Israel-Lebanon latest: Israeli strikes on Hezbollah kill 356 as Beirut civilians urged to evacuate

Israel is deepening its attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the public will have to remain calm the next few days, defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday, signaling that he expected intensified fire from across the border.

“We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes,” Gallant said in a video published by his office. “These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure.”

Footage published by Lebanese media has shown the seconds after an Israeli airstrike hit a village in southern Lebanon.

The strike was reportedly carried out in the village of Ansar in the Nabatieh Governorate. The link below is from The Times of Israel’s military correspondent Emanuel Fabian.

Earlier, we reported that Israel had told residents in southern Lebanon to evacuate ahead of imminent strikes targeting Hezbollah weapons stores.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee has said that airstrikes on houses in Lebanese villages in which Hezbollah had hidden weapons were imminent on Monday, warning residents to evacuate immediately.

A rocket hit an uninhabited mountainside east of the Lebanese port city of Byblos on Monday, Lebanon’s state media and a resident there has said.

The area has not been previously hit by airstrikes but falls between Christian and Shi’ite villages there, the resident said, declining to be identified. Israel on Monday carried out intensified airstrikes across a wider geographical region, targeting the Shi’ite armed group Hezbollah.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has spoken with US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin about the military’s latest strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Provided the Secretary with a situation assessment of Hezbollah threats and briefed him on [Israeli military] operations to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks against Israeli civilians,” Gallant wrote on X.

“We also discussed the wider regional situation and the threats posed by Iran and its proxies,” he added.

Below we have footage taken by Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera showing the moment the Israeli military raids its West Bank offices in the latest attempt to shut down the broadcaster’s operations in the region.

Last week, Israel’s government announced it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country. Four months ago, they banned the channel from operating inside Israel.

The Israeli communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, confirmed the latest closure in a statement that called Al Jazeera “the mouthpiece” of Gaza’s Hamas and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“We will continue to fight in the enemy channels and ensure the safety of our heroic fighters,” he said.

Al Jazeera has denounced the raid as “a criminal act”. 

Israel’s military said on Sunday that it intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” launched from the east, and that no damage or injuries were reported.

Earlier, an official in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a grouping of Iran-backed armed factions, said they launched cruise missile and explosive drone attacks at Israel.

Drones of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq targeted the Israeli military’s Golani observation base in the occupied Palestinian territories, the pro-Iranian militant group said on Monday.

On Sunday, the group said it had launched a drone attack on a target in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley.

Iraqi Shia armed factions, like other pro-Iranian groups, pledged to carry out attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians after Hamas militants launched its attack on Israel on 7 October last year, triggering the war in Gaza.

Islamic Resistance in Iraq vowed to escalate its attacks.

In separate statements, the Israeli military said interceptors were launched towards an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that had been launched from Iraq and was identified crossing into Israeli territory from Syria.

No injuries were reported.

Tension in the Middle East has surged since thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group exploded in an attack widely blamed on Israel.

Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged some of the heaviest cross-border fire in a conflict running in parallel with the almost year-long Gaza war.