teams from his organization were helping Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians affected by the fighting. Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, among them more than 1 million Syrians who fled their country’s civil war.
“The expansion of the war into Lebanon is taking us away from reaching a cease-fire needed for respite for civilians across the region,” he said on social media. Mr. Lazzarini has repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza, and the United Nations has called for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
The broadening military operations — which have included targeting and killing Hezbollah’s leader and other senior commanders — have so far failed to stop the cross-border rocket fire targeting northern Israel. The Israeli military said that Hezbollah launched about 320 projectiles into the country on Saturday — one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar.
Sirens warning of incoming rocket fire sounded across northern Israel on Sunday, with Israel’s military saying that Hezbollah had fired around 115 rockets or missiles as of 3 p.m. local time. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
Hezbollah released statements on social media on Sunday saying that it had launched a missile at the Israeli city of Haifa and also targeted Israeli forces in Lebanon with a series of rocket and missile attacks. It was not possible to independently confirm the claims.
By trumpeting its continued ability to attack Israeli forces and fire rockets into Israel, Hezbollah aims to undermine Israeli public support for the invasion, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War, a research group based in Washington.
“Hezbollah is falsely presenting Israeli ground operations as a failure in order to degrade Israeli will and underscore Hezbollah’s own resilience in the face of massive Hezbollah losses since mid-September,” said the report, which was released on Saturday.
In recent days, Israeli forces in southern Lebanon have fired several times at a U.N. peacekeeping mission that operates along the border, wounding at least four peacekeepers. The attacks, reported by the mission, known as UNIFIL, have prompted international criticism of Israel’s military action.
Israel’s military has said that Hezbollah militants operate near UNIFIL positions and encouraged the peacekeepers to pull back — a request which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel reiterated on Sunday in a message directed at the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres.
“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech posted on social media. “We regret the harm to UNIFIL soldiers and we are doing our utmost to prevent such harm. But the simplest and most obvious way to ensure this is simply to withdraw them from the danger zone.”
Mr. Guterres does not have authority over UNIFIL; only the United Nations Security Council can authorize their movement.
The U.N. force has rejected Israel’s calls to leave its positions in southern Lebanon, noting that its presence there is mandated by the U.N. Security Council. UNIFIL was set up after Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon in 1978 to monitor the border and keep weapons or fighters out. Israel has repeatedly claimed that the force, which is largely observational, has failed to prevent Hezbollah from building up its military forces along the frontier.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said he had spoken on Saturday with Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and “strongly emphasized the importance of ensuring the safety and security” of the peacekeepers as well as of Lebanese forces.
Mr. Gallant said in his own statement on Sunday that “the incident involving UNIFIL troops” was being investigated and that Israel’s military “will continue to take measures to avoid harm to UNIFIL troops and peacekeeping positions.”
Israel has invaded Lebanon four times. During its previous invasion in 2006, the Israeli military sustained substantial losses despite its overwhelming military superiority.
Around a dozen Israeli troops have been killed during the current operation. On Sunday, the Israeli military said that two more soldiers had been severely wounded in combat. It also said that Israeli forces had captured a Hezbollah fighter in a tunnel during a raid in southern Lebanon. The fighter had been transferred to a detention facility in Israel for further questioning, the military added.
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