MARJEYOUN (AP) – Israeli strikes yesterday killed more than 270 Lebanese in the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war as the Israeli military warned residents in southern and eastern Lebanon to evacuate their homes ahead of a widening air campaign against Hezbollah.
Thousands of Lebanese fled the south, and the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon was jammed with cars heading toward Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 fighting.
More than 1,000 other people were wounded in the strikes – a staggering one-day toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices last week.
The government ordered schools and universities to close today across most of the country and began preparing shelters for people displaced from the south.
The Israeli military announced that it hit some 800 targets yesterday, saying it was going after Hezbollah weapons sites. Some strikes hit in residential areas of towns in the south and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
One strike hit a wooded area as far away as Byblos in central Lebanon, about 130 kilometres (km) from the border north of Beirut.
The military said it was expanding the airstrikes to include areas of the valley along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli military post in Galilee.
It also targeted for a second day the facilities of the Rafael defence firm, headquartered in Haifa.
There was no sign of an immediate exodus from the villages of southern Lebanon, and the warning left open the possibility that some residents could live in or near targeted structures without knowing that they are at risk.
The increasing strikes and counterstrikes have raised fears of an all-out war.
Associated Press journalists in southern Lebanon reported heavy airstrikes targeting many areas yesterday morning, including some far from the border.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the strikes hit a forested area in the central province of Byblos, about 130km north of the Lebanese border, for the first time since the exchanges began in October.
No injuries were reported there.
Israel also bombed targets in the northeastern Baalbek and Hermel regions, where a shepherd was killed and two family members were wounded, according to the news agency. It said a total of 30 people were wounded in strikes.
The Lebanese Health Ministry put the death toll at 274. It asked hospitals in southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa valley to postpone surgeries that could be done later.
The ministry said in a statement that its request aimed to keep hospitals ready to deal with people wounded by “Israel’s expanding aggression on Lebanon”.
