A source close to Hezbollah said an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday targeted the group’s commander for south Lebanon, where the movement has clashed with Israel for nearly a year.
“The target of the Israeli strike was Ali Karake, the current commander of the southern front and the third-in-command after” two top commanders who were both killed in Israeli strikes in the southern suburbs in recent weeks, said the source requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. It was unclear whether he had been killed, the source said.
Israeli strikes on Monday 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 Tuesday 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 Monday, saying it was going after Hezbollah weapons sites. One strike hit a wooded area as far away as Byblos in central Lebanon, more than 80 miles 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. Hezbollah has long had an established presence in the valley, and it is where the group was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari repeated warnings urging residents to immediately evacuate areas where Hezbollah is storing weapons, including in the valley. The warnings left open the possibility that some residents could live in or near targeted structures without knowing that they are risk.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets toward Israel, including at an military post in Galilee. It also targeted for a second day the facilities of the Rafael defense firm, headquartered in Haifa.
As Israel carried out the attacks, Israeli authorities reported a series of air-raid sirens in northern Israel warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.
