By Maayan Lubell, Maya Gebeily and Timour Azhari
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Israel launched airstrikes against Hezbollah targets on Monday, killing 492 people and sending tens of thousands fleeing for safety in Lebanon’s deadliest day in decades, according to authorities.
After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since hostilities flared in October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to evacuate areas where it said the armed movement was storing weapons.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a short video statement addressed to the Lebanese people.
“Israel’s war is not with you, it’s with Hezbollah. For too long Hezbollah has been using you as human shields,” he said.
Families from south Lebanon loaded cars, vans and trucks with belongings and people, sometimes multiple generations in one vehicle. As bombs rained down, children crammed onto parents’ laps and suitcases were tied to car roofs.
Highways north were gridlocked. “I grabbed all the important papers and we got out. Strikes all around us. It was terrifying,” said Abed Afou who was with his family, including three sons aged 6 to 13 and several other relatives. They sat in traffic as it crawled north.
They did not know where they would stay, he said, but just wanted to reach Beirut.
Some people escaped on foot. People carrying small bundles of belongings trekked northward on the beach near the Lebanese town of Tyre.
Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89 temporary shelters in schools and other facilities had been activated, with capacity for more than 26,000 people as civilians fled “Israeli atrocities”.
After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to the northern frontier, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, also backed by Iran.
Israel’s military said it struck Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, east and north.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 492 people had been killed, including 35 children, and 1,645 wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon’s highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday marked a “significant peak” in the nearly year-long conflict.
“On this day we have taken out of order tens of thousands of rockets and precise munition. What Hezbollah has built over a period of 20 years since the second Lebanon War is in fact being destroyed by the IDF,” he said in a statement, referring to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Saudi Arabia expressed deep concern on Monday and urged all parties to exercise restraint, state news agency SPA reported.
MORE AIRSTRIKES EXPECTED
On Monday evening Israel launched a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs aimed at senior Hezbollah leader Ali Karaki, the head of the southern front. Hezbollah later said he was safe and had moved to a secure location.
But Hamas’ armed wing said its field commander in southern Lebanon, Mahmoud al Nader, was killed in an Israeli air strike.
About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of the cross-border fighting. Gallant said the campaign would continue until the residents had returned to their homes. Hezbollah for its part has vowed to fight until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli military said it struck about 1,300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Monday. There were many secondary blasts when munitions stored inside buildings exploded, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement.
He said Israeli strikes hit long-range cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets, short-range rockets and explosive drones.
In response to the strikes, Hezbollah said it launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern Israel.
Sirens warning of Hezbollah rocket fire sounded across northern Israel, including in the port city of Haifa, and in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, the military said.
More attacks were expected in Lebanon.
Hagari said Hezbollah put weaponry “inside Lebanese villages and civilian homes, and intended to fire them toward civilians in Israel while endangering the Lebanese civilian population.”
Hezbollah has not commented on the assertion that it has hidden weapons in houses, which Reuters could not independently verify, but it has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.
STRIKES PUT MORE PRESSURE ON HEZBOLLAH
The strikes have redoubled the pressure on Hezbollah, which last week suffered heavy losses when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.
The operation was widely blamed on Israel, which has not confirmed nor denied responsibility.
In New York, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel wanted to drag the Middle East into a full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“It is Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict,” he told journalists after his arrival in New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly, saying the consequences of such instability would be irreversible.
The fighting has raised fears that the U.S., Israel’s close ally, and Iran will be sucked into a wider war.
Suffering from a financial meltdown, Lebanon can ill afford another war like the one that erupted in 2006, when Israel pounded it during a month-long conflict with Hezbollah.
