Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu threatens more attacks on Lebanon

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened more military action against Hezbollah on Sunday after a week in which his country escalated attacks on Lebanon, stoking fears of a full-scale war.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel “dealt Hezbollah a string of blows it could not have imagined” in a recorded address. “If Hezbollah didn't get the message, I promise you – it will get the message. We are determined to return our northern residents safely to their homes.”

The address came as Israel was on high alert after Iran-backed Hezbollah fired a major barrage of projectiles into the north of the country overnight, the latest round of attacks during a period of unprecedented hostilities since both sides started striking each other last October.

Hezbollah's deputy leader Naim Qassem said the group has entered an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel. Speaking at the funeral of senior commander Ibrahim Aqil, founder and leader of Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces who was assassinated in an Israeli missile attack in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh on Friday, Mr Qassem promised retribution for the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon as part of the new phase of its battle with Israel.

He described substantial overnight strikes into Israel as “one page in an ongoing book of actions to make Israel pay a price for their crimes in Lebanon”.

“Just as the Israelis have announced their new war goal of returning their citizens to the north, we have also erected our new war objective,” he said. “We will not allow the Israelis to return to the north.”

Residents of northern Israel were told to avoid travel and stay near shelters and hospitals. They were also urged to cut routine procedures to free up space and schools were shut across the north as authorities prepared for more strikes. Israel's military said the overnight attacks involved about 150 “aerial threats”, many of which were intercepted.

Some urban areas were hit, however, and footage emerged of a strike on a residential area in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Bialik that injured three people. A teenager died in a road traffic accident during one of the barrages. Hezbollah said the attack targeted a defence centre.

There have been near-daily exchanges of fire since October 8, but fears have been growing in recent weeks over the prospect of a full-scale war as Israel shifts attention away from its campaign in Gaza towards the northern border, where Hezbollah has long posed a threat.

Last week, Israel's security cabinet made returning more than 60,000 people from the north an official war aim. Days later, dozens of people were killed, including civilians. Thousands were injured across Lebanon after communications devices belonging to Hezbollah members exploded, in what is widely believed to have been an Israeli operation. The group said its barrage on Sunday was a response to this attack.

Israel then assassinated senior Hezbollah members, including top commander Ibrahim Aqil who the military said was overseeing plans to invade northern Israel, in a strike on Beirut on Friday which killed 45 people, including three children.

Mr Netanyahu's comments came as Israeli air strikes continued on Gaza, where seven people were killed and several others wounded in an attack on a school-turned-shelter in Al Shati refugee camp, near Gaza city.

The air strike came a day after 21 people, including a pregnant woman and 13 children, were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced civilians in Al Zeitoun neighbourhood. Civilians and rescue workers were filmed removing a woman's unborn child from the wreckage of the school, which was reduced to rubble in the attack.

Six others were killed in Sunday attacks on Rafah and Deir Al Balah, according to the official Wafa news agency, just hours after the enclave's Health Ministry confirmed 40 Palestinians were killed across Gaza in the past 24 hours.

Nada Homsi contributed from Beirut