Hezbollah strikes back with rockets and declares an “open battle of reckoning” with Israel

NAHARIYA, Israel — Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets over northern Israel early Sunday, some landing near the city of Haifa, while Israel launched hundreds of attacks on Lebanon. A Hezbollah leader said a “pitch-and-burn battle of reckoning” was underway as both sides appeared to be moving ever closer to open war.

The overnight rocket fire was in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon that killed dozens of people, including a longtime Hezbollah commander, and an unprecedented attack on the group's communications equipment. Air raid sirens across northern Israel forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to shelters.

A rocket hit near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a town near Haifa. At least three people were injured and buildings and cars caught fire. The Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom reported that four people were injured by shrapnel in the shelling.

Avi Vazana ran into a shelter with his wife and nine-month-old baby before he heard the rocket hit Kiryat Bialik, then went back outside to see if anyone was injured.

“I ran with no shoes, no shirt, just pants. I ran to that house while everything was still burning to find out if there were other people there,” he said.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said three people were killed and four others wounded in Israeli attacks near the border. It did not say whether the victims were civilians or combatants.

Hezbollah responds to unprecedented strikes and intensifies its rhetoric

Hezbollah's deputy leader, Naim Kassem, said his group is currently in an “open confrontation” with Israel, which could lead to further displacement of people in northern Israel.

“We admit that we are suffering. We are human. But as we are suffering, you will also suffer,” Kassem said at the funeral of Hezbollah top commander Ibrahim Akil. He said a barrage of rockets fired by the group deep into Israel early Sunday was just the beginning and promised to destroy Israel's economy.

The rocket fire came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday killed at least 45 people, including a top Hezbollah leader and several other fighters, as well as women and children. Hezbollah was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies just days earlier.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take all necessary measures to restore security in the north and allow people to return to their homes.

“No country can tolerate the deliberate construction of rockets in its cities. We cannot accept this either,” he said.

The Israeli military said it had carried out attacks across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting around 400 militant positions, including rocket launchers. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said the strikes had foiled an even larger attack.

“Hundreds of thousands of civilians have come under fire in large parts of northern Israel,” he said. “Today we saw that the fire has penetrated deeper into Israel than ever before.”

The military also said it had intercepted several missiles fired from Iraq after Iranian-backed militant groups there claimed they had launched a drone attack on Israel.

Classes were canceled throughout northern Israel and the Health Ministry announced that all hospitals in the north would move their operations to protected areas within medical centers.

In another development, Israeli forces raided the West Bank office of Al-Jazeera, which they banned earlier this year, accusing the channel of serving as a mouthpiece for militant groups. The pan-Arab broadcaster denied the allegations.

UN envoy says region is on the brink of disaster

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading blows since the Gaza war began nearly a year ago, when the militant group fired rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its Iranian-backed ally Hamas. The smaller-scale fighting has left dozens of people dead in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon and tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border.

Until recently, neither side was believed to want a full-scale war, and Hezbollah has not yet attacked Tel Aviv or key civilian infrastructure. But in recent weeks, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon. Hezbollah has said it will not stop its attacks until the war in Gaza ends, as a ceasefire there seems increasingly difficult to achieve.

The war in Gaza began with the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage. About 100 prisoners are still being held, a third of whom are believed to be dead. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed. It does not say how many fighters there were, but it says more than half of the dead were women and children.

The hostages' families expressed fear that a war in the north could distract from their situation and further complicate negotiations for their release.

The UN envoy for Lebanon called on all parties to withdraw.

“As the region stands on the brink of imminent disaster, it cannot be stressed enough: There is NO military solution that would make either side safer,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said in an X-post.

Hezbollah says it is using new weapons

Hezbollah said it fired dozens of Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets – a new type of weapon the group had not used before – at the Ramat David air base southeast of Haifa “in response to repeated Israeli attacks on various Lebanese regions that resulted in many civilian martyrs.”

In July, the group released a video containing alleged footage of the base taken with surveillance drones.

Hezbollah also said it attacked the facilities of Haifa-based defense company Rafael, calling it retaliation for the wireless attack. No evidence was provided and the Israeli military declined to comment on the statement.

Hezbollah has vowed retaliation against Israel after a wave of explosions hit pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 37 people – including two children – were killed and about 3,000 injured. Blame for the attacks was widely placed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs while Hezbollah members were meeting in the basement, Israel said. Among those killed was Akil, a senior Hezbollah official who commanded the group's special unit, the Radwan Force.

Lebanese authorities said Friday's airstrike killed at least seven women and three children and wounded dozens more. It was the deadliest attack on Beirut since the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the attack broke the group's chain of command and eliminated Akil, who he said was responsible for the deaths of Israeli soldiers.

Akil had been on the US wanted list for years, with a reward of seven million dollars on his behalf. He is accused of playing a role in the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983 and in the hostage-taking of American and German people in Lebanon during the civil war in the 1980s.

Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Moshe Edri contributed from Kiryat Bialik.