(Bloomberg) -- Hezbollah forces fired a missile at Tel Aviv from Lebanon that Israel shot down, as the two sides continued their heaviest attacks on one another in around 20 years.
Israel activated air sirens in its commercial capital early on Wednesday as the projectile — the first fired by Hezbollah on the city — flew over central parts of the country, the Israeli military said. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, said it was a ballistic missile aimed at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s external-intelligence agency, in Tel Aviv’s suburbs.
The US, European and Arab governments are trying to calm the situation and prevent an Israeli ground offensive on Lebanon. Such a scenario could spiral into a region-wide war, with Washington and Tehran directly backing their respective allies.
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Around 560 people were killed by a massive Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley in the north east on Monday and Tuesday, according to Lebanese government officials. The figure included 50 children, the officials said, adding that more than 1,800 people were wounded.
Hezbollah fired about 300 rockets at northern Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli army said. Israel Electric Corp., the country’s biggest power provider, said a “strategic” facility was targeted but that there was no damage. It didn’t give the location of the site.
Lebanon is on “the brink,” United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday in New York at the organization’s annual general assembly. “The people of Lebanon, the people of Israel and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”
US President Joe Biden, in his final address to the general assembly, again called for a cease-fire in Gaza as a way to de-escalate tension in the region, including between Israel and Hezbollah. In Gaza, the prospects of a truce any time soon look slim because talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt, are deadlocked.
Saudi Arabia warned of the “dangers of spreading violence across the region.” The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, in a joint statement, said Israel “is pushing the region toward a comprehensive war.”
Israel says its attacks on Lebanon are aimed at Hezbollah targets and meant to force the group’s fighters away from the Israel-Lebanon border area. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s set to travel to New York to speak at the UN later this week, is trying to enable tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north of the country. A similar number of people have had to flee southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu and his generals appear to believe they can force Hezbollah’s hand with an aerial campaign alone and avoid sending troops into southern Lebanon, which would likely entail large human and economic costs for both Israel and Lebanon.
Still, Israeli officials say they are prepared to move soldiers into Lebanon if they think it’s necessary.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military killed Ibrahim Muhammad Qabisi, head of Hezbollah’s missiles and rockets force, with a strike on Beirut. Israel said it would continue to target senior commanders.
“Any Hezbollah force that you may encounter will be destroyed,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli troops, adding that Israel’s forces have been hardened by fighting Hamas in Gaza for almost a year.
Israel believes that in the past week it has destroyed about half of Hezbollah’s short-range rockets, which can fly up to 45 kilometers (28 miles), and medium-range rockets, which can hit targets 125 kilometers away, according to an Israeli official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel soon after the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza erupted in October. The Lebanese group, which is also a political party, is acting in solidarity with Hamas. Iran has funded and trained both of them and they’re considered terrorist organizations by the US.
Beirut hasn’t been the target of a major bombardment, but Israel has struck it several times in the past two days in attacks seemingly aimed at specific Hezbollah commanders. The strike on Qabisi was the latest of those.
The hostilities are likely to exacerbate the economic and political turmoil Lebanon’s been in for about five years. It has only a caretaker government because talks to elect a new president failed, inflation’s running at 35%, and the country’s in default on tens of billions of dollars of international bonds.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that the Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah “cannot go unanswered,” in a speech at the UN’s general assembly.
--With assistance from Omar Tamo, Dan Williams, Dana Khraiche, Brendan Scott, Alisa Odenheimer and Dan Williams.
(Updates with more details. An earlier version corrected the date of Hezbollah’s strike in first paragraph.)
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