Hezbollah announces ‘battle of reckoning’ with Israel

Rocket fire has intensified since the Beirut airstrike that killed the group’s senior commander

Dozens of Hezbollah missiles have struck northern Israel, in what the Shia group said was retaliation for Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon that killed over 250 people.

Months-long exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah escalated last week, when Israel claimed to have remotely activated hundreds of pagers and other communications devices in Hezbollah hands, killing at least 37 people and injuring an estimated 3,000, including children. Israeli jets then bombed Beirut and killed Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah commander.

“We admit that we are pained. We are humans. But as we are pained – you will also be pained,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Kassem said at Aqil’s funeral on Sunday, announcing an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel.

Later in the day, Hezbollah launched around 100 rockets at Israel, targeting the city of Haifa in the north. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded with a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Monday. The IDF strikes killed at least 274 people, including 21 children and 39 women, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad has said.

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Hezbollah responded by launching 35 rockets at several Israeli bases. The IDF said the missiles targeted Mt. Carmel and the Galilee. 

“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north – that is exactly what we are doing,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, announcing the bombing campaign against Hezbollah from the army headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has condemned the Israeli attacks on Lebanon as “insane” and warned of “dangerous consequences.”

“This needs to stop,” UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told AFP on Sunday. “The attacks that we saw on the communication devices, the pagers, followed by rocket attacks and rocket fire being exchanged on both sides … marks a real escalation.” 

Shamdasani added that the UN warnings about the “regional spillover” of the Gaza conflict appeared to be coming true, with “both the actions and the rhetoric” of Israel and Hezbollah driving the escalation.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading missile fire and airstrikes since last October, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands on the border. The low-intensity conflict has frustrated Netanyahu’s efforts to “eliminate” Hamas in Gaza, launched after the Palestinian group’s October 7 raids blamed for the deaths of some 1,200 Israelis. More than 41,000 Palestinians in the enclave have been killed in Israeli military operations since then.