Fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance group have launched volleys of rockets at an Israeli military-industrial complex in the northern part of the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories in retaliation for deadly Israeli strikes across the Arab country.
Residents of Haifa ran for shelter as sirens rang out on Monday evening following the Hezbollah onslaught, AFP reported.
“Sirens sounded in the city of Haifa and surrounding areas, northern Israel,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Approximately 180 projectiles and one drone crossed into Israeli airspace over the day in various parts of northern occupied territories, the military said.
Hezbollah said rockets were fired at Rafael Electronics Company north of Haifa, as well as the reserve headquarters of the Northern Corps and logistics base of the Galilee Formation in the Ami'ad camp.
The group also fired dozens of rockets against Ramat David, an Israeli air force base located in the northern part of the occupied territories, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Haifa.
Israeli Channel 13 television channel reported that five illegal settlers sustained minor injuries from shrapnel after rockets fired from Lebanon struck areas on the northern side of the territories.
This was the second time Hezbollah targeted military sites in Haifa. The Lebanese resistance group previously fired missiles at the city on Sunday.
According to Israeli media outlets, hundreds of thousands of settlers have fled to their local bomb shelters amid barrages of rockets fired into the 1948 occupied territories by Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad says Israeli air attacks have killed at least 356 people, including 21 children, 39 women and two medics, while more than 1,200 others have been wounded.
The minister added that the Israeli attacks have targeted medical centers, ambulances and cars of people trying to leave.
All nurseries across Lebanon have been closed and schools will be shut for two days in areas hit by Israeli strikes, according to education authorities.
The United Nations has voiced deep worry “about the escalation in Lebanon.”
“The attacks that we saw on the communication devices, the pagers, followed by rocket attacks and rocket fire being exchanged on both sides … marks a real escalation,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told AFP.
“What we’ve been warning about all along, the regional spillover of the conflict, it appears that both the actions and the rhetoric of the parties to the conflict is taking the conflict to another level,” she noted.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have incrementally escalated since the occupying regime launched a ruinous war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip in October last year, which has killed at least 41,455 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
The two sides have on a near-daily basis exchanged heavy fire resulting in the loss of more than 600 lives on the Lebanese side.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on September 19 that the deadly wireless device explosions by Israel amounted to a declaration of war on Lebanon, vowing a harsh response to the regime.