BEIRUT: The Zionist entity said it launched a new wave of “extensive” strikes Tuesday against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, after hundreds were killed the day before when clashes sparked by the nearly year-long Gaza war intensified. Lebanon said Zionist strikes killed at least 558 people on Monday, sending tensions soaring on the deadliest day of violence in the country since its 1975-90 civil war.

Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad, who gave Monday’s toll of 558 dead, said the “vast majority, if not all, of those killed in yesterday’s attacks were unarmed people in their homes”. His office said another six people were killed Tuesday in a strike on south Beirut. The Zionist entity said it “eliminated” Hezbollah’s rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi the strike. A source close to Hezbollah also said Kobeissi had been killed.

In the evening, the Zionist military said it was “currently conducting extensive strikes on Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanon”. Hezbollah said it targeted a military base in the Zionist entity near Safed twice with salvos of rockets. “In defense of Lebanon and its people”, Hezbollah targeted “the Dado base” near Safed – the headquarters of the Zionist military’s northern command – with a total of 90 rockets, the Iran-backed group said in two separate

rate statements. Hezbollah said later it targeted four more Zionist military sites, including a military camp south of Haifa, with three “Fadi” rockets.

The Kuwaiti foreign ministry on Tuesday expressed robust condemnation of the air raids and military operations carried out by the Zionist occupation forces against the brotherly Republic of Lebanon. This offensive, that inflicted hundreds of deaths and injuries, is a flagrant breach of international law and international humanitarian law and a dangerous threat to the region’s security and stability. It warned anew of the repercussions of the mounting escalation that may eventually expand and lead to dangers affecting states of the region.

Despite pressure mounting on the Zionist entity, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to press on with the withering Zionist air campaign in Lebanon. “We will continue to hit Hezbollah... the one who has a missile in his living room and a rocket in his home will not have a home,” he said.

The UN said tens of thousands of Lebanese had fled their homes since Monday, in the face of the intensifying Zionist bombardment. “Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes yesterday and overnight, and the numbers continue to grow,” UN refugee agency spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said. “The toll on civilians is unacceptable,” he added. The agency later said it was “outraged” after one of its staff members and a contractor were killed.

Thuraya Harb, a 41-year-old housewife at a makeshift center for displaced families in Beirut, described Tuesday as a “day of terror”. “I didn’t want to leave my home, but the children were scared,” the mother of four said, adding that her family fled “with nothing but the clothes on our backs”. Not all the displaced stayed in Lebanon. A security official in neighboring Syria told AFP that some 500 people had crossed the border, fleeing the bombing.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington opposed a Zionist ground invasion targeting Hezbollah and had “concrete ideas” on how to de-escalate the crisis. Zionist armed forces chief Herzi Halevi said Monday’s strikes hit combat infrastructure Hezbollah had been building for two decades, while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Monday “a significant peak” in the operation. “This is the most difficult week for Hezbollah since its establishment — the results speak for themselves,” Gallant said.

The violence between the Zionists and Hezbollah escalated dramatically last week, when coordinated communications device blasts that the militants blamed on the Zionist entity killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000. Then on Friday, a Zionist strike on southern Beirut, a bastion of Hezbollah, killed its elite Radwan Force commander, Ibrahim Aqil. – Agencies