What happened in Lebanon and why is Israel attacking Hezbollah?

CNN
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Israel launched a barrage of airstrikes across much of Lebanon on Monday, the country's deadliest day since the 2006 war between Israel and the powerful, Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Terror and despair gripped the Lebanese population as Israeli bombs killed at least 492 people, including dozens of children, and injured more than 1,600 others, authorities said, as residents fled their homes in desperation to seek safety.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was changing the “balance of power” on the northern front after the Israeli military attacked 1,600 Hezbollah facilities across Lebanon on Monday and did not rule out the possibility of a ground offensive.

Several countries warned that the attacks increased the risk of a larger regional war and called for urgent international pressure to de-escalate the situation. Despite the scale and intensity of Monday's attacks, neither side is calling the current escalation a war.

Here’s what we know:

Israel intensified its air campaign against Hezbollah on Monday, launching “extensive attacks” on the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, marking the deadliest day since the 2006 war. The attacks hit several parts of the country, particularly the south and east of the country near the border with Syria, where the militant group has a strong presence.

The dead and injured also included women, children and paramedics, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday. It is unclear how many of the victims were civilians or Hezbollah fighters, but many of the locations Israel has identified as Hezbollah targets are also residential areas and villages.

Israel said Hezbollah's targets included cruise missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers, rockets and warheads, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said, adding that the ammunition was stored in private homes.

Residents began leaving their homes after their phones beeped with text messages from Israel and calls from unknown numbers urging them to evacuate immediately. A popular Lebanese radio station said it had been hacked and its broadcast interrupted by an Israeli evacuation warning. The Israeli military warned civilians to leave areas where Hezbollah operates, such as those where weapons are stored.

Residents said they had little time to get to safety before the bombing began. A resident of the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre said he heard Israeli warplanes “raining” bombs near his home starting at 5 a.m. local time on Monday.

Classes in schools and universities have been cancelled across the country and some flights to and from Beirut have been suspended. Many schools have been closed to be used as emergency shelters for those seeking protection.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it had fired several rocket salvos into northern Israel, targeting the Ramat David, Meggido and Amos air bases, all located near the northern city of Afula.

Meanwhile, the Israeli cabinet has declared a “state of emergency” across the country, giving it the authority to impose restrictions on civilian life, including limits on public gatherings, an Israeli official told CNN.

Israel said it attacked Hezbollah infrastructure, but videos showing the destruction of residential areas and the high death toll reflect the scale and intensity of the attacks.

The nearly 500 dead on Monday alone are about half as many Lebanese as were killed during the entire 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

In the late afternoon, Israeli warplanes were also spotted over various parts of the country, including the Lebanon Mountains, where Hezbollah has no significant presence.

The Lebanese representative to the United Nations General Assembly spoke of a mass exodus of people fleeing. According to a Lebanese NGO, over 100,000 people have been displaced.

Residents reported seeing buildings collapsing and towns emptied, while images and videos show roads blocked in both directions by heavy traffic as people try to flee. Reuters video from Beirut's southern suburbs showed debris from damaged buildings and shards of glass scattered on the ground.

“We have nowhere to go, we have nothing,” Mohamed Hamayda, a Syrian displaced from Deir al-Zahrani, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Lebanon's Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad said convoys of vehicles evacuating people from shelled areas were “targeted,” as were two ambulances, a fire truck and a medical center. Two rescue workers were killed, he added.

The Israeli military said it was trying to “limit the damage to the Lebanese civilian population as much as possible,” Hagari said. Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of long using civilians as human shields while firing rockets at Israeli citizens.

Hezbollah and Israel have been in conflict for decades, but the two countries have increased their attacks on each other since last October, when Israel's war in the Gaza Strip began after the Palestinian militia Hamas carried out a deadly attack on Israel on October 7.

Hezbollah is part of a Tehran-led alliance in Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq that has been attacking Israel and its allies since the start of the war with Hamas. The group has said it will continue to attack Israeli targets as long as the war in Gaza continues.

The increasing escalation has once again brought the region to the brink of all-out war.

Last week, Hezbollah – one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the region – was rocked after a deadly twin attack by Israel when pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously across the country. The attack followed an Israeli assault on a building in densely populated south Beirut that killed at least 45 people, including a top commander and other senior activists, as well as women and children.

The days that followed saw the heaviest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in the nearly year-long Gaza war. The Lebanese militants fired missiles deeper into Israeli territory than ever before and Israel fired hundreds of missiles into southern Lebanon.

This came as Israel saw its new war aim as returning displaced residents to their homes near the northern border after they had been evacuated due to Hezbollah attacks.

On Monday, Netanyahu said Israel was changing the “security balance” of power in the north, telling the security cabinet that the country's goal in Lebanon was to “keep Hezbollah out of the war with Hamas,” an Israeli official told CNN.

Although Hezbollah is militarily weakened and its secret communications channels have been exposed, Hezbollah's deputy declared a “new chapter” in the conflict, which he described as a “fight without borders.”

Are Lebanon and Israel at war?

While the airstrikes, attacks and rhetoric of both Israel and Hezbollah indicate that the two sides are in open conflict, neither side is calling the current escalation a war.

Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi said they were preparing “for the next phases,” and Netanyahu told the Lebanese people in a televised address that his country was not at war with them, but with Hezbollah.

Iran has warned Israel of “dangerous consequences” of the attacks. The Iranian president told CNN on Monday that the attacks risk sparking a larger conflict in the region.

The international community is making renewed efforts to de-escalate the situation. Qatar, a key mediator in talks between Israel and Hamas, said the region was “on the brink of collapse” and France has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the attacks.

Former US Secretary of Defense and CIA chief Leon Panetta told CNN that the situation had “crossed a threshold” and warned: “We are clearly heading toward a much larger war.”

This week, heads of state and government from around the world are meeting in New York for the UN General Assembly, and behind the scenes, feverish efforts are underway to prevent Israel from further escalation and a ground attack on Lebanon.

Although the United States is Israel's closest ally and largest arms supplier, a senior U.S. State Department official said the U.S. and its partners are trying to find a diplomatic solution.

The US believes that neither Israel nor Hezbollah are interested in a full-scale war, but the biggest concern is that Iran, a major Hezbollah backer, could get involved, US officials told CNN.