Israel urged civilians to evacuate Hezbollah outposts in southern Lebanon on Monday before unleashing what appears to be the most widespread bombing operation the IDF has conducted in the neighboring country since the latest round of the long-running conflict began almost a year ago.
The Israeli Defense Forces said it struck over 300 Hezbollah targets Monday after military spokesman admiral Daniel Hagari instructed civilians to leave areas in Lebanon where Hezbollah is storing weapons and conducting other combat-related activities.
Israel sent text messages to civilians and took to radio airwaves to get the message out about upcoming strikes, local media reported. Lebanese authorities quickly claimed that the Israeli strikes killed 274 people and wounded 1,000, but the widely reported statistics have not been independently verified. Should the numbers prove accurate, it would be the deadliest day in the region since the October 7 massacre.
At the same time, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli military post in Galilee, according to the Associated Press.
Following the initial bombing campaign Monday morning, the IDF warned civilians that the operation would soon expand to eastern Lebanon, where the IDF said Hezbollah plans to begin launching attacks.
“Get away from there, for the sake of your safety and security. Hezbollah intends to fire those munitions toward Israeli territory, and we will not allow this,” Hagari said in a televised address.
Civilian warnings have become a feature of Israel’s ongoing military campaign against Hamas that began after the terrorist organizations’s civilian massacre on October 7. Seeking to limit civilian casualties, the Israeli military often warns the people of Gaza to leave certain areas and assists with humanitarian evacuations to nearby locations.
The latest Israeli strikes against Hezbollah come after the two sides traded tit-for-tat escalatory attacks over the weekend. The latest escalation spiral kicked off when Hezbollah fighters were injured by pager and walkie-talkie explosions widely attributed to Israeli intelligence. Hezbollah launched an estimated 150 rockets into northern Israel Sunday, many of which were intercepted, wounding at least one individual and damaging a residential building.
On Friday, Israeli forces killed a top ranking Hezbollah terrorist and 13 others with an airstrike in Beirut. The airstrike preempted what Israel believes what a plan from Hezbollah to conduct a similar massacre to Hamas’s October 7 attack in northern Israel.
Schools remain closed in parts of northern Israel, where many civilians had already evacuated amid ongoing rocket attacks over the last several months. Businesses across the area have also been shuttered, with the IDF excepting only those establishments within a certain radius of fortified shelters.