More than 200 people, including women and children, were killed Monday and more than 1000 were wounded as the Israeli military said it had targeted more than 300 Hezbollah sites in Lebanon in an unprecedented wave of air strikes.
"So far more than 300 Hezbollah sites have been targeted" since Monday morning, the military said in a statement. It earlier said more than 150 air strikes were carried out within just one hour, between 6:30 am and 7:30 am.
Israeli warplanes targeted several southern towns for the first time since October 7.
The health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south and east killed 274 people and wounded more than 1024, in the worst toll by far in nearly a year of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.
"Israeli enemy strikes on southern towns and villages since this morning" have killed "182 people and wounded 727 others", the health ministry had said, with casualties including "children, women and paramedics".
An Israeli military official said Israel is focused on aerial operations and has no immediate plans for a ground operation. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations, said the strikes are aimed at curbing Hezbollah's ability to launch more strikes into Israel.
Hundreds of people in south Lebanon fled the bombardment, a local official said.
Bilal Kachmar, an official at the disaster management unit in Tyre, said "hundreds of displaced people rushed to" a school-turned-shelter in the southern city, with many others "camping out in the streets". AFP correspondents in the south saw rows of cars leaving nearby Sidon.