Hezbollah fires missile at Tel Aviv in further escalation after heavy Israeli strikes on Lebanon

BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv early Wednesday, in a further escalation after Israel carried out strikes on Lebanon that killed hundreds of people and the militants fired rockets across wider areas of northern Israel.

The Israeli military said it intercepted the surface-to-surface missile, which set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and across central Israel, and there were no reports of casualties or damage. The military said it struck the site in southern Lebanon from which the projectile was launched.

Hezbollah said it fired a Qader 1 ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, which it blames for a recent string of targeted killings of its top commanders and for an attack last week in which bombs hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies killed dozens of people and wounded thousands, including many Hezbollah members.

The Israeli military said it was the first time a projectile fired from Lebanon had reached central Israel. Hezbollah claimed to have targeted an intelligence base near Tel Aviv last month in an aerial attack, but there was no confirmation. The Palestinian Hamas militant group in Gaza repeatedly targeted Tel Aviv in the opening months of the war.

The launch ratcheted up tensions as the region appears to be teetering toward another all-out war, even as Israel continues to battle Hamas in the Gaza Strip. A wave of Israeli strikes on Monday and Tuesday killed at least 560 people in Lebanon and forced thousands to seek refuge.

Families have fled southern Lebanon, flocking to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, sleeping in schools turned into shelters, as well as in cars, parks and along the beach. Some sought to leave the country, causing a traffic jam at the border with Syria.

Israel said late Tuesday that fighter jets carried out “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah weapons and rocket launchers across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa region to the north. The military has said it has no immediate plans for a ground invasion but has declined to give a timetable for the air campaign.

Tensions between Israel and the Lebanese militant group have steadily escalated over the last 11 months. Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and its ally Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed militant group.

Israel has responded with increasingly heavy airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on Lebanon for Wednesday at the request of France.

Nearly a year of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel had already displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border before this week’s escalation. Israel has vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure its citizens can return to their homes in the north, while Hezbollah has said it will keep up its rocket attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, something which appears increasingly remote.

Israel has moved thousands of troops who had been serving in Gaza to the northern border. It says Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including some capable of striking anywhere in Israel, and that the group has fired some 9,000 rockets and drones since last October.

Cross-border exchanges began ramping up on Sunday in the wake of the pager and walkie-talkie bombings, which killed 39 people and wounded nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny responsibility.

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched around 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

The next day, Israel said its warplanes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets, destroying cruise missiles, long- and short-range rockets and attack drones, including weapons concealed in private homes. The strikes racked up the highest one-day death toll in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006.

An Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday killed Ibrahim Kobeisi, who Israel described as a top Hezbollah commander with the group’s rocket and missile unit. Military officials said Kobeisi was responsible for launches towards Israel and planned a 2000 attack in which three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and killed. Hezbollah later confirmed his death.

It was the latest in a string of assassinations and other setbacks for Hezbollah, which is Lebanon’s strongest political and military actor and is widely considered the top paramilitary force in the Arab world.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said six people were killed and 15 were wounded in the strike in a southern Beirut suburb, an area where Hezbollah has a strong presence. The country’s National News Agency said the attack destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building.

The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon said one of its staffers and her young son were among those killed Monday in the Bekaa region, while a cleaner under contract was killed in a strike in the south.

Hezbollah fired 300 rockets on Tuesday, injuring six Israeli soldiers and civilians, most of them lightly, according to the Israeli military.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 564 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Monday, including 50 children and 94 women, and that more than 1,800 have been wounded, a staggering toll for a country still reeling from the deadly pager and walkie-talkie bombings last week.

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Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Abby Sewell And Melanie Lidman, The Associated Press