Israel and the militant group Hezbollah exchanged intense fire on the Lebanese border on Sunday, stoking fears of a wider conflict in the region as the months-long war in Gaza continues.
“Dozens of rockets hit Israel and destroyed homes, cars and communities,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told X.
In a separate development, Israeli soldiers closed Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday morning, a move condemned by several journalist organizations.
The IDF said Hezbollah launched approximately 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones at Israel. While many were intercepted by Israeli air defenses, “there were a small number of cases of impacts and intercepted debris falling” on Israeli territory, it said.
Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said on X that three people were wounded by shrapnel in the bombardment. Another rescue service, United Hatzalah, said it treated 20 people who were wounded while heading to a shelter.
The IDF later said its fighter jets had “attacked dozens of Hezbollah terror targets, including launchers and military structures in dozens of areas in southern Lebanon.”
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of rockets as part of its initial response to Friday’s airstrike in a densely populated Beirut suburb that killed 45 people, including top leaders of the group. That attack followed the coordinated detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members across Lebanon.
Separately, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militias, said it had also launched drones at Israel on Sunday.
In a video statement on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his military had “inflicted on Hezbollah a sequence of blows that they did not imagine.”
Reiterating his government’s intention to return displaced residents in northern Israel, he said: “No country can tolerate shooting at its residents, shooting at its cities, and we, the state of Israel, will not tolerate it either. We will do everything necessary to restore security.”
Israel and Hezbollah, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, have exchanged fire since the war in Gaza erupted, beginning with the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks that killed about 1,200 people and Palestinian militants took about 250 hostages. About 100 people remain in captivity, though a third are believed dead.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza since then has killed more than 41,000 people, according to health officials in the enclave. Those numbers do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Hezbollah said it began firing rockets in solidarity with Palestinians and its Iran-backed ally Hamas, and low-level attacks have since killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.
UN Warning
The United Nations warned that the region was “on the brink of an imminent catastrophe.” In a statement published on X, UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis said “it cannot be overemphasized enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer.”
Further south in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s air force killed seven people and wounded several more in a strike on a compound housing a former school, Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Saber Basal said in a Telegram post on Sunday. He added that the compound was home to “hundreds of displaced people.”
In a statement, the IDF claimed that Hamas was operating from the compound and that “numerous measures had been taken to mitigate the risk of harm to uninvolved civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence information.”
Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers closed Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday morning.
In an exchange broadcast live on Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language news channel, Israeli troops handed the network’s bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, an order closing the office for 45 days.
The IDF said in a statement that “the order was signed following a legal opinion and an updated intelligence assessment which determined that the offices were being used to incite terror, to support terrorist activities and that the channel’s broadcasts endanger security and public order both in the area and in the State of Israel as a whole.”
Calling the allegations baseless, the network said in a statement that the raid was “an affront to press freedom.”
“These repressive measures are clearly aimed at preventing the world from witnessing the reality of the situation in the occupied territories and the ongoing war in Gaza and its devastating impact on innocent civilians,” the statement added.
The move was condemned by the Foreign Press Association, which said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned by this escalation of threats to press freedom.” Urging the Israeli government to reconsider the measures, it added that “the restriction on foreign correspondents and the closure of media outlets signal a departure from democratic values.”
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement that the raid was “deeply worrying.” It added that journalists “must be protected and allowed to work freely.”
Israel banned Al Jazeera from broadcasting inside Israeli territory, but it continued to broadcast from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Last week, the Israeli government announced it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country, four months after banning the channel from operating inside Israel.
