Israelis told to stay near shelters, Lebanese urged north as troops push across border
Bus driver moderately injured by Hezbollah barrage at Tel Aviv area; terror group claims Israel lying about soldiers entering Lebanon, but says it’s ready for ‘direct confrontation’
A rocket fired from Lebanon on Tuesday hit a major highway outside of Tel Aviv, injuring at least two people, authorities said, placing new restrictions on gatherings as the military geared up for fighting with the Hezbollah terror group to escalate after launching a limited ground incursion into southern Lebanon overnight.
The warnings for millions of Israelis from the northern Galilee down to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv came shortly after the Israel Defense Forces cautioned Lebanese civilians to remain north of the Litani River as it began deploying troops into villages along the border, in a move that will likely shift the ongoing conflict into a higher gear after weeks of heavy airstrikes on Hezbollah bastions throughout the country.
The rocket fire late Tuesday morning was the first salvo to target central Israel since the ground operation was announced just after midnight Tuesday, though the morning saw dozens of rocket attacks on northern Israel and a thwarted drone attack near Tel Aviv that was later claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are allied with Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.
The new restrictions announced by the IDF’s Home Front Command shut schools and workplaces that lack adequate access to bomb shelters, ordered beaches closed and restricted gatherings to 30 people outdoors and 300 people indoors. The directives covered all of northern and central Israel, including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the coastal Sharon region, the Carmel area near Haifa, Wadi Ara, and the northern West Bank.
The announcement was made after authorities said three or four rockets were fired at central Israel from Lebanon, with one slamming into Route 6 near the town of Kafr Qassem, leaving a crater in the road and shutting down the busy highway.
Other rockets in the volley, which activated sirens in a large number of densely populated towns north and east of Tel Aviv, were swatted down by air defenses, the IDF said.
Shrapnel from the rocket impact on Route 6 managed to penetrate a bus with 10 passengers on the highway, wounding the 54-year-old driver in the head, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. He was hospitalized in moderate condition.
Others on the bus were treated for acute stress, and another motorist, 31, was hospitalized with light wounds, MDA said.
Hezbollah took credit for the launch, saying it had fired medium-range “Fadi 4” missiles at the Glilot military base near Herzliya, which houses the Mossad spy agency’s headquarters and the IDF’s signals intelligence unit 8200.
Police said shrapnel also fell in other areas, including Tel Aviv suburb Ramat Hasharon, but there were no other reports of injuries or damage.
Throughout Tuesday morning, sporadic rocket fire peppered Israel’s north, with sirens blaring repeatedly in the border town of Metula, and residents in Safed and other northern towns being sent into shelters.
Over 30 rockets were fired at the north, most of which were intercepted or landed in open areas. No injuries were reported in the attacks, but some sparked brushfires.
The attacks were relatively modest compared to the massive barrages that some had feared could accompany an Israeli ground invasion, challenging Israel’s vaunted air defenses.
However, the new Home Front Command restrictions, which came as many Israelis readied for an extended holiday to celebrate the Jewish New Year starting Wednesday night, indicated that officials believed more rocket fire could be in the offing.
Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afifi called the missile fire at the Tel Aviv area “only the beginning.”
Before fighting began, Hezbollah was thought to possess a formidable arsenal of some 150,000 rockets, including a small number of precision missiles, along with a highly regimented fighting force.
A punishing Israeli air campaign has targeted the group’s weapons stores and manufacturing facilities, while targeted strikes have wiped out much of its leadership, likely depleting the group’s ability to attack.
In the days leading up to the ground operation, Israeli military leaders had warned that the air campaign would likely need to be complemented by a ground-based offensive.
There were no reports of major fighting in southern Lebanon after Israel announced early Tuesday that it was launching a “limited, localized” operation to push Hezbollah away from the border and allow residents of Israel’s north to return home after a year of incessant rocket fire from Lebanon on towns near the border.
Two Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Israeli units had crossed into Lebanon overnight for reconnaissance and probing operations. Lebanese troops also pulled back from positions along the border, the source added.
The IDF’s 98th Division, an elite formation of paratrooper and commando units that had been deployed to Gaza for months, led the overnight ground operation in Lebanon, the military said.
The division’s Paratroopers and Commando brigades were joined by the 7th Armored Brigade, according to the IDF, which released footage of the start of the operation.
After earlier warning Lebanese civilians to remain north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the border, the IDF sent evacuation warnings to the residents of nearly two dozen Lebanese border communities early Tuesday afternoon, telling them to flee north of the Awali River, some 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border.
“Urgent warning to the residents of South Lebanon. Heavy fighting is taking place in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah elements using the civilian environment and the population as human shields to launch attacks,” the military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X.
The Litani marks the northern edge of a UN-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah, but which Jerusalem says has been overrun by armed terror operatives over the last two decades.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said troops were conducting “localized ground raids” on villages near the border, accusing Hezbollah of planning to use the towns as “staging grounds for an October 7-style invasion into Israeli homes.”
Hezbollah planned “to invade Israel, attack Israeli communities and massacre innocent men, women and children,” he said.
An Israeli military official said the troops were within walking distance of the border, focused on villages hundreds of meters from Israel. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said there had been no clashes yet with Hezbollah fighters on the ground.
Hezbollah’s Afifi denied that troops had entered Lebanon but said fighters were ready “to have direct confrontation with enemy forces that dare to or try to enter Lebanon to inflict casualties among them.”
The army said it was also continuing to use air power, carrying out strikes on several buildings where Hezbollah stored weapons and rocket launchers in Lebanon. Overnight, it said it struck Hezbollah weapons production facilities and other military infrastructure in the Dahiyeh suburb south of Beirut.
In a phone call overnight, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant appeared to win US support for the operation from his counterpart Lloyd Austin. According to the Pentagon, the two “agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border to ensure that Lebanese Hezbollah cannot conduct October 7-style attacks on Israel’s northern communities.”
The international UNIFIL peacekeeping force said the military had notified it the day before of its “intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon” and described it as a “dangerous development.”
The Blue Helmet force accused Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 and required that the Iran-backed terror group retreat north of the Litani.
Hagari said UNSCR 1701 had not been enforced by Lebanon or UNIFIL, leaving southern Lebanon “swarming with Hezbollah terrorists and weapons.”
“If the state of Lebanon and the world can’t push Hezbollah from our border, we have no choice but to do it ourselves,” Hagari said.
Ahead of the IDF’s announcement, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that their US counterparts had been informed that the goal of the limited operation was to remove Hezbollah positions along the northern border, thus creating the conditions for a diplomatic agreement under which the terror group’s forces would be pushed northward beyond the Litani River.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support the Hamas terror group amid the war in Gaza, which was sparked a day earlier when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists carried out a massive onslaught in southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.
