The leader of Hezbol­lah vowed Thurs­day to keep up dai­ly strikes on Is­rael de­spite this week’s dead­ly sab­o­tage of its mem­bers’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices, and said Is­raelis dis­placed from homes near the Lebanon bor­der be­cause of the fight­ing would not be able to re­turn un­til the war in Gaza ends.

Hezbol­lah and Is­rael launched fresh at­tacks across the bor­der as Has­san Nas­ral­lah spoke for the first time since the mass bomb­ing of de­vices in Lebanon and Syr­ia that he de­scribed as a “se­vere blow” — and for which he promised to re­tal­i­ate.

The two days of at­tacks tar­get­ing thou­sands of Hezbol­lah pagers and walkie-talkies have been wide­ly blamed on Is­rael, height­en­ing fears that 11 months of near-dai­ly ex­changes of fire be­tween Hezbol­lah and Is­rael will es­ca­late in­to all-out war. Is­rael has nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied in­volve­ment in the at­tacks.

Dur­ing Nas­ral­lah’s speech, Hezbol­lah struck at least four times in north­ern Is­rael, and two Is­raeli sol­diers were killed in a strike ear­li­er in the day. Is­raeli war­planes flew low over Beirut while Nas­ral­lah spoke and broke the sound bar­ri­er, scat­ter­ing birds and prompt­ing peo­ple in hous­es and of­fices to quick­ly open win­dows to pre­vent them from shat­ter­ing.

Is­rael al­so launched at­tacks in south­ern Lebanon on Thurs­day, say­ing it struck dozens of mis­sile launch­ers and oth­er Hezbol­lah in­fra­struc­ture, though it was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear if there were any ca­su­al­ties.

In re­cent weeks, Is­raeli lead­ers have stepped-up warn­ings of a po­ten­tial larg­er mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion against Hezbol­lah, say­ing they are de­ter­mined to stop the group’s fire to al­low tens of thou­sands of Is­raelis to re­turn to homes near the bor­der.

In a Thurs­day brief­ing, the Is­raeli de­fence min­is­ter said Hezbol­lah would “pay an in­creas­ing price” as Is­rael seeks to make con­di­tions near its bor­der with Lebanon safe enough for res­i­dents to re­turn.

“The se­quence of our mil­i­tary ac­tions will con­tin­ue,” he said.

The at­tack on elec­tron­ic de­vices ap­peared to be the cul­mi­na­tion of a month­s­long op­er­a­tion by Is­rael to tar­get as many Hezbol­lah mem­bers as pos­si­ble all at once — but civil­ians were al­so hit. At least 37 peo­ple were killed, in­clud­ing two chil­dren, and some 3,000 wound­ed in the ex­plo­sions Tues­day and Wednes­day.

Nas­ral­lah said the group is in­ves­ti­gat­ing how the bomb­ings were car­ried out.

“Yes, we were sub­ject­ed to a huge and se­vere blow,” he said. “The en­e­my crossed all bound­aries and red lines,” he said. Point­ing to the num­ber of pagers and walkie-talkies, he ac­cused Is­rael of in­tend­ing to kill thou­sands of peo­ple at one time. “The en­e­my will face a se­vere and fair pun­ish­ment from where they ex­pect and don’t ex­pect.”

He said Hezbol­lah will con­tin­ue its bar­rages in­to north­ern Is­rael as long as the war in Gaza con­tin­ues, vow­ing that Is­rael will not be able to bring its peo­ple back to the bor­der re­gion. “The on­ly way is stop the ag­gres­sion on the peo­ple of Gaza and the West Bank,” he said. “Nei­ther strikes, nor as­sas­si­na­tions nor an all-out war will achieve that.”

Ear­li­er Thurs­day, Hezbol­lah said it had tar­get­ed three Is­raeli mil­i­tary po­si­tions near the bor­der, two of them with drones. Is­raeli hos­pi­tals re­port­ed eight peo­ple light­ly or mod­er­ate­ly in­jured.

Hezbol­lah says its near dai­ly fire is a show of sup­port for Hamas. Is­rael’s 11-month-old war with Hamas in Gaza be­gan af­ter its mil­i­tants led the Oct. 7 at­tack on Is­rael.

Is­rael has re­spond­ed to Hezbol­lah’s at­tacks with strikes in south­ern Lebanon, and has struck se­nior fig­ures from the group in the cap­i­tal Beirut. The ex­changes have killed hun­dreds in Lebanon and dozens in Is­rael and forced the evac­u­a­tion of tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents on each side of the bor­der.

Is­rael and Hezbol­lah have re­peat­ed­ly pulled back from an all-out war un­der heavy pres­sure from the Unit­ed States, France and oth­er coun­tries.

But in their re­cent warn­ings, Is­raeli lead­ers have said they are de­ter­mined to change the sta­tus quo dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

Speak­ing to Is­raeli troops on Wednes­day, Gal­lant said, “We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it re­quires courage, de­ter­mi­na­tion and per­se­ver­ance.” He made no men­tion of the ex­plod­ing de­vices but praised the work of Is­rael’s army and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, say­ing “the re­sults are very im­pres­sive.”

He said that af­ter months of fight­ing Hamas in Gaza, “the cen­ter of grav­i­ty is shift­ing to the north by di­vert­ing re­sources and forces.”

Is­rael be­gan mov­ing more troops to its bor­der with Lebanon on Wednes­day as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, Is­raeli of­fi­cials said. Is­rael’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Hale­vi, said plans have been drawn up for ad­di­tion­al ac­tion against Hezbol­lah, though me­dia re­port­ed the gov­ern­ment has not yet de­cid­ed whether to launch a ma­jor of­fen­sive in Lebanon.

Lebanon is still reel­ing from the dead­ly de­vice at­tacks of Tues­day and Wednes­day.

The ex­plo­sions have rat­tled anx­ious Lebanese fear­ing a full-scale war. The Lebanese Army said it has been lo­cat­ing and det­o­nat­ing sus­pi­cious pagers and com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices, while the coun­try’s civ­il avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties banned pagers and walkie-talkies on all air­planes de­part­ing from Beirut’s in­ter­na­tion­al air­port un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The at­tack was like­ly to se­vere­ly dis­rupt Hezbol­lah’s in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion as it scram­bles to de­ter­mine safe means to talk to each oth­er. Hezbol­lah an­nounced the death of five com­bat­ants Thurs­day, but didn’t spec­i­fy if they were killed in the ex­plo­sions or on the front lines.

The blasts went off wher­ev­er the hold­ers of the pagers or walkie-talkies hap­pened to be in mul­ti­ple parts of Beirut and east­ern and south­ern Lebanon — in homes and cars, gro­cery stores and cafes and on the street, even at a fu­ner­al for some killed in the bomb­ings, of­ten with fam­i­ly and oth­er by­standers near­by.

Many suf­fered gap­ing wounds on their legs, ab­domens and faces or were maimed in the hand. Tues­day’s pager blasts killed 12 peo­ple, in­clud­ing two chil­dren, and wound­ed some 2,300 oth­ers. The fol­low­ing day’s ex­plo­sion killed 25 and wound­ed more than 600, Health Min­is­ter Fi­ras Abi­ad said, giv­ing up­dat­ed fig­ures.

Abi­ad told re­porters that Wednes­day’s in­juries were more se­vere than the pre­vi­ous day as walkie-talkies that ex­plod­ed were big­ger than the pagers. He praised Lebanon’s hos­pi­tals, say­ing they had man­aged to deal with the flood of wound­ed with­in hours. “It was an in­dis­crim­i­nate at­tack. It was a war crime,” he said.

BEIRUT (AP) —