Israel says it conducted widespread attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon

Israel’s subject said Monday it was wide attacking Hezbollah targets successful Lebanon, amid days of escalated struggle betwixt the 2 sides that has raised fears of an all-out war.

The Israel Defense Forces did not instantly place nonstop targets.

The strikes followed what Hezbollah said were artillery and rocket strikes it launched astatine bluish Israel.

Israeli aerial defenses besides intercepted a drone aboriginal Monday launched by a pro-Iranian militant radical successful Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance successful Iraq said it was targeting an Israeli base.

The surge successful warring on the Israel-Lebanon borderline during the past week prompted the U.S. State Department to contented a caller question informing urging U.S. citizens to permission Lebanon connected commercialized flights portion they inactive person the option.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces traded hundreds of rocket strikes Sunday, portion Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to bash “whatever it takes” to reconstruct information successful bluish Israel.

Netanyahu said Israel successful caller days had “dealt Hezbollah a bid of blows they ne'er imagined,” calling it a “message.”

The back-and-forth attacks included Hezbollah retaliating to an Israeli onslaught that killed Hezbollah subject leaders successful Beirut connected Friday, portion the militants blamed Israel for remotely detonating explosives successful pagers and walkie-talkies wrong Lebanon, sidesplitting astatine slightest 32 and injuring thousands.

Hezbollah lawman secretary-general Naim Qassem said Hezbollah had started a caller signifier of its combat against Israel, which helium described arsenic an "open-ended conflict of reckoning."

U.S. nationalist information spokesperson John Kirby said Sunday connected ABC News’ “This Week” amusement that Israel and Hezbollah indispensable restrain themselves to support the struggle from escalating into an all-out war.

“We judge determination are amended ways … than opening a 2nd front” on the Israeli-Lebanon borderline beyond Israel’s astir year-long combat with Hamas militants successful Gaza.

“Nobody is pollyannish astir however hard this volition be,” Kirby said, but the warring parties should propulsion backmost from continued warring truthful this doesn’t go an all-out war.

As the Israeli-Hezbollah warfare mounts, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees pointed to ongoing conflicts successful Syria and Yemen, noting that the portion is already precise fragile.

“An enlargement of the struggle whitethorn person incalculable consequences,” Filippo Grandi told VOA of the escalation successful Lebanon this week.

He said the U.N., peculiarly its humanitarian agencies, has been making contingency plans for immoderate clip should the warfare spread, but that nary 1 should expect humanitarians “to code each the countless problems, countless challenges, that volition look from an adjacent greater determination war.”

Israel and Hezbollah person traded occurrence since the outbreak of the warfare successful Gaza past Oct. 7, erstwhile the militant radical began firing rockets successful solidarity with the Palestinians and its chap Iran-backed state Hamas. The warring has killed dozens of radical successful Israel, hundreds successful Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands connected some sides of the frontier.

The warfare successful Gaza began with Hamas' October 2023 onslaught connected confederate Israel, successful which Palestinian militants killed astir 1,200 radical and took astir 250 others hostage. They are inactive holding astir 100 captives, a 3rd of whom are believed to beryllium dead. More than 41,400 Palestinians person been killed, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, with the Israeli subject saying the decease toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.

Hamas has been designated a panic radical by the U.S., U.K., EU, and others.

VOA’s United Nations analogous Margaret Besheer contributed to this report; immoderate worldly came from The Associated Press.