Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel's third-largest city Haifa and Israel looked poised to expand its offensive into Lebanon on Monday, one year after the devastating Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Israelis held ceremonies and protests to mark the first anniversary of the Oct 7 attack as the Gaza conflict has spread across the Middle East and raised fears of all-out regional war.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally in Lebanon of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with "Fadi 1" missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65 km away.
The armed group later said it also targeted areas north of Haifa with missiles. Israel's military said around 135 projectiles had entered Israeli territory on Monday as of 5 pm local time.
Ten people were reported injured in the Haifa area and two others further south in central Israel.
Israel's military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon and two Israeli soldiers were killed, taking the Israeli military death toll inside Lebanon to 11.
Lebanon's health ministry reported dozens of deaths, including 10 firefighters killed in an airstrike on a municipal building in the border area, and 22 other people killed in air attacks on Sunday.
Also on Monday, Israel within the space of an hour carried out air strikes on 120 targets in southern Lebanon, including against Radwan special forces units, Hezbollah's missile force and its intelligence directorate.
"This operation follows a series of strikes aimed at degrading Hezbollah's command, control and firing capabilities, as well as assisting ground forces in achieving their operational goals," the military said in a statement. (Reuters)