Nahariya: Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets at large areas of northern Israel early Saturday, some of which fell near the city of Haifa. Israel retaliated with heavy air strikes on Lebanon, raising the risk of months-long tension between the two sides escalating into a full-blown war. Hezbollah’s rocket attacks set off air raid sirens in northern Israel, forcing thousands of people to take shelter in bomb-proof camps.
The Israeli military said the rockets were fired towards residential areas, raising the possibility of further escalation of the confrontation between the two sides, as most of the previous attacks were targeting military bases. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said one person was killed and another injured in Israeli airstrikes near the border.
Israel’s rescue service agency Magen David Adom said it treated four people with shrapnel injuries, including a 76-year-old man who was injured in Kiryat Bialik, near Haifa. Several buildings were reported damaged and vehicles caught fire in Kiryat Bialik. However, it was not immediately clear whether the damage to buildings and vehicles was caused by Hezbollah rockets or Israeli warplanes.
Hezbollah carried out these rocket attacks at a time when 45 people, including a top leader of the organization, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday. Apart from this, a few days ago, there were massive explosions in other devices including pagers, walkie-talkies, mobiles and laptops of many Hezbollah members. The Israeli army said that in the last 24 hours it carried out several airstrikes in southern Lebanon, under which about 400 terrorist targets, including rocket launch sites, were targeted.
Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani claimed that with the help of these attacks, plans for many more attacks (in Israeli territory) were thwarted. Shoshani said, “Millions of people living in most of northern Israel faced attacks. They spent Saturday night and Sunday morning in bomb-proof camps. There have never been such large-scale attacks so deep into Israel before.
