Hezbol­lah launched more than 100 rock­ets ear­ly Sun­day across a wider and deep­er area of north­ern Is­rael, with some land­ing near the city of Haifa, as Is­rael launched hun­dreds of strikes on Lebanon. The sides ap­peared to be spi­ralling to­ward all-out war fol­low­ing months of es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions.

The rock­et bar­rage overnight was in re­sponse to Is­raeli at­tacks in Lebanon that have killed dozens, in­clud­ing a vet­er­an Hezbol­lah com­man­der, and an un­prece­dent­ed at­tack tar­get­ing the group’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­vices. It set off air raid sirens across north­ern Is­rael, send­ing thou­sands of peo­ple scram­bling in­to shel­ters.

One rock­et struck near a res­i­den­tial build­ing in Kiry­at Bia­lik, a com­mu­ni­ty near Haifa, wound­ing at least three peo­ple and set­ting build­ings and cars on fire. Is­rael’s Ma­gen David Adom res­cue ser­vice said that a to­tal of four peo­ple were wound­ed by shrap­nel in the bar­rage.

Avi Vazana raced to a shel­ter with his wife and 9-month-old ba­by be­fore he heard the boom of the rock­et hit­ting in Kiry­at Bia­lik. Then he went back out­side to see if any­one was hurt.

“I ran with­out shoes, with­out a shirt, on­ly with pants. I ran to this house when every­thing was still on fire to try to find if there are oth­er peo­ple,” he said.

Lebanon’s Health Min­istry said that three peo­ple were killed and an­oth­er four wound­ed in Is­raeli strikes near the bor­der, with­out say­ing whether they were civil­ians or com­bat­ants.

Hezbol­lah re­sponds to un­prece­dent­ed blows

The bar­rage came af­ter an Is­raeli airstrike in Beirut on Fri­day killed at least 45 peo­ple, in­clud­ing one of Hezbol­lah’s top lead­ers as well as women and chil­dren. Hezbol­lah was al­ready reel­ing from a so­phis­ti­cat­ed at­tack that caused thou­sands of pagers and walkie-talkies to ex­plode just days ear­li­er.

Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said Is­rael would take what­ev­er ac­tion was nec­es­sary to re­store se­cu­ri­ty in the north and al­low peo­ple to re­turn to their homes.

“No coun­try can ac­cept the wan­ton rock­et­ing of its cities. We can’t ac­cept it ei­ther,” he said.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said that it car­ried out a wave of strikes across south­ern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hit­ting about 400 mil­i­tant sites, in­clud­ing rock­et launch­ers. Lt. Col. Na­dav Shoshani, an Is­raeli mil­i­tary spokesman, said those strikes had thwart­ed an even larg­er at­tack.

“Hun­dreds of thou­sands of civil­ians have come un­der fire across a lot of north­ern Is­rael,” he said. “To­day we saw fire that was deep­er in­to Is­rael than be­fore.”

The mil­i­tary al­so said it had in­ter­cept­ed mul­ti­ple aer­i­al de­vices fired from the di­rec­tion of Iraq, af­ter Iran-backed mil­i­tant groups there claimed to have launched a drone at­tack on Is­rael.

Is­rael’s Health Min­istry said that all hos­pi­tals in the north would be­gin mov­ing op­er­a­tions to pro­tect­ed ar­eas or shel­ters with­in the med­ical cen­tres.

In a sep­a­rate de­vel­op­ment, Is­raeli forces raid­ed the West Bank bu­reau of Al-Jazeera, which it had banned ear­li­er this year, ac­cus­ing it of serv­ing as a mouth­piece for mil­i­tant groups, al­le­ga­tions de­nied by the pan-Arab broad­cast­er.

U.N. en­voy warns that the re­gion is on the brink of a cat­a­stro­phe

Is­rael and Hezbol­lah have trad­ed fire since the out­break of the war in Gaza near­ly a year ago, when the mil­i­tant group be­gan fir­ing rock­ets in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tini­ans and its fel­low Iran-backed al­ly Hamas. The low-lev­el fight­ing has killed dozens of peo­ple in Is­rael, hun­dreds in Lebanon, and dis­placed tens of thou­sands on both sides of the fron­tier.

