Israeli strike kills 10 firefighters in south Lebanon, authorities say

Israel stepped up its bombardment of southern Lebanon on Monday, hitting towns and villages around Tyre

At least 10 firefighters were killed in an Israeli air strike in a border area in southern Lebanon on Sunday night, the Lebanese health ministry says.

The firefighters had been “ready to go out on rescue missions” from a municipal building in Baraachit when it was struck, a ministry statement on Monday.

The Israeli military told the BBC on Tuesday that it had conducted a "precise" strike on "several Hezbollah terrorist operatives who were using a fire station as a military post during combat".

The military also said it carried out air strikes on 120 Hezbollah targets across the south in only hour on Monday afternoon, after Lebanese media reported intense Israeli bombardment across the region.

The state-run National News Agency said Israeli aircraft hit more than 30 towns and villages around the southern coastal city of Tyre alone.

The BBC’s Orla Guerin, who is in Tyre, said some of the locations hit were in the hills close to the border with Israel, but that at least one struck a built-up area of the city.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the targets of the strikes belonged to three regional units of Hezbollah’s Southern Front - the elite Radwan Force, the Missiles and Rockets Force, and the Intelligence Directorate.

The IDF also said it conducted a “targeted” strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where a thick plume of smoke was reported.

The Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon also appeared to be expanding, with the IDF saying that a third division had joined the ground operation it launched six days ago to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.

The IDF also ordered the evacuation of another 20 communities in the south, including the coastal town of Naqoura where the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have their headquarters.

Three weeks of intense Israeli strikes and other attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 1,400 people, including 22 on Sunday, and displaced another 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.

Hezbollah - a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon - has remained defiant despite suffering a series of devastating blows in recent weeks, including the killing of its leader and most of its top military commanders.

On Monday, the group insisted it was “confident... in the ability of our resistance to oppose the Israeli aggression”.

It came hours after Hezbollah rockets struck the northern Israeli port city of Haifa and the town of Tiberias, causing damage and nine injuries.

Another 135 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Monday, according to the IDF. Police said a road was damaged in the Lower Galilee region between Haifa and Tiberias.

Israel’s government - which designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation - has pledged to make it safe for tens of thousands of displaced residents to return to their homes near the Lebanese border after a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the Gaza war.

The hostilities have escalated steadily since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Monday that the “counterattack on our enemies in Iran's axis of evil is necessary for securing our future and ensuring our security”.