Hezbollah fired about 250 rockets throughout the day on Sunday, activating some 500 air-raid sirens, in one of its largest attacks in months.
Ceasefire talks with Lebanon continued, while Israeli officials said Hezbollah’s capabilities are plummeting.
The IDF shot down most of the rockets, but the Lebanese terrorist group achieved some direct hits. Several people were wounded in Petah Tikva. A few people were wounded in Haifa, where a five-story building was hit and in danger of collapse. One person was wounded in Kfar Blum. Rockets also hit Nahariya and Moshav Rinatya, near Petah Tikva, and elsewhere.
Magen David Adom paramedics treated wounded people after a Hezbollah rocket caused a fire in Petah Tikva.Four people were wounded in Petah Tikva, MDA Director-General Eli Bin said. One person suffered moderate wounds, while the others were lightly wounded, he said.
Shahar Chazkelvitz, MDA’s deputy director of the Yarkon Region, and MDA Paramedic Yehudah Shoshana said in a press release: “We arrived at the scene with large forces and saw extensive destruction and several vehicles on fire.
We began by searching the houses and nearby streets. We saw a woman in her 70s who was fully conscious and suffering from smoke inhalation as a result of a vehicle on fire. A 23-year-old man was slightly injured by the blaze. In addition, MDA teams [were] providing medical treatment to a number of panic victims and people who were injured on the way to a protected area.”
Hezbollah rocket attack hit Haifa, North
A rocket hit a five-story building in Haifa. Three victims were rescued with minor wounds. United Hatzalah treated several people for shrapnel wounds and anxiety.
United Hatzalah paramedic Doron Shafir and emergency medical technician Shlomo Feder said they had treated a man and woman in their 60s who were wounded by shrapnel and more than 15 people who suffered from trauma.
A 60-year-old man working in chicken coops near Kibbutz Kfar Blum in the Hula Valley was moderately to severely wounded by shrapnel.
A Hezbollah rocket hit a factory in the Galilee, wounding a 51-year-old woman, United Hatzalah reported.
Firefighters arrived at the scene to put out a fire and searched for anyone trapped in the structure.
The woman suffered light shrapnel wounds to her lower limbs and was taken to Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. A 50-year-old man was in moderate condition after he hit his head while running to a shelter.
“We arrived at the scene very quickly and [found] a 51-year-old woman who was in the parking lot while she was fully conscious and suffering from a shrapnel wound in her lower body,” MDA medic Eran Binyamini said. “We gave her initial medical treatment in the field and then evacuated her in an MDA ambulance to the hospital while she was in good condition.”
The air-raid sirens sounded as far south as Herzliya.
Rocket fragments caused damage to a house in Givat Ada, the Israel Police reported, adding that there were no casualties.
Later Sunday, the IDF struck a rocket launcher that had fired projectiles toward the Haifa area during earlier in the day.
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, published maps on Sunday, calling on Lebanese civilians to be at least 500 meters from certain areas in Beirut, including Dahiyeh.
At least one airstrike destroyed a five-story building and killed somewhere between one and two dozen people in Beirut, according to foreign reports.
Neither the foreign press nor the IDF reported numbers distinguishing between Hezbollah members killed and civilians killed. The IDF said it had targeted terrorist command centers that Hezbollah had embedded within civilian areas.
Lebanon has claimed that the IDF has killed nearly 3,700 Lebanese since the Israel-Hamas War began.Unlike in Gaza, where the IDF has acknowledged anecdotally that civilian deaths could be 60% or more of the total, the IDF has said the vast majority of those killed in Lebanon have been Hezbollah members, and that until mid-September, nearly all of them had been Hezbollah members.
In Gaza, the IDF on Sunday issued new evacuation orders to residents in Gaza City’s Shejaia suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement, and a Gaza hospital director was wounded by an Israeli drone attack, Gaza health officials said.
The new orders for Shejaia that were posted by the IDF spokesperson on X/Twitter on Saturday night were blamed on Hamas terrorists firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the northern Gaza Strip.“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” the IDF said.
The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas’s so-called armed wing, which said it had targeted an IDF army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social media and Palestinian media outlets, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children, walking with backpacks.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents and Palestinian media said – the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In northern Gaza, where the IDF has been attacking for a fourth round against regrouping Hamas terrorists since early last month, Gaza health officials said an Israeli drone had dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, wounding its director, Hussam Abu Safiya.
Armed terrorists use civilian buildings, including housing blocks, hospitals, and schools, for operational cover, according to the IDF.
Reuters contributed to this report.