Israel says at least 75 rockets fired from Lebanon in second day of escalation

Rocket sirens blared throughout the morning in the north of the country.

Israel’s military said 75 rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Tuesday, with some starting fires and damaging buildings in the country’s north.

It is the second day of much-intensified hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah after Lebanese health officials said nearly 500 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Monday.

The rockets came in five volleys throughout the morning, the largest of them containing 50 rockets toward the Upper Galilee area. The military said it had struck the launchers where the rockets were fired. Another heavily-targeted area was southeast of the Israeli city of Haifa.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it launched missiles overnight at eight sites in Israel, including an explosives factory in Zichron, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the border.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after a rocket hit a local municipality storage in Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel — Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after a rocket, fired from Lebanon, hit a local municipality storage in Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, on Tuesday (Leo Correa/AP)

Several others were being treated for light wounds from running to shelters and traffic accidents when alarms sounded.

Hezbollah has been sending heavy volleys of rockets into Israel as Israel intensifies its operation in Lebanon.

On Monday, Israeli strikes killed nearly 500 people, Lebanese health officials say, and Israel’s military ordered the south of the country evacuated.

Lebanon Israel — A boy checks the damage to a building hit in an Israeli airstrike in the southern village of Akbieh, Lebanon, on Tuesday (Mohammed Zaatari/AP)

The Israeli military says it has no immediate plans for a ground invasion but is prepared for one, after moving thousands of troops who had been serving in Gaza to the northern border. It says Hezbollah has launched some 9,000 rockets and drones into Israel since last October, including 250 on Monday alone.

The military said Israeli warplanes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets on Monday, destroying cruise missiles, long and short-range rockets and attack drones, including weapons concealed in private homes.

Lebanese families displaced from villages farther south slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon.

Some who did not find shelter elsewhere slept in cars and parks and on a seaside road.

Traffic on a highway near Beirut — People who fled the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes on Monday, sit in their cars as they are stuck in traffic at a highway that links to Beirut, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Tuesday (Mohammed Zaatari/AP)

Some offered up empty apartments or rooms in their houses in social media posts, while volunteers set up a kitchen at an empty gas station in Beirut to cook meals for the displaced.

In the eastern city of Baalbek, the state-run National News Agency reported that lines formed at bakeries and gas stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of another round of strikes on Tuesday.

In Israel, the US embassy in Jerusalem restricted American government employees from travelling to Israel’s north after a heavy exchange of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

The embassy said on Tuesday that employees require an armoured vehicle and prior approval to travel to a large region of the north that includes the bustling coastal city of Haifa.

The US State Department meanwhile urged American citizens to leave the country.