After nearly a year of back-and-forth attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the fighting along the border in the last two days has been remarkably one-sided.
Israel has waged one of the most intense air raids in modern warfare, leaving large parts of southern Lebanon in ruins and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee. Many videos circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times show multiple strikes in quick succession.
About 10 miles north of the border, this city was hit hard.
Monday was the country’s deadliest day since its 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. The number of people reported dead in Lebanon on Monday almost surpassed the number believed to have lost their lives there since the current conflict began in October.
The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, although Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said on Tuesday that scores of women and children were among those killed.
Hezbollah has maintained its own attacks, firing barrages of rockets into northern Israel as it has since Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7. But many of the Hezbollah rockets have been intercepted, and have caused no deaths or serious injuries.
Southern Lebanon
The majority of Israel’s strikes have been in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah dominates. The Israeli military says that pushing Hezbollah back from the border zone is the only way that the tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes in northern Israel can return.
In the months of simmering conflict that preceded Monday’s escalation, more than 100,000 people had already fled their homes on Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel. But there are also cities in southern Lebanon like Tyre and Nabatieh that are home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of whom had not fled their homes.
Israeli strikes hit populated areas across the region, videos show. One showed an airstrike about 20 miles from the border.
In the southern Lebanese city of Habbouch, another video shows a vehicle ablaze as fires rage in the distance.
Israeli forces struck “buildings in which Hezbollah hid rockets, missiles, launchers, drones and additional military infrastructure,” the military said.
Many residents scrambled to arrange transportation for older family members still trapped in southern towns and cities. U.N. and Lebanese officials said on Tuesday that 27,000 displaced people had already been settled in temporary shelters.
The Bekaa Valley
While the heaviest bombardment was in the south, Israel also struck farther north, across Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and as far north as Hermel, a city 80 miles from the Israeli border.
The Bekaa Valley was one of the areas where the Israeli military told residents to move away from their village or to the nearest “central school” if they were close to Hezbollah sites. Rights groups have criticized the evacuation directive, saying residents have no way of knowing how close they are to potential military targets.
In Baalbek, an ancient city 50 miles north of the Israeli border, Israeli strikes could be seen from the city’s ruins, which include a pre-Hellenic temple and later Roman structures.
For months, Israel struck only in the south of Lebanon, hitting as far north as Baalbek for the first time in late February. On Monday, Israel struck several towns and cities even farther north than Baalbek.
Beirut
Even as many people fled for the relative safety of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, Israel fired a smaller number of airstrikes at the city’s southern suburbs, an area with a strong Hezbollah presence, on Monday and Tuesday.
A video taken on Tuesday shows the aftermath of a strike on a building in one of those neighborhoods, Dahiya. People can be seen surveying the damage and digging through rubble.
Residents throughout Beirut have become increasingly on edge since the strikes began on Monday, fearing an all-out war that could envelop the whole city.
Israel’s military said it was targeting Hezbollah’s top commander in southern Lebanon in a strike on Monday, and another senior commander in a strike in on Tuesday.
In the strike on Dahiya, Lebanon’s health ministry said that six people had been killed and 15 others wounded. The Israeli military claimed the strike had killed a senior commander who oversaw Hezbollah’s missile apparatus.
Hezbollah strikes in Israel
Hezbollah responded to Israel’s air raid by launching cross-border rocket attacks on Israel. Videos filmed on Sunday show a large fire caused by one rocket that engulfed multiple cars in a residential area of the Israeli town of Kiryat Bialik.
Seven Israelis were injured as a result of the strikes since Sunday, according to Magen David Adom, an Israeli emergency rescue service.
Many of Hezbollah’s rockets since Monday have been intercepted by Israeli’s Iron Dome system, and little serious damage has been reported. One video showed a rocket being intercepted on Monday over the city of Haifa, about 20 miles from the border with Lebanon.
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