JERUSALEM/BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired heavy rocket barrages at Israel on Sunday, and the Israeli military said houses had been destroyed or set on fire near Tel Aviv, after a powerful Israeli airstrike killed at least 29 people in Beirut the day before.
Israel also struck Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, where intensified bombardment over the last two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in U.S.-led cease-fire talks.
Hezbollah, which has previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it had launched precision missiles at two military sites in Tel Aviv and nearby.
Police said there were multiple impact sites in the area of Petah Tikvah, on the eastern side of Tel Aviv, and that several people had minor injuries.
The Israeli military said a direct hit on a neighborhood had left “houses in flames and ruins.” Television footage showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire.
The IDF said Hezbollah had fired 240 rockets at Israel, of which many were intercepted, with sirens sounding across most of the country. At least four people had been injured by shrapnel.
Video obtained by Reuters showed a projectile exploding as it smashed into the roof of a building in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya.
The military warned on social media that it planned to target Hezbollah facilities in southern Beirut before strikes that demolished two apartment blocks, according to security sources in Lebanon. Afterwards, the IDF said it had hit command centres “deliberately embedded between civilian buildings."
On Saturday, it had carried out one of its deadliest and most powerful strikes on the center of Beirut.
Lebanon’s health ministry on Sunday raised the death toll from 20 to 29. It said 84 people had been killed in all on Saturday, taking the death toll to 3,754 since October 2023.
The IDF did not comment on Saturday’s strike in the capital or say what it had attacked.
Israel went on the offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in September, pounding the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs with airstrikes after nearly a year of hostilities ignited by the Gaza war.
