Israel bombed the mountains north of Beirut and Hezbollah targeted Tel Aviv for the first time on Wednesday, in a further expansion of the range and scope of the aerial conflict across the Lebanese border.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon to escape Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, but the strike on Maaysra, about 60 miles (100km) north of the border, fuelled fears that the intense assault on southern Lebanon could spread to other parts of the country.
Thousands of people crossed into Syria to escape the aerial assault, aid agencies said. Israel hit more than 100 sites inside Lebanon on Wednesday, extending a three-day bombing campaign that has killed 560 people and injured thousands. Half a million people are displaced, Lebanese authorities say.
Hezbollah attempted to hit Tel Aviv for the first time on Wednesday but Israel intercepted the surface-to-surface missile with air defences, and no damage was reported.
The Lebanese group said it was targeting intelligence headquarters, in an apparent signal that it can still pose a serious threat, even after days of intensive Israeli attacks which have killed many top commanders and destroyed much of its arsenal.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the unguided missile was heading towards civilian areas along the coast. “The Mossad headquarters is not in that area, it is a bit east and north of that area,” Lt Col Nadav Shoshani of the Israel Defense Forces told a briefing. “Hezbollah is definitely trying to escalate the situation.”
Israel estimated that Hezbollah had 150,000 rockets and missiles at the start of the conflict and has not said how many have been destroyed. Senior commanders killed include the head of the elite Radwan force, Ibrahim Aqil, last week, and on Tuesday the head of the missile and rocket force Ibrahim Qubaisi.
Israel’s successful strikes have decimated the top of Hezbollah’s chain of command, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one of Hezbollah’s key backers, said on Wednesday that the group would survive the death of senior leaders, Reuters reported.
“The organisational strength and human resources of Hezbollah is very strong and will not be critically hit by the killing of a senior commander, even if that is clearly a loss,” he said.
Israel’s stated goal in its campaign in Lebanon is to allow about 60,000 evacuees to return to their homes in the north of Israel. They were forced to leave after Hezbollah began attacking Israel in support of its ally Hamas after 7 October.
Israeli defence officials may hope the bombing campaign will create potential for a deal that would involve Hezbollah withdrawing from areas near the border, but the group still has “significant launch capacity”, Haaretz newspaper reported.
Over decades of conflict, Hezbollah has previously managed to rebound from heavy blows and fight Israeli forces to a standstill despite a vast disparity in military technology.
As it braces for further retaliation, Israel has brought in tighter restrictions, including school closures, for more than a million people in northern parts of the country, including the city of Haifa. One rocket hit an assisted living home in Safed city, starting a fire, but no casualties were reported.
Most airlines have stopped flights to Beirut and governments around the world, from Moscow to Washington, are urging their citizens to evacuate over fears the current air war could expand into a ground conflict or draw in regional players.
Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said the US is the only country that can end the conflict, but expressed disappointment after Joe Biden addressed the UN on Tuesday, urging Israel to avoid full-blown war but blaming Hezbollah for unprovoked attacks.
Biden’s remarks were “not strong” and “would not solve the Lebanese problem”, AFP quoted Bou Habib as saying. The UN secretary general António Guterres, warned of a risk of escalation that could leave swathes of Lebanon in ruins and plunge its people into a humanitarian disaster.
“The situation in Gaza is a nonstop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it. Lebanon is at the brink,” he said in a statement on X. “The people of Lebanon, the people of Israel and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued, even as global attention shifted to Lebanon. An airstrike on a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Wednesday killed a pregnant woman and her four children.
Hospital records showed that the 35-year-old woman was six months pregnant. Her four children were aged between eight and 18, the AP reported; one of its journalists also saw the bodies.
The death toll in the war has now risen to nearly 41,500 people, the majority of them civilians, according to health authorities. Israel launched the war after a cross-border attack led by Hamas on 7 October 1,200 people, the majority civilians, and resulted in another 250 being taken captive.
The expansion of Israel’s war on the northern front means efforts to reach a deal for a ceasefire and hostage release has in effect been put on hold.
Families and supporters of the hostages attacked the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over his plans to attend the UN general assembly in New York in person this week.
“While the country is burning and 101 hostages have been abandoned in the Hamas death tunnels for 355 days, the prime minister chooses another unnecessary show trip to the US,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.