Hizbullah rockets hit Israel’s third-largest city of Haifa, police said early on Monday, and Israeli media reported 10 injured in the country’s north on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has spread in the Middle East.
Iran-backed Hizbullah, an ally of Hamas, the Palestinian militants group fighting Israel in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with a salvo of “Fadi 1″ missiles.
Media said two rockets hit Haifa on Israel’s Mediterranean coast and five hit Tiberias, 65km (40 miles) away.
Police said some buildings and properties were damaged, and there were reports of minor injuries, with some people taken to a nearby hospital.
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Israel’s military said fighter jets hit targets belonging to Hizbullah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut, including intelligence-gathering means, command centres, and additional infrastructure sites.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military launched an aerial and ground offensive in Gaza over the weekend, thought to be the largest in months, underlining the complexity of defeating Hamas a year after the militant group stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people.
It came as Israelis on Monday marked the first anniversary of the devastating Hamas attack that triggered a war that has sparked protests worldwide and risks igniting a far wider conflict in the Middle East.
[ As October 7th anniversary nears, perhaps horror is the new status quoOpens in new window ]
Ceremonies and protests in Jerusalem and Israel’s south were began around 6.29am, the hour when Hamas-led militants launched rockets into Israel at the start of the October 7th attack last year.
They killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
Outside Israel, demonstrations are expected around the world against its offensive in the Gaza Strip that has laid waste the densely populated coastal enclave, killed almost 42,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and displaced most of the 2.3 million population.
For Israel, the surprise assault by the Palestinian Islamist group was one of the worst security failures for a country that prides itself on a strong, sophisticated military.
Most of the dead were civilians, including women, children and elderly people, killed in their homes, on the roads and at the site of an open air music festival – as well as soldiers on army bases near the Gaza border.
In Gaza, 101 hostages remain as Israeli forces press on with their mission to end Hamas’s rule of the enclave and demolish its military capabilities.
But the focus of the war has increasingly shifted north to Lebanon where Israeli forces have been exchanging fire with Hizbullah since the Iranian-backed group launched a barrage of missiles in support of Hamas.
What began as limited daily exchanges has escalated into bombardments of Hizbullah’s stronghold in Beirut and a ground offensive into border villages.
Israel’s assault, which has killed well over 1,000 people in the past two weeks, has triggered a mass flight from southern Lebanon where more than one million people have been displaced.
A series of Israeli assassinations over the past few months that killed Hizbullah and Hamas chiefs and a sophisticated attack on Hizbullah via pagers and radios have restored some sense of security for Israelis.
But they also prompted unprecedented missile attacks from Iran, raising fears of a regional war with a powerful enemy. Israel has yet to respond to the second Iranian barrage on October 1st, but has vowed a harsh response. – Reuters and Bloomberg