Israeli strikes killed more than 180 Lebanese Monday in the deadliest and most intense barrage in nearly a year as the Israeli military warned residents in southern and eastern Lebanon to evacuate their homes ahead of a widening air campaign against Hezbollah.
Thousands of Lebanese fled the south, and the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon was jammed with cars heading toward Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. More than 400 other people were injured in the strikes.
The Israeli military announced that it hit some 300 targets Monday, saying it was going after Hezbollah weapons sites. Some strikes hit in residential areas of towns in the south and the eastern Bekaa Valley. One strike hit a wooded area as far away as Byblos in central Lebanon, more than 80 miles from the border north of Beirut.
The military said it was expanding the airstrikes to include areas of the Bekaa Valley, along Lebanon’s eastern border. Hezbollah has long had an established presence in the Bekaa Valley, which runs along the Lebanese-Syrian border, and it is where the group was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said residents of the valley must immediately evacuate areas where Hezbollah is storing weapons.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli military post in Galilee. It also targeted for a second day the facilities of the Rafael defense firm, headquartered in Haifa.
As Israel carried out the attacks, Israeli authorities reported a series of air-raid sirens in northern Israel warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.
Earlier Monday, Israel issued a broad warning urging residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate from homes and other buildings where it claimed Hezbollah has stored weapons.
It was the first warning of its kind in nearly a year of steadily escalating conflict and came after a particularly heavy exchange of fire on Sunday. Hezbollah launched around 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for strikes that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters.
There was no sign of an immediate exodus from the villages of southern Lebanon, and the warning left open the possibility that some residents could live in or near targeted structures without knowing that they are risk.
