Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it targeted northern Israel’s Haifa naval base on Tuesday in response to the Israeli military’s ongoing strikes against the Iran-backed movement’s strongholds in Lebanon, including the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Israel carried out successive air raids for a second day on southern Lebanon as well as suburbs of the capital after issuing evacuation warnings to residents.
In a statement, Hezbollah said it targeted the Haifa naval base with “a barrage of high-quality missiles” at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT). The Israeli military said shortly after 8:00 pm that several incoming projectiles had been detected and that most were intercepted.
Lebanon was drawn into the regional war on Monday following an initial attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which said it wanted to “avenge” the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during US-Israeli strikes.
Israel quickly launched large-scale strikes on Lebanon, where the government declared an immediate ban on Hezbollah’s military activities on Monday.
Israel announced on Tuesday morning that it had begun a new round of “simultaneous strikes in Tehran and Beirut” and said in an evening statement that it had hit “approximately 60” targets “belonging to the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organisations”, along with additional “broad-scale strikes” targeting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military also said it had deployed troops to several locations in southern Lebanon in what it described as a “forward defence” measure along the border.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had authorised the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to advance and take control of additional strategic positions in Lebanon in order to prevent attacks on Israeli border communities.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for 13 attacks against Israel on Tuesday, saying it had targeted at least five Israeli tanks, three of them in Lebanese territory, using guided missiles and “appropriate weapons”.
The group also said it had used attack drones and rocket salvos to target several bases in northern Israel and the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967, as well as a gathering of Israeli forces at a base near Yuval, close to the Lebanese border.
Additionally, it claimed to have shot down an Israeli drone over the southern city of Nabatiyeh.
These attacks came “in response to the criminal Israeli aggression on dozens of Lebanese cities and towns”, Hezbollah said.
Since the early hours of Tuesday morning, Beirut’s southern suburbs have been subjected to a series of air strikes targeting several buildings after evacuation warnings were issued.
AFP photographers saw huge plumes of smoke rising into the air and obscuring the sky over the capital.
Lebanese authorities on Monday recorded the displacement of more than 58,000 people from areas targeted by strikes.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television broadcaster said its Beirut headquarters had been targeted overnight from Monday into Tuesday and announced on Tuesday morning that Israel had also struck the offices of Hezbollah’s Al-Nour radio broadcaster.
In a statement, Hezbollah condemned the strikes on “two civilian media outlets”, saying they were aimed at “silencing the voice and image of the resistance”.
The southern city of Sidon, largely spared during the last Hezbollah–Israel war, was struck twice on Tuesday.
One strike hit a headquarters belonging to Jamaa Islamiya, an Islamist group allied with Hamas and Hezbollah, and the other followed an evacuation warning elsewhere in the city.
The surroundings of the city of Tyre, further south, were also struck after evacuation warnings were issued.
