DE Online Desk:
Israel’s military kept up its strikes on two fronts on Monday, with an intense barrage on southern Lebanon and a retaliatory attack targeting Hamas in southern Gaza, a sign of how significantly the fighting has spread in the year since Hamas’s cross-border assault.
As Israelis commemorated the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that sparked Israel’s war in Gaza, Hamas targeted what it called “the depths of the occupation” in Tel Aviv with a rare rocket attack that left little damage. Hours later, Israel responded with what it said was an attack on the rocket launcher that had fired the projectiles.
At the same time, Israel said it was conducting “extensive” strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Dahiya, the densely packed cluster of neighborhoods adjoining Beirut. The skyline in Beirut has been thick with smoke after days of bombardment.
- Advertisement -
Israel said that it had sent more troops to Lebanon to join the invasion it launched last week to fight Hezbollah, and called on more residents in the country’s south to evacuate.
The Israeli deployments and bombardments show how the fighting has broadened a year after the attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others were taken hostage. In addition to its invasions of Lebanon and Gaza — where more than 40,000 people have been killed — Israel has also conducted airstrikes against the Houthi militia in Yemen in recent days, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against Iran for its missile and drone attack on his country last Tuesday.
Hezbollah, which like Hamas and the Houthis is backed by Iran, began firing missiles and rockets across Israel’s northern border roughly a year ago in support of Hamas. But Israel expanded its campaign against Hezbollah last month with a wave of bombardments and assassinations, and started a ground invasion last week targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. At least 2,083 people have now been killed in Lebanon and nearly 10,000 wounded since the war began last October, according to Lebanon’s ministry of health, most of those over the last three weeks.
Israel also called on residents of large parts of northern Gaza to evacuate. It says that Hamas’s main fighting units in the enclave have largely been destroyed, but it has continued its operations, seeking to eradicate any threat posed by the group and prevent it from reconstituting its forces.