Un­til re­cent­ly, nei­ther side was be­lieved to be seek­ing an all-out war, and Hezbol­lah has so far stopped short of tar­get­ing Tel Aviv or ma­jor civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture. But in re­cent weeks, Is­rael has shift­ed its fo­cus from Gaza to Lebanon and vowed to bring back calm to the bor­der so that its cit­i­zens can re­turn to their homes. Hezbol­lah has said that it would on­ly halt its at­tacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which ap­pears in­creas­ing­ly elu­sive.

The war in Gaza be­gan with Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack in­to Is­rael, in which Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants killed about 1,200 peo­ple and took around 250 oth­ers hostage. They are still hold­ing around 100 cap­tives, a third of whom are be­lieved to be dead. Over 41,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry. It doesn’t say how many were fight­ers, but says women and chil­dren make up more than half of the dead.

Fam­i­lies of the hostages have raised fears that a war in the north would dis­tract from their plight and fur­ther com­pli­cate the ne­go­ti­a­tions over their re­lease.

The U.N. en­voy for Lebanon called on all par­ties to pull back.

“With the re­gion on the brink of an im­mi­nent cat­a­stro­phe, it can­not be over­stat­ed enough: there is NO mil­i­tary so­lu­tion that will make ei­ther side safer,” Jea­nine Hen­nis-Plass­chaert said in an X post.

Is­raeli me­dia re­port­ed that rock­ets fired from Lebanon ear­ly Sun­day were in­ter­cept­ed in the ar­eas of Haifa and Nazareth, which are fur­ther south than most of the rock­et fire to date. Is­rael can­celled school across the north, deep­en­ing the sense of cri­sis.

Hezbol­lah says it is us­ing new weapons

Hezbol­lah said that it had launched dozens of Fa­di 1 and Fa­di 2 mis­siles — a new type of weapon the group hadn’t used be­fore — at the Ra­mat David air­base, south­east of Haifa, “in re­sponse to the re­peat­ed Is­raeli at­tacks that tar­get­ed var­i­ous Lebanese re­gions and led to the fall of many civil­ian mar­tyrs.”

In Ju­ly, the group re­leased a video with what it said was footage it had filmed of the base with sur­veil­lance drones.

Hezbol­lah al­so said it had tar­get­ed the fa­cil­i­ties of the Rafael de­fense firm, which is head­quar­tered in Haifa, call­ing it re­tal­i­a­tion for the wire­less de­vices at­tack. It didn’t pro­vide ev­i­dence, and the Is­raeli mil­i­tary de­clined to com­ment on the state­ment.

Hezbol­lah has vowed to re­tal­i­ate against Is­rael for a wave of ex­plo­sions that hit pagers and walkie-talkies be­long­ing to Hezbol­lah mem­bers on Tues­day and Wednes­day, killing at least 37 peo­ple — in­clud­ing two chil­dren — and wound­ing around 3,000. The at­tacks were wide­ly blamed on Is­rael, which hasn’t con­firmed or de­nied re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

On Fri­day, an Is­raeli airstrike took down an eight-sto­ry build­ing in a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed neigh­bour­hood in Beirut’s south­ern sub­urbs as Hezbol­lah mem­bers were meet­ing in the base­ment, ac­cord­ing to Is­rael. Among those killed was Ibrahim Ak­il, a top Hezbol­lah of­fi­cial who com­mand­ed the group’s spe­cial forces unit, known as the Rad­wan Force.

Lebanese au­thor­i­ties say at least sev­en women and three chil­dren were killed in Fri­day’s airstrike and that dozens more were wound­ed. It was the dead­liest strike on Beirut since the month­long war in 2006 be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah.

Is­raeli De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant said that the at­tack broke up the group’s chain of com­mand while tak­ing out Ak­il, who he said was re­spon­si­ble for Is­raeli deaths.

Ak­il had been on the U.S. most want­ed list for years, with a $7 mil­lion re­ward, over his al­leged role in the 1983 bomb­ing of the U.S. Em­bassy in Beirut and the tak­ing of Amer­i­can and Ger­man hostages in Lebanon dur­ing the civ­il war in the 1980s.

Ka­reem Chehayeb re­port­ed from Beirut. Moshe Edri con­tributed to this re­port from Kiry­at Bia­lik.

NA­HARIYA, Is­rael (AP) —